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Contribution short abstract

The study investigates how the grand narratives of EU-funded programs influence and shape the positioning of climate scientists’ self-narratives in bridging the gap between knowledge and action to inform adaptive decision-making.

Contribution long abstract

Grand narratives are overarching stories that best explain the past, motivate the present and imagine the future. Under the assumption that individual scientific actions are situated within a larger socio-political context that continuously interacts with grand narratives, convictions about what is deemed actionable are socially embedded and normatively charged. Committing to a research career path requires a consistent narrative identity shaped by personal experience and institutional context. Re-interpretating our role as part of grand narratives through time invokes not just the moral codes and value frameworks to appeal to, but what visions of the future spark commitment despite fundamental uncertainty.

In this study, we intended to demonstrate the (mis)alignment of self-narratives with grand narratives. The project calls for proposals are issued under Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, both essential in driving innovative research and addressing societal challenges. We analysed the project calls for convictions towards technology, socio-politics, values, knowledge, and action. The self-narratives were interpreted from interview fragments with individual climate scientists participating in a research and innovation project. A large language model has been used to mark narrative segments, which are then categorised to compare personal with grand narratives. The preliminary results showed how such grand narratives interacted with climate scientist's constructions of past experiences and expectation-building to affect decision-making.