Thaddeus Holownia is a visual artist, teacher, letterpress printer and publisher. In Holownia’s large-scale photographs, he uses the idea of heightened perception to explore the traces humankind leaves on the landscape. About his work, he echoes Thoreau’s observation, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.
Anders Sandberg is a James Martin Research Fellow, at the Future of Humanity Institute & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. His research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. Topics of particular interest include enhancement of cognition, cognitive biases, technology-enabled collective intelligence, neuroethics and public policy. He has worked on this within the EU project ENHANCE, where he also was responsible for public outreach and online presence. Besides scientific publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies, he has also participated in the public debate about human enhancement internationally. Anders also held an AXA Research Fellowship and is now the senior researcher in the FHI-Amlin collaboration on systemic risk of risk modelling.
Siobhán McDonald is an Irish artist based in Dublin. In a practice that emphasizes field work and collaboration she works with natural materials, withdrawing them from their cycles of generation, growth and decay. Her solo exhibition, ‘The Boglands are Breathing’, presents a new body of work that critically explores the role of boglands as both repositories of our past and guardians of our future. In a multifaceted body of work, Siobhán McDonald blends scientific and creative processes to make sculpture, video, works on paper, paintings and sound pieces.
Jana Norman is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. Jana also teaches in the English, Creative Writing and Film Department at the University of Adelaide. Jana’s research interests in environmental humanities and legal theory focus on critical and creative approaches to collaborating across difference towards reparative shared futures. Her book, ‘Posthuman Legal Subjectivity: Reimagining the Human in the Anthropocene’ (Routledge 2021) received the Socio-Legal Studies Theory and History Book Prize in 2022 and the Chris Beasley Prize for Gender and Sexuality Theory from the Fay Gale Center for Research on Gender at the University of Adelaide in 2021.
Benjamin Gearey is lecturer in environmental archaeology, University College Cork, with a wide range of research interests focused on wetland and especially peatland environments. He is PI for the ongoing IRC COALESCE funded project IPeAAT, and was CO-I for the recently completed EU Joint Planning Initiative/Cultural Heritage funded project ‘WetFutures’ and other IRC funded projects.
He is a member of the United Nations Global Peatlands Initiative and an elected member of the JPICH Scientific Advisory Committee with expertise in past climate change. He is editor of The Journal of Wetland Archaeology and has published extensively on aspects of peatland heritage, environmental change and human impact, in peer reviewed journals and books, including the recently published ‘An Introduction to Peatland Archaeology and Palaeoenvironments’ (Oxbow Books, 2023).
Maureen O’Connor is a lecturer at the School of English and Digital Humanities in University College Cork. “I am an Irish Studies scholar, specializing in women’s writing, from the late nineteenth century to today. Much of my work is ecofeminist analysis, including my first book, The Female and the Species: The Animal in Irish Women’s Writing.”
Dr Rosie Everett is a Lecturer in Forensic Science at Northumbria University with a specialist interest in forensic ecology and environmental trace evidence. As a former environmental archaeologist, she has research experience and interest in past environmental archives (pollen, diatoms) for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction with a focus on peatlands and peatland heritage. She has worked with government bodies and NGOs to develop policy and action to support peatland restoration groups and communities in the management and protection of peatland heritage in the face of climate change.
Simon P. James is Professor of Philosophy, Durham University.
“I came to philosophy by a roundabout route, taking a BSc in Biological Sciences followed by an MA in the History and Philosophy of Science, before obtaining a PhD for a thesis on environmental ethics. I have written a number of articles on environmental philosophy as well as the following books: ‘Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics’ (Routledge, 2004), ‘Buddhism, Virtue and Environment’ (Routledge, 2005; co-authored with David E. Cooper), ‘The Presence of Nature: A Study in Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy’ (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009) and ‘Environmental Philosophy: An Introduction’ (Polity, 2015). My new book, ‘How Nature Matters’ (Oxford University Press, 2022), presents a new theory of environmental value, based on the concepts of meaning, constitution and cultural identity.”
Sir Jonathan Bate is Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities at Arizona State University and a Senior Research Fellow in English Literature at Oxford University, where he was formerly Provost of Worcester College. The author of twenty books, several of which have won major prizes, he is a world-renowned expert on Shakespeare and the history of English and European Literature, especially the Romantic movement and contemporary poetry and fiction. He was the first to introduce ecological approaches to the arts and humanities into British scholarship and has also made significant contributions to discussions in the public sphere of the value of the humanities. A Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, he is the youngest person ever to have been knighted for services to literary scholarship.
Ava Roth is a Toronto-based encaustic painter, embroiderer and mixed-media artist. For the past decade she has worked almost exclusively with beeswax. Combining techniques from both fine art and crafts, she aims to use natural materials and processes to explore the intersection between human beings and the natural world. Her current collection is an inter-species art collaboration between herself and honey-bees.
Patrick Huse is a Norwegian painter and multi-media artist. He studied landscape art and conceptualism during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. His works incorporate techniques as painting, drawing, photograph, video, wall based text material and objects. In the early 1990’s he started a project titled Rethinking Landscape, a trilogy consisting of the three parts: ‘Nordic Landscape’, ‘RIFT’ and ‘Penetration’. The traditional landscape art still plays a role as an artistic reference, but through a series of exhibitions from the mid-1990’s and later, he has challenged landscape art in a way which makes his project unique. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.
Amy M. Youngs creates eco art, interactive sculptures, and digital media works that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice-based research involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She has created installations that amplify the sounds of living worms, indoor ecosystems powered by a rocking chair, an interactive museum for live insects, and an augmented reality tour of real nature. ‘Belonging to Soil’ is an art installation and virtual reality experience based on a critical ecological reality.