illustration of fungi

Radical Epistemologies and Future Natures – video recordings

Radical Epistemologies and Future Natures

Our online ‘workshop’ with the POLLEN22 conference, Radical Epistemologies and Future Natures, is now available to view. The workshop topics include commoning and enclosures, ‘weird’ ecologies, and beyond-human ecologies.

The sessions are ‘asynchronous’, meaning people can view the pre-recorded talks at any time. There is space for comments and discussion on each page. Discussion was particularly encouraged during the first week (25-31 July 2022), but the talks will stay online and accessible afterwards, with space to comment.

The workshop is split into three sections:

  • Commoning, Enclosure and Future Natures
  • Natures out of Place I – Ecologies and materialities of ‘the weird’
  • Natures out of Place II – Beyond-Human Ecologies

You don’t need a conference ticket to view the videos, which are open access.

Workshop line up

Here’s what to expect from each session.

1. Commoning, Enclosure and Future Natures

Keynote: Commoning and Enclosure, by Massimo De Angelis.

Introduction to the Future Natures Centre, by Amber Huff.

Lightning talks on the commons, by participants in the Future Natures network.

2. Natures out of Place I – Ecologies and materialities of ‘the weird’

Session organizers: Dr Amber Huff, Institute of Development Studies UK, and Dr Adrian Nel, University of Kwazulu-Natal

Presentations and presenters:

  • Keeping the spectre of waste alive
    Lisa Doeland, Radboud University Nijmegen and University of Amsterdam
  • Mosquito time: Human-insect porosity within english urban wetlands
    Mary Geary, University of Brighton
  • Taming and living of ‘weird ecologies’: notes from the floodplains of Assam, India
    Sampurna Das, the University of Delhi
  • Towards Weird Geographies And Ecologies: Vandermeer, Miéville, And Chernobyl
    Jonathon Turnbull, University Of Cambridge; Ben Platt, University Of Cambridge; Adam Searle, Université De Liège

Session abstract: Bringing political ecology’s long-standing concerns with the politics of human-nature relations into dialogue with insights from cultural and critical geography, cultural anthropology, the environmental humanities, geocriticism and genre fiction, this session responds to calls for a departure from primarily reactive analysis and critique, to develop new, experimental, proactive, playful and speculative approaches and analyses in political ecology (Harris, 2021; Braun, 2015).

We ask: what is the potential of ‘the Weird’ and adjacent notions like the eerie, the uncanny, and the haunted (VanderMeer and VanderMeer, 2011; Fisher, 2016; Fisher, 2012) for developing grounded and radically ‘alternative epistemic entryways’ that can help us assess, historicize, recast and subvert dominant, flattening framings and ‘anthropocene’ politics of ecology, crisis, control and enclosure (Hosbey and Roane, 2021), whilst at the same time working for more convivial relations and abundant futures (Büscher and Fletcher, 2019; DeVore et al., 2019; Collard et al., 2015)?

Contributions to this session explore and develop these themes as they intersect with ecologies of place and with long-standing and emerging concerns in political and other ecologies that are sensitive to history, relationality and power.

3. Natures out of Place II – Beyond-Human Ecologies

Presentations and presenters:

  • Situating The Monkey In The Urban Socio-spatial Fabric Of Delhi’s Neighbourhood
    Ms Aditi Dhillon, School Of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi, Dr Suresh Babu, School Of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University Delhi
  • The More-than-human Histories Of A Dying Lake. The Uru-qotzuñi And Lake Poopó, Bolivia
    Dr Hanne Cottyn, University Of York, UK
  • Going Beyond The Rational, Or: How Visceral Methods Can Enhance Research Outcomes
    Dr Robert Hafner, University Of Innsbruck, Austria; Dr Felix Dorn, University Of Innsbruck, Austria; Anna-maria Brunner, University Of Innsbruck, Austria; Dr Christina Plank, University Of Natural Resources And Life Sciences, Austria
  • Un-naming and Wild Dogs
    Rosa Deen, University of Kent
  • Art and Ecology
    Heather Sanchez

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Featured image: Image from page 194 of “Diseases of plants induced by cryptogamic parasites; introduction to the study of pathogenic Fungi, slime-Fungi, bacteria, & Algae” (1897)

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