Jessica O’Reilly

Jessica O’Reilly, Associate Professor of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, is an anthropologist of Antarctic and climate science and policy. She began her Antarctic research career with her dissertation project at the University of California Santa Cruz, which ultimately became the book The Technocratic Antarctic: an ethnography of scientific expertise and environmental governance (2017, Cornell University Press). Her postdoctoral work turned to policy-relevant science under uncertainty, focusing on sea level rise projections from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. In addition to the Antarctic Treaty System, O’Reilly studies the sociocultural dynamics of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, featured in the books Inside the IPCC: how assessment practices shape climate knowledge (2024, Cambridge University Press) and the forthcoming manuscript Science in the Balance: the epistemics and aesthetics of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. O’Reilly has served as an advisor to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition and the United States delegation to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings.

Research projects / interests:

• Science/ policy for environmental management
• Decision making under uncertainty
• Institutional ethnography
• Epistemology

Areas of interest:

• Polar Governance
• Antarctic Treaty System
• Environmental Management
• Polar Policy
• Geopolitics
• Human Geography
• Anthropology
• Cultural Studies
• Environment
• Values

Keywords: anthropology, climate change, science/ policy, environmental management and governance