Living Climate Futures Lab
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
is an interdisciplinary initiative bringing together twenty MIT faculty and affiliates from across the Institute. LCFL was the recipient of the inaugural Faculty Driven Initiative (FDI) Seed Grant from the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) in spring 2025.
The Living Climate Futures Lab (LCFL)
More about the Lab Members on our page
The climate crisis is global, but its patchwork effects are unevenly felt. MIT's Living Climate Futures Lab collaborates with communities and individuals living on the front lines of our climate futures.
Just as climate scientists might use a network of sensors to measure climate change and its planetary impacts, the Living Climate Futures Lab fosters a network of community-level “sensors” across disparate social landscapes that can help us understand how climate change and its mitigation impacts are unfolding in real-life settings. Through a series of case studies, insights from the Lab’s collaborative research partnerships with both community groups and STEM colleagues will further our knowledge of — and strengthen our responses to — climate change in ways that aspire to a truly “just transition” away from fossil fuels.
The Living Climate Futures Lab serves as a home base and umbrella organization at MIT for the growing numbers of researchers interested in the Lab’s three pillars:
1. Focusing on how climate change, and climate "solutions," play out in people’s everyday lives.
Trinity Colón, Destiny Vasquez, Alejandra Cruz, and Gregory Miller from Southeast Chicago’s George Washington High School speaking at MIT’s Living Climate Futures 2022 Symposium. Photo by Jade Mazon
2. Creating knowledge and research partnerships with community organizations.
Professor Ryan Emanuel (Lumbee), speaking to a group from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality about wastewater contamination. Photo by David Shane Lowry.
3. Building bridges across STEM and SHASS disciplines.
Participants of Decarbonizing Mongolia class trip in 2024, overlooking wind turbines installation on the horizon. Photo by Lauren Bonilla.
A view onto Chelsea Creek looking toward the Boston Bay Marina. Photo by Bettina Stoetzer.
The Living Climate Futures Lab is premised on the recognition that climate change — its causes, impacts, and solutions — is simultaneously economic, ecological, political, technological, social, and cultural. To grasp its complexity, we must conceptualize climate change in holistic ways that cross varied social and environmental settings and draw upon the expertise of diverse academic disciplines.