These research seminars are interdisciplinary discussions around contemporary debates in the humanistic social sciences of climate change and the environment. Events take multiple formats, including standard seminar format as well as more engaged discussions of relevant readings and works in progress.
At present due to the current circumstances, seminars are taking place online via Zoom. The seminars are open to all. If you would like access to any of the upcoming seminars please email sociology.media@lse.ac.uk.
The series is co-sponsored by the Department of Geography and Environment, the Department of Sociology and the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
It is organised by Dr Kasia Paprocki (k.paprocki@lse.ac.uk) and Dr Austin Zeiderman (a.zeiderman@lse.ac.uk) of the Department of Geography and Environment and Dr Rebecca Elliott (r.elliott1@lse.ac.uk) of the Department of Sociology. Please contact Dr Rebecca Elliott with any questions. Updates can be found on Twitter.
Past Seminars
Summer Term 2021
Dr Jesse M. Keenan, Tulane University School of Architecture
4 May 2021, 2-3:30pm
The (Applied) Epistemology of Resilience and Adaptation
Lent Term 2021
Dr Hannah Knox, Department of Anthropology, UCL
Tuesday 26 January, 1-2:30pm
Encountering Climate in Models and Materials
Dr Amelia Moore, Department of Marine Affairs, University of Rhode Island
Tuesday 16 February, 2-3:30pm
At the Island’s Edge: Living and Learning Within Intersectional Ecologies
Dr Debjani Bhattacharyya, Department of History, Drexel University
Tuesday 23 March, 2-3:30pm
Climate Futures’ Past: Insurance, Cyclones and Weather Knowledge in the Indian Ocean World
Michaelmas Term 2020
Professor J. Timmons Roberts, Department of Sociology and Institute at Brown for Environment & Society, Brown University
Tuesday 13 October, 1-2:30pm, Zoom
The New U.S. Climate Battleground: Actors and Coalitions in the States
Professor James R. Elliott, Department of Sociology, Rice University
Tuesday 10 November, 4-5:30pm, Zoom
Damages Done: The Long-Term Impacts of Rising Disaster Costs on Wealth Inequality
Professor Veronica Strang, Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University
Tuesday 1 December, 1-2:30pm, Zoom
Water Beings: From Nature Worship to the Current Environmental Crisis
Summer Term 2020
Professor Lyla Mehta, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK; Visiting Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
June 8 (1-2:30pm U.K. time)
The politics of climate change, uncertainty and transformation in marginal environments
Lent Term 2020
Professor Andrea Nightingale, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo
January 27 (1-2:30pm)
Unruly landscapes of environmental change: imagining a future Himalaya
Professor Miriam Greenberg, Department of Sociology, University of California Santa Cruz
17 February 2020 (1-2:30pm)
The Housing/Habitat Project: Tracing Impacts of the Affordability Crisis in the Wildlands of Exurban California
Michaelmas Term 2019
Dr Gökçe Günel, Department of Anthropology, Rice University
21 October (6-7:30pm)
Book Launch: Spaceship in the Desert
Professor Paige West, Department of Anthropology, Barnard College and Columbia University
4 November (1-2:30pm)
A prayer for the world: Climate change, engaged scholarship and writing the future
Dr Daniel Aldana Cohen, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
11 November (1-2:30pm)
Follow the Carbon: Housing Movements and Carbon Emissions in the 21st Century City
Dr Andrew Curley, Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2 December (1-2:30pm)
What is a Resource Curse?: Energy, infrastructure, colonialism, and climate change in Native North America
Summer Term 2019
Dr Nayanika Mathur, Department of School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, Oxford
13 May, 1-2:30pm
Crooked Cats: Human-Big Cat Entanglements in the Anthropocene
Lent Term 2019
Dr Jesse Goldstein, Department of Sociology, Virginia Commonwealth University
4 February, 1-2:30pm
From Planetary Improvement to Energy Abolition: Against and beyond the Transparent Energy of Whiteness
Dr Sarah Knuth, Department of Geography, Durham University
4 March, 1-2:30pm
Rentiers of the Green Economy? Placing Rent in Clean Energy Transition
Professor James McCarthy, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University
18 March, 1-2:30pm
Renewing accumulation? Political economies and ecologies of renewable energy
Michaelmas Term 2018
Dr Malini Ranganathan, School of International Service, American University
8 October, 1-2:30pm
From Urban Resilience to Abolitionist Climate Justice in Washington, DC
Professor Elizabeth Shove, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University
12 November, 1-2:30pm
DEMAND: Exploring the dynamics of energy, mobility and demand
Dr Megan Black, Department of International History, LSE
3 December, 1-2:30pm
Divided Legacies of the Landsat Satellite: The Origins of a Climate Science Tool in American Mineral Exploits, 1965-1980
Summer Term 2018
Dr Anne Rademacher, Program in Environmental Studies and Department of Anthropology, New York University
2 May, 4:30-6pm
Building Green: Forging Environmental Futures in Mumbai
Dr Liz Koslov, Comparative Media Studies, MIT
4 June, 4:30-6pm
The Fight for Retreat: Urban Unbuilding in the Era of Climate Change