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Spring 2025
Taviton Street 14-16, room 432 | Tuesdays 2-4pm
14 January
Professor Peter Jones, Department of Geography, UCL
‘Incentive diversity is key to the more effective and equitable governance of marine protected areas’
21 January
Gabriella Santini, PhD candidate, UCL Anthropology
Understanding the Motivations Behind Lion Hunting in Kenya's Maasailand: A Case Against Conflict
28 January
Dr Hani Rocha El Bizri, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
‘Sustainable hunting in the Amazon’
4 February
Dr Sophie Haines, University of Edinburgh
‘The Nature of Forecasting: Anticipatory Devices and Environmental Politics in Belize’
11 February
Dr Mark Infield, Ashdown Forest Conservators, previously Fauna & Flora International
‘There and back again: A circular story of conservation and the meaning of protected areas’
18 February | READING WEEK
25 February
Dr Andrew Sanger, Dance Lecturer, The Place
‘Enchantment and the Soft Activism of Attention: An Ethnography of Environmental Dance Practices in the United Kingdom’
4 March
Bo Yang, PhD candidate, UCL Anthropology
‘The Nomadic Life of Plants: Multispecies Stories and the Cosmopolitics of Kham Tibetan Pastoralism’
11 March
Dr Thomas White, Lau China Institute, Kings College London
‘China’s Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier’
18 March
Dr Maria Salaru, Anthropology, UCL
‘Materializing Climate Change: Architectural Transformation and the Politics of Retrofit’
Please contact Emily Woodhouse for further information.
- Autumn 2024
Tuesdays 2.00 - 4.00pm | Room 431 | SSEES, 16 Taviton Street, WC1H 0BW
1 October
Introductions and 2023-4 MSc student research presentations
(Juan Pablo Lobo-Guerrero Villegas, Helen Shen, Ramya Nair)8 October
‘Unpacking rights-based approaches to international conservation practice’
Megan Tarrant, PhD candidate, York University15 October
‘The Amazon in Times of War’
Dr Marcos Colón, Professor of Media and Indigenous Communities, Arizona State University22 October
‘Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing environmental governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield’
Dr Ariadne Collins, School of International Relations, St Andrews University29 October
‘Becoming Jaguars or Knowledge and Eating in More-than-human Indigenous Pesh Worlds’
Juan Mejía Lopez, PhD candidate, UCL Anthropology12 November
‘Plundered Wealth and Violent Extraction: The Political Economy of Coping in the Democratic Republic of Congo’
Dr Maryam Rokhideh, Science & Technology Studies, UCL19 November
‘Reimagining Peripheral Futures: Going beyond the Urban-rural dichotomy’
Dr Lakshmi Priya Rajendran, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL26 November
‘Farming with diversity in late modernity: contemporary issues of knowing, knowledge, technics and relations’
Dr Julien Blanc, Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris3 December CANCELLED
Apologies this seminar has had to be cancelled.
“Re-beavering London: An experiment in urban (re)wilding”
Dr Tom Fry, Department of Geography, Cambridge University and Dr Jonathon Turnbull, School of Geography & the Environment, Oxford University
- Autumn 2023
3.10.23 Introductory session
10.10.23 2022-3 MSc cohort present their research
17.10.23 Prof. Chris Sandbrook (Cambridge University) - "Green grab or inclusive conservation? investigating the social implications of 30x30"
24.10.23 Prof Sian Sullivan (Bath Spa University) - ""Hunting Africa": How International Trophy Hunting May Constitute Neocolonial Green Extractivism"
31.10.23 Prerna Singh Bindra (PhD Cambridge University) - "Living with Tigers, Moving for Tigers: The Policy and Practise of Conservation Related Relocation in India"
14.11.23 Kayla de Freitas (PhD Royal Holloway; AED/HERG graduate) - "Burning Tensions: The Implications of Shifting Indigenous Burning Practices on Local Fire Governance in South Rupununi, Guyana"
21.11.23 Dr. Sarah Coulthard (Newcastle University) - "Why are Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) so controversial and is there really a need for conservation approaches that exclude people entirely?"
Followed by roundtable with panellists who all are/or were closely involved with the policy team at DEFRA charged with delivering the Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMA) policy: Mark Atkinson (Head of Marine Social Science, DEFRA), Robert Clark (Chief Officer of the Association of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities, AIFCA), Phil James (Director of the Sustainable Development Reform Hub and former Head of Domestic Marine Economics, DEFRA), Peter Jones (Professor of Environmental Governance at UCL Geography).
28.11.23 Dr Marie-Annick Moreau (UCL Anthropology) - ""Bring us water and we will drink": On kindness, trust, and guilt in fieldwork!"
5.12.23 Dr Thais Morcatty (Oxford Brookes University) - "Nurtured by Nature: The Role of Wildlife in Biocultural Heritage and Food Security for Amazonian Peoples"
- Spring 2023
10 January - George Holmes (University of Leeds)
Eager about beavers? Rewilding, landscape, and the (il)legal lethal control of feral beavers in Tayside, Scotland17 January - Sarah Edwards (Oxford Botanic Garden & University of Oxford)
Plants As Medicine in the Anthropocene: Scientific and Indigenous Ontological Perspectives24 January - Megnaa Mehtta (UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction)
Intimate Antagonisms and Unlikely Friendships between State and Society in the Sundarbans Forests of IndiaForests worldwide are often implicated in histories of violence. The Sundarbans, straddling India and Bangladesh, infamous for its tigers, tiger-demons and home to 5 million human residents sharply expresses this global conflict. However, ethnographic fieldwork encountered co- option, conviviality and mutual care among individuals classically characterised as political antagonists. How might this ‘compassion in repression’ be ruptured?
31 January - Fabien Moustard (Extreme Citizen Science Group, Geography, UCL)
Behind the fence of an eco-guards basecamp7 February - Simon Hoyte (UCL Anthropology)
“The trees, I know their names, I know how they heal”: Health and a 'One Health' project in the rainforest of Cameroon14 February - Reading Week
21 February - Dawn Hill Adams (Tapestry Institute) - in person meeting, speaker online
The World of Indigenous Research Methods[Cancelled] 28 February - Sarah Fischel (UCL Geography)
Caring for Coral: exploring multi-species care and coral restoration in Bonaire[Cancelled] 7 March - Chris Sandbrook (Cambridge University) - in person meeting, speaker online
MSc AED students can instead, if they wish, book to see their dissertation supervisor during this HERG slot14 March - Kew Gardens visit: Ethnobotany lecture and tour for MSc AED students (and interested PhDs)
Hosted by Dr. Mark Nesbitt, Curator of Ethnobotany at Kew, Visiting Professor Royal Holloway and UCL, and his team