Lucie Benoit is a PhD candidate under the SNF Ambizione project Juridification of climate politics in the name of climate emergency. Her research deals with the criminal trials of climate activists prosecuted for various acts of protest (such as unauthorized demonstrations or roadblocks) in Switzerland. Drawing empirically on courtroom ethnography and conceptually on performativity theories, she examines the discourses and practices through which climate civil disobedience and its (il)legitimacy are constructed in court. Her work aims to explore the co-constitutive relationship between law and politics in modern Western democracies facing the climate crisis by bringing together questions of participation, citizenship and (judicial) power.
She holds a Masters in Environmental Sciences and Humanities from the University of Fribourg.
Research interests
- Legal and political anthropology
- Critical legal studies
- Performance and performativity theories of law
- Climate litigation
