This roundtable will cover infrastructure and initiatives at UBC that support sustainability and climate justice research. Part of the Un/Predictable Environments: Politics, Ecology, Agency digital conference.
Chair: Mary Chapman, University of British Columbia, Canada
Speakers:
Tara Ivanochko | “The UBC Sustainability Initiative: Supporting UBC faculty and students to act on the planet’s most urgent sustainability problems”
Tara Ivanochko received a PhD in Paleoclimatology at the University of Edinburgh. In 2009 she joined the educational leadership stream faculty at UBC to direct, develop and teach in the Environmental Science undergraduate degree program. Now, as Academic Director, Tara provides vision, guidance, and oversight to the UBC Sustainability Initiative.
David Tindall | “Humanities Courses in the Minor in Environment and Society”
D.B. Tindall studies contention over environmental issues, including topics such as forestry, wilderness preservation, fisheries, and climate change. A major focus of his research has been environmental movements in BC and Canada and, in this context, the interrelationships between social networks, movement identification, and participation. His current research, funded by SSHRC, focuses on sociological aspects of contention over climate change in Canada, including perceptions about climate change, views about climate justice, and social processes affecting policies for dealing with climate change, and media coverage of climate change issues. He chairs Arts’ Minor in Environment and Society.
Liska Richer | “SEEDS Sustainability Program: Creating Applied Research & Partnerships”
Liska Richer is Manager of the SEEDS Sustainability Program at the UBC-Vancouver Campus. SEEDS utilizes the Campus as a Living Laboratory to co-create impactful student-led research opportunities and interdisciplinary partnerships that advance UBC’s ambitious sustainability and wellbeing commitments and create scalable solutions to critical societal issues. Over 1000 impactful applied research projects have been generated which inform the development and implementation of UBC’s sustainability policies and practices, and provide students with professional development and meaningful learning experiences and faculty with opportunities to integrate sustainability into the curriculum. She co-chairs the Campus Biodiversity Initiative: Research & Demonstration, Climate Change in Urban Biodiversity, UBC Food System Project, and the Climate Action Plan 2030. Additionally, Liska in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems.
Anna Casas | “UBC’s zeroemissionuniversity petition”
Anna is an Assistant Professor in the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies and was a Wall Scholar at Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. Her work explores intimate connections between gender, nationalisms, and regionalisms in modern Spanish and Catalan literature and visual culture. With Wall Scholars and other UBC faculty, Anna drafted UBC’s zeroemissionuniversity petition.
Meghan Wise | “Connecting and empowering university and community stakeholders to take bold climate action for a just future”
Meghan Wise is the Campus Climate Initiatives Lead with the Climate Hub and a graduate student in Political Science at UBC. Meghan’s research, writing, community engagement and organizing are rooted in three areas: Researching climate denialism as a barrier to climate policy and action; analyzing the lessons we can learn from the Covid-19 pandemic to better understand and address sociopolitical impacts of climate change; and researching impacts of climate change on community mental health and using art to build community wellbeing, resilience, and hope amid the climate crisis.
Thursday, May 20, 2021
2:30 – 3:30 pm PDT
Online via Zoom
Free
This conference is co-hosted by the Public Humanities Hub at UBC-Vancouver and the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, in collaboration with the University of Allahabad. With support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council Canada.