Birkbeck Climate Festival 2025: PhD Spotlights: Research for a Sustainable Future
When:
—
Venue:
Online
As part of the Birkbeck Climate Festival 2025, this event brings together PhD students from across the college and across disciplines to showcase their research on environment and sustainability. Each speaker will give a short, engaging 5–10 minute talk, offering insights into their cutting-edge work—covering topics such as climate resilience, renewable energy, conservation, environmental policy, and more.
Confirmed Speakers:
🌿 Nishani Rose Anam Cadwallender – Trees Revisited: Exploring the Nature of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Arboreal Poetry
This creative-critical project examines how trees shape identity, literary tradition, and ecological thought in nineteenth-century poetry. Engaging with the works of Toru Dutt, Elia Cook, and Amy Levy, Cadwallender interweaves critical analysis with creative components she calls dendrologies, reimagining poetic anthologies through a botanical lens.
⚗️ Olivia Allison – Re-membering Ammonia’s Past, Present and Future Disasters
Ammonia (NH₃) is a toxic gas with a paradoxical role as both a fertiliser and an explosive. This creative-critical project explores the contradictions of ammonia’s history and future—examining how its disasters, both fast (explosions, leaks) and slow (pollution, administrative violence), shape the human and non-human world. Drawing on archival materials, found texts, and interviews, this innovative hybrid text analyses and re-members ammonia’s affective and material impact on our world.
This is a unique opportunity to hear from emerging scholars across a range of disciplines, exploring the ways literature, history, and environmental studies intersect with sustainability and climate research. Whether you're a student, researcher, or simply curious about the latest developments in sustainability, join us for an evening of thought-provoking discussions and fresh perspectives.
Contact name:
Stephen Willey