Emma Critchley’s Soundings invites us into intimate encounters with the deep seabed. In this public conversation, we will explore this further, examining questions of representation, inclusion and speech in the context of human-nature relationships.
*From Rosmarie Waldrop’s poem Representation
Dr Dina Lupin, Leo Townsend, Dr Giulia Champion and Michael Lomotey will look at who gets to speak and be heard in the articulation and regulation of these relationships. Critically examining how different human and more-than-human communities are represented in policy, law and practice in the context of environmental crisis. In doing so, they will begin to uncover what intimate relations between humans and their worlds means and demands.
Dr Dina Lupin is an Associate Professor at the School of Law at the University of Southampton. In their research, Dina examines the role of fundamental legal values in the context of environmental decision-making and they use feminist, queer and decolonial theory in their analysis of Indigenous epistemic and social resistance to unjust environmental processes and practices.
Leo Townsend teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. His research explores the pragmatics and politics of representative speech acts: how one person can be in a position to speak for others, and how representation can sometimes be abused, in a way that silences those who are purportedly spoken for. He is currently developing a new research project on speaking for nature.
Dr Giulia Champion is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. Her main research project, entitled (Un)Mediating the Ocean, investigates how the seabed is mediated in legal, financial, scientific, infrastructural and cultural documents and interventions as part of the creation of a regulatory framework for deep-sea mining by the International Seabed Authority. The project explores questions about Just Energy Transition, Civil Society engagement with the International Seabed Authority negotiations and In/Tangible Underwater Cultural Heritage.
Michael Lomotey is 3rd Year PhD in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton. He is interested in the Black Radical Tradition and especially antiblackness as theoretical, ontological and conceptual frameworks through which to interrogate and uncover truths in climate change discourse. Michael is currently researching the impacts of flooding on Black communities in Hull.
6pm – Exhibition open for viewing
6:30pm – In conversation event
7:30pm – Event finishes