Nicolas Viens is a PhD student in sociology at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the sociology of the climate crisis, particularly the involvement of fossil fuel and finance corporations among energy transition debates and decarbonization initiatives. His work involves social networks, historical materialism, and human ecology.
Born in Quebec, Nicolas holds a pan-Canadian education granting him a broad understanding over political and ecological issues surrounding the climate crisis, both at the provincial and federal levels. He is involved in research and policy work from coast to coast. He completed a master’s degree in development studies at York University, where he conducted research on the effects of fossil fuel industry interests onto Canadian governmental climate and energy policy outcomes.
Since 2021 he is a collaborative researcher with the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS, Socioeconomic Research and Information Institute), an independent think tank based in Montreal, where he wrote several policy papers as well as short articles about the climate crisis destined to the general public. He also co-authored and led larger research projects on key socioeconomic and ecological topics in the province of Quebec, such as public transportation, urban sprawling, and economic development following the COVID-19 pandemic. His contributions also include provincial budget analyses, organizing environmental committees, and media interviews discussing some of the think tank’s publications.
Nicolas has been a research assistant for more than two years for a large SSHRC-funded project on the anti-ecological transition economic elite in Eastern Canada, led by Professor Jean-Philippe Sapinski, at Université Moncton, and co-directed by Professors Éric Pineault (Université du Québec à Montréal) and Audrey Laurin-Lamothe (York University). This project notably relies on social network analysis to unravel what green growth policy-planning networks in Quebec and the Maritimes provinces as a source of climate inaction in the country.