Rock Ethics Institute

Biography

Nancy Tuana was the founding director of the Rock Ethics Institute. She is a philosopher of science and feminist science studies theorist who specializes in issues of ethics and science.

Dr. Tuana is part of an interdisciplinary research team at Penn State that has developed a more robust model of research ethics to more adequately reflect the impacts of ethical issues in scientific practice. Her research includes coupled ethical-epistemic issues in the field of climate science. In this domain, she Co-PI of the NSF Sustainability Research Network on Sustainable Climate Risk Management. Her research for this project focuses on how best to develop climate risk management strategies that are ethically defensible as well as sustainable, scientifically sound, technologically feasible, economically efficient. This research also includes the ethical issues raised by geoengineering proposals.

Dr. Tuana is also engaged in research on justice issues in the context of climate change and is the author of a number of articles on the topic of gender and climate change.