In 2025, Rissa Citizen Science is partnering with polar scientist Giulia Castellani from the University of Pisa, Italy, on a research project to better understand what makes kittiwake hotels appealing to these seabirds. Meet Giulia Castellani, where climate change, social science, and nature conservation converge.

Giulia Castellani in her natural habitat.
Hi Giulia, can you introduce yourself?
I am a scientist working in polar regions. I have always been fascinated by the ice, especially sea ice, and I did my PhD in sea ice physics. However, during my years of research and also during my expeditions in polar regions, I realized how important sea ice is for ecosystems. So, over the last years I have been working as sea ice ecologist in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

Kittiwakes over the sea ice during the MOSAiC expedition, which Giulia joined in 2020.
Can you share details about your upcoming research project on kittiwakes in Tromsø?
My research project focuses on the kittiwakes hotels. During this project, I will analyze data collected in 2023 and 2024 to identify key factors—such as hotel materials, nesting platform spacing, orientation, and location—that promote successful nesting. These findings will guide the placement and design of the future hotels in Tromsø and other European towns and cities that kittiwakes use as a refuge.

What makes a kittiwake hotel attractive to kittiwakes?
You are an accomplished polar scientist with a solid expertise in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. What sparked your interest in studying kittiwakes?
Despite sea ice being so far from our daily life, its changes are already having a great impact on our lives. However, such impacts still feel quite distant in time and remote in space. Kittiwakes are one of the most tangible connections between sea ice and our reality since the recent changes in sea ice are contributing to the kittiwakes 'intrusion' in our lives. Kittiwakes are a great example of co-existence forced by climate changes, a topic that we will have to face more and more in the future and not just with animals, but also with other human populations.

Kittiwakes are part of Tromsø city's identity.
You took a career break and traveled the world for nearly two years from 2022 to 2024. Did this experience change the way you work as a scientist?
By traveling around the world, I could see with my own eyes the terrible impact of climate change on the many people of the many countries that I crossed. Despite a deep professional understanding of climate change, for the very first time I saw people, far away from polar regions, really suffering and struggling to face its consequences. This broadened my perspective as a scientist and fostered the will to study climate change on a more global and human-centric perspective.

Kittiwakes on a kittiwake hotel in Tromsø.
Tromsø has been your home town while working for the Norwegian Polar Institute, which means you have lived with kittiwakes. Has your perception of kittiwakes changed during your stay here?
Absolutely. Initially, I was associating kittiwakes with the smell that sometimes invested me while walking around the city. Such smell often made me hold my breath and walk as fast as possible away from it. Now that I know the story and the background of these birds, whenever I encounter such smell I look up and I observe the nests, the buildings, where and how they are organized. Curiosity and the wish to somehow support them is now overcoming any smell.

Kittiwake in Tromsø.
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