Tag Archives: Ecology

A theatre project explores collective solutions to saving the ocean

Dr Kira Erwin is an urban sociologist and senior researcher, at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology. Her research and publications focus largely on race, racialisation, racism and anti-racism work within the urban context. Her past projects explore narratives of home and belonging within the context of migration, gender and inclusion; as well as state delivered housing projects in the city. She is currently working on Lalela uLwandle with a team of researchers and civil society organisations to think through how people’s economic, spiritual, scientific and symbolic meanings of the sea should be part of ocean governance decisions. Her projects make use of creative participatory methods, and she collaborates with colleagues in various creative fields to produce forms of public storytelling that extend research beyond the walls of academia.

A tropical fish evolved to endure rising temperatures – but it may not be fast enough to survive climate change

Rachael Morgan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Ecophysiology, University of Glasgow.
“I am an ecophysiologist who studies temperature effects on fish. My research focuses on understanding how fish are able to acclimate or adapt to rising temperatures and determining the underlying mechanisms of thermal performance and thermal tolerance.”

Washed Up

Alejandro Durán collects the international trash washing up on the Caribbean coast of Mexico and transforms it into aesthetic yet disquieting art works that wake us to the threat of plastic pollution. Through photography and installation, his long-term project “Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape” examines the fraught intersections of man and nature, revealing the pervasive impact of consumer culture on the natural world. He also engages audiences through community-based environmental art-making and speaking engagements.

Is humanity doomed because we can’t plan for the long term? Three experts discuss

Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, Department of Experimental Psycology, University of Oxford. His research is concerned with trying to understand the behavioural, cognitive and neuroendocrinological mechanisms that underpin social bonding in primates (in general) and humans (in particular).

Chris Zebrowski is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Loughborough University. His research analyses the concept of resilience in the context of the changing rationalities and practices of risk management and security.

Per Olsson is a Researcher, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. He is a transdisciplinary researcher and has worked in the interface of natural and social sciences and humanities. His current research focuses on agency and system entrepreneurship, social-ecological innovations, transformations to sustainability, and how to reverse current trends of crossing critical thresholds and tipping points in the Earth system.

Biodiversity loss could be making us sick – here’s why

Jake M. Robinson is a PhD Researcher, Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield. A professional ecologist and planetary health researcher with experience in both terrestrial and marine environments, his current research interests centres around three topics:
1. The environment-microbiome-health axis: investigating the relationship between microbes, the health of humans (noncommunicable and infectious diseases) and the wider environment
2. Remote sensing: using innovative technology to acquire and analyse remote data, particularly for biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration
3. Investigating nature-based solutions within planetary, one and eco-health frameworks

Future Blueprint

Jasmine Pradissitto is an international artist, innovator, and speaker with a background in physics based in London. Inspired by nature, the human condition, the mythopoetic and a more sustainable future, her forms create a commentary on an unsustainable, increasingly Anthropocene world slowly being reshaped by the things we consume and then disregard. She creates work that builds awareness about diminishing air quality and biodiversity extinction.

The queer uses of colour

This text looks to undo assumptions of creative individuals existing apart from dynamic material relations. Following a material ecocriticism ethos, it describes many simultaneous instances of materials affecting the narrative or meaning-making potential within human art practice, specifically in recounted moments from an artist residency taking place within collective gardens where plants were made into paints. In developing Sara Ahmed’s refrain of ‘use’ coming before, during or after relations, the creative tendency to find potential in pre-existing materials, using them differently, is proposed as a life-sustaining mode, like that of Margulis’ Serial Endosymbiosis Theory.

Handspan, handspun: navigational lines in the work of artists Inge Thomson and Deirdre Nelson

This essay considers projects by two multimedia artists working in Scotland to propose that culture and local ecology are inseparable and mutually-determining aspects of our understanding of and care for place. The work of Inge Thomson and Deirdre Nelson encompasses material cultures and oral traditions, with an emphasis on marine environments, creating new narratives of passage as works of advocacy for ‘vernacular, community-based ecology’.

The digital revolution could unlock a green transformation of the global economy

Prof. Dr. Dirk Messner is the director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security of United Nations University (UNU-EHS). He is also the Co-Director of the “Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research” at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He is an internationally recognized expert on the topics of global change, digitalization, and sustainable development, transformation towards the decarbonization of the global economy, global governance and evolution of human cooperation.