The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is excited to welcome Moira Donovan as Journalist in Residence from October to November 2026!

Moira Donovan is a freelance journalist based in Halifax, Canada, reporting on the environment and climate change, with a particular focus on marine issues and coastal climate change. Her stories on subjects such as fisheries management, ocean pollution, and carbon dioxide removal have appeared in The Guardian, Yale E360 and The Economist, and on CBC Radio, and have won awards from the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Moira has also been awarded fellowships with the Logan Science Journalism Program (2025), the Falling Walls Foundation (2022), and is an alumna of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. Before becoming a journalist, she studied philosophy at the University of King's College and the London School of Economics. 

At the MPIWG, Moira will be based in the Department “Knowledge Systems and Collective Life,” where she will be researching a project on geoengineering and climate modification, including the process by which scientists and societies come to understand the environment as something that can be managed, as well as the limitations of the scientific method when applied to a system as complex as the planet itself. The project will explore how scientific knowledge on geoengineering is creating a new relationship with the planet.