Climate change is rapidly becoming the dominant event of our lives. The rapidly destabilising ecological context requires concentrated efforts across disciplines yet the discussion continues to be dominated by science at international level. Join this international webinar to explore this provocative question and reflect on how arts and humanities guide reflection, dialogue and action for climate change mitigation.
What role do lessons of the past have in helping us find better ways of addressing the crisis? What roles do narratives widely circulating in the present have in facilitating global action? What imaginative solutions can be found through creative expressions to lead to a better future for the next generations? Perspectives from Scotland, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand will be brought together to reflect on the contribution of these human-centred disciplines to addressing the ecological challenges we face, to interrogate our relationship with the planet and its resources and to seek new solutions for a better future.
This event is co-organised by the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH), the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA) and the Irish Humanities Alliance (IHA).You can register, here, on Eventbrite
Participants:
• Dr Jamie Gillen – University of Auckland & DASSH
• Professor Robert Greenberg - University of Auckland & DASSH
• Professor Catherine O’Leary – University of St Andrews & SAHA
• Professor Caitríona Ní Dhúill – University College Cork & IHA
• Professor Murray Pittock – University of Glasgow & SAHA
• Professor Claire Squires – University of Stirling, SGSAH & SAHA
• Dr Timothy Stott – Trinity College Dublin & IHA
Contributor Bios:
Dr Jamie Gillen is director and senior lecturer in the Global Studies programme at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. His research and teaching interests revolve around the human geographies of Southeast Asia and he has started a new project studying climate entrepreneurialism in Vietnam.
Prof. Robert Greenberg is a board member for DASSH and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland. He received his PhD from Yale University in 1991, and held teaching positions at Yale, Georgetown University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has served in academic leadership roles since 2000. As Dean, Professor Greenberg has been a staunch advocate of the value of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines.
A specialist in Slavic languages, he conducts research on the link between language, nationalism, and ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia. His publications include numerous books and articles on the Slavic peoples and their languages, with a special emphasis on language policies, language and society, and language and politics. His book, Language and Identity in the Balkans received an award in 2005 for the best book in Slavic Linguistics from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. In 2010 he was the recipient of the William Clyde DeVane medal for excellence in teaching and scholarship at Yale University.
Prof. Caitríona Ní Dhúill is professor in German at University College Cork, where she convenes the Eco-Humanities Research Group and is an affiliate of the Environmental Research Institute. She is the author of Sex in Imagined Spaces: Gender and Utopia from More to Bloch (2010) and Metabiography: Reflecting on Biography (2022), and is currently co-editing a special issue of the journal Austrian Studies on 'Anthropocene Austria' (forthcoming 2022). She is a member of the Environmental Humanities Working Group of the Irish Humanities Alliance. She gained her PhD from Trinity College Dublin in 2005 and has taught in St Andrews, Durham and Vienna.
Catherine O’Leary is Professor of Spanish and Dean of Arts and Divinity at the University of St Andrews. She has published widely on contemporary Spanish literature, and has particular interests in theatre censorship, gender and identity, and exile and cultural memory. She is Director of the St Andrews interdisciplinary Cultural Identity and Memory Studies Institute (CIMS). A graduate of Dublin City University and University College Dublin, she worked at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, before moving to Scotland in 2013.
Prof. Murray Pittock is co-Chair of the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance (SAHA) and Bradley Professor at the University of Glasgow, where he has served in senior leadership roles since 2008. He is currently Pro Vice-Principal, with responsibilities ranging from directing early career development for over 500 academic staff in Glasgow, Dumfries, China and Singapore, to external partnerships with a particular focus on the Glasgow Riverside Innovation District . He leads the Kelvin Hall development for the University as well as chairing its Advanced Research Centre XR Strategy Board.
Murray is a Trustee (Research and Education) and Scottish History advisor to the National Trust for Scotland and an advisor to many other organizations. His recent funded research includes the £1M Allan Ramsay and the Enlightenment Project, a Scottish Government report on the impact of Burns on the Scottish Economy, and an urban history consultancy with Barclays Bank. He has held visiting appointments at Yale, New York University, Notre Dame, Trinity College, Dublin, Charles University, Prague, South Carolina and other institutions. Murray has made around 2000 media appearances in 55 countries on culture, politics, history and society. His Global History of Scotland is due out in 2022 from Yale. In 2020, he became the first person elected to Academia Europaea for research on Scottish studies.
Prof. Claire Squires is Professor of Publishing Studies at the University of Stirling, and Director of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH). She has led on SGSAH’s development of a GREEN/GRADUATE strategy, and the provision of the SGSAH/British Council EARTH Scholarships for PhD and Early Career Researchers in the environmental arts & humanities to come to Scotland in 2023.
Dr Timothy Stott is Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Head of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College Dublin. His research focuses on the history of environmental art and design and, most recently, the visual culture and architecture of climate science. Recent publications include the monograph Buckminster Fuller’s World Game and Its Legacy (2021), and the edited collection (with Johanna Gosse) Nervous Systems: Art, Systems, and Politics since the 1960s, (2022). He is Chair of the Environmental Humanities Working Group for the Irish Humanities Alliance at the Royal Irish Academy and a member of the Trinity Centre for Environmental Huma