Staff profile

Academic Biography

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Durham University .

My areas of research and teaching specialty are in Political Philosophy and Ethics (Normative and Applied) with a focus on issues that intersect matters of climate justice, philosophy of immigration, gender, and global and social justice. My current work addresses the moral, political, governance, and institutional challenges of “climate mobilities” which refers to voluntary and forced immobility and migration including in-situ adaptation, external and internal displacement, refugee flows, managed retreat, and planned relocation that are influenced by climate variability, slow and rapid-onset climate impacts. While my research is grounded in normative and political philosophical theorizing, I engage with and contribute to interdisciplinary research and teaching programs in the social sciences.

Prior to joining the Philosophy Department at Durham I was a Research Associate at the Climate Futures Initiative in Science, Values, and Policy at Princeton University administered by theHigh Meadows Environmental Instituteand theUniversity Center for Human Values. I am also an Associate of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University where I was a Research Fellow in the Mahindra Humanities Center and part of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation research cohort on Migration and the Humanities. I earned my PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine in 2018 and my MA in Philosophy from San Francisco State University in 2012.

• Climate Justice
• Climate Mobility
• Environmental Philosophy
• Ethics (Normative & Applied)
• Feminist Philosophy
• Philosophy of Immigration
• Political and Social Philosophy

Journal Article

• Capisani, S. (2021). Livability and a Framework for Climate Mobilities Justice. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 11(1),
• Capisani, S. (2020). Territorial Instability and the Right to a Livable Locality. Environmental Ethics, 42(2), https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics2020111816