Human Ecology Research Group (HERG) seminars
A seminar series on research around the dynamic relationships between humans, environments and resources.
Spring 2026
Room 432, Taviton 14-16 | Tuesdays 2pm – 4pm
Please contact Emily Woodhouse for further information.
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Moving beyond the hatchet: how researchers and practitioners can work together more effectively to plant seeds of change
Dr Fleur Winn | Cambridge University
13 January
Return of the Serpent: cosmologies of climate change in the Bolivian Andes
Dr Rosalyn Bold | UCL Anthropology
20 January
Making wild and making weird: European bison (re)introductions in the UK and Europe
Callum Aitken | PhD candidate, UCL Anthropology
27 January
Conserving the World’s Largest Working Wetscape—Developing tools for sustainability and biodiversity conservation in the Pantanal
Tom McFarland | PhD candidate, UCL Anthropology & Geography
27 January
Using local ecological knowledge to investigate socioecological systems and environmental change in North Korea
Dr Joshua Powell | UCL Geography
3 February
How drug prohibition drives environmental harm and is a barrier to climate justice
Clemmie James | Health Poverty Action
10 February (Note: the time for this event is 1.30 - 3pm)
The implementation of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) in Colombia
Cat Clarke | PhD candidate, UCL Anthropology
24 February
From settler ecologies to ecologies otherwise? The possibilities and limitations of inclusive conservation in northern Kenya
Dr Brock Bersaglio | Birmingham University
3 March
Beavers in Paradise: Prefiguring London’s urban wilds
Dr Tom Fry | Cambridge University and Dr Jonathon Turnbull, Durham University
10 March
Special event celebrating the career of Professor Katherine Homewood
Speakers: Professor Kate Hill, Oxford Brookes University and Professor Dan Brockington with a introduction given by Emeritus Professor Phil Burnham.
17 March | 3pm-5pm | Daryll Forde Seminar Room, UCL Anthropology
This event is for current HERG members and invited guests. Please contact Emily Woodhouse in advance if you would like to attend.
Introductions and 2024-5 MSc student research presentations
Skye Hervas-Jones, Mark Moffat, Marie Poisson & Nathan Whitebrook
30 September
The Climate of Poor Governance: Maladaptation and the Making of Vulnerability in the Sundarbans
Dr Megnaa Mehtta | UCL Risk & Disaster Reduction
7 October
Embroidery as method: Threading diasporic more-than-human entanglements between New York City and Mexico
Inés Hernández de la Peña | PhD candidate, Cambridge University
14 October
One-step forward, three steps back: Is it really possible to decolonise academia?
Dr Sahil Nijhawan | ZSL; Nature Conservation Foundation; UCL Anthropology
21 October
The one that got away: learning from unsuccessful hunts about knowledge, practice and belief...and maybe causality and failure too
Dr Raj Puri | University of Kent & Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
28 October
Reading week - no seminar
4 November
Protecting Congo’s peatlands and peatlands-dependent livelihoods
Dr Cassie Dummett | UCL Geography
11 November
Proofers of Crisis: horror, glee, and emotional editing in climate (in)action
Dr Andrea Pia | LSE
18 November
Promising Blue Futures: Marine Biobanks and the uptake of ocean life in Europe
Dr Hannah Dickinson | University of Manchester
25 November
Triangulating coexistence: Evidence from multiple ways of knowing in the Maasai Mara, Kenya
Erin Connolly | PhD candidate, UCL People and Nature Lab
2 December
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.
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 University
15 October
‘The Amazon in Times of War’
Dr Marcos Colón, Professor of Media and Indigenous Communities, Arizona State University
22 October
‘Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing environmental governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield’
Dr Ariadne Collins, School of International Relations, St Andrews University
29 October
‘Becoming Jaguars or Knowledge and Eating in More-than-human Indigenous Pesh Worlds’
Juan Mejía Lopez, PhD candidate, UCL Anthropology
12 November
‘Plundered Wealth and Violent Extraction: The Political Economy of Coping in the Democratic Republic of Congo’
Dr Maryam Rokhideh, Science & Technology Studies, UCL
19 November
‘Reimagining Peripheral Futures: Going beyond the Urban-rural dichotomy’
Dr Lakshmi Priya Rajendran, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
26 November
‘Farming with diversity in late modernity: contemporary issues of knowing, knowledge, technics and relations’
Dr Julien Blanc, Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris
3 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
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"
10 January - George Holmes (University of Leeds)
Eager about beavers? Rewilding, landscape, and the (il)legal lethal control of feral beavers in Tayside, Scotland
17 January - Sarah Edwards (Oxford Botanic Garden & University of Oxford)
Plants As Medicine in the Anthropocene: Scientific and Indigenous Ontological Perspectives
24 January - Megnaa Mehtta (UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction)
Intimate Antagonisms and Unlikely Friendships between State and Society in the Sundarbans Forests of India
Forests 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 basecamp
7 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 Cameroon
14 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 slot
14 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