Departmental Events

🌲 Professorial Inaugural Lecture No. 3 - Recording 📹

Many thanks indeed to Profs. Kate Arnold and Jon Ensor for delivering two fantastic lectures this week on their respective career paths and future plans. From the foraging habits of pub goers to self-tuning guitars, it provided a fascinating insight into the different routes that can be taken on the way to reaching a professorial academic post in our Department. 

If you were not able to join us, you can watch the recording of the Prof. Inaug. Lecture No. 3: Prof. Kate Arnold / Jon Ensor.

The next installment of the series will be held on Weds 8 May, 15:00-16:00 in ENV005, followed by refreshments in the Foyer. There we will hear from Profs. Sarah Bridle and Andy Dougill. If you need the calendar invite to be resent, do let Chloe know (environment-pa@york.ac.uk). 

🌲 DEG Seminar

Date / Time: Tuesday 16th April at 12:05

Location: Hybrid - in person (ENV/005) and Zoom.

Speaker: Dave Tickner

Title: A bad scientist’s view of how science can do more to help bend the curve of freshwater biodiversity loss

Blurb

Dave trained as a geographer and began his career as a policy adviser in the UK environment ministry. He then completed a PhD in freshwater sciences from the University of Birmingham before joining the WWF. As their Chief Freshwater Advisor, he advises river and wetland conservation programmes in the UK and internationally, engages governments and companies on water-related issues, and leads research into global freshwater challenges and solutions. In his seminar, he ponders whether we know that scientists have found more species of fish living in our rivers and lakes than in the world’s oceans? Or that freshwater habitats are home to one third of all vertebrate species? Or that the global freshwater wildlife stock index has fallen more than twice as fast as the indices for land and ocean habitats? Reversing the freefall, or “bending the curve”, of global freshwater biodiversity while also managing rivers, lakes and aquifers for human benefit is one of the great environmental challenges. In this seminar, he will tell the story of efforts to develop and implement an Emergency Recovery Plan for freshwater biodiversity. He will also discuss how the science community can be more impactful in stimulating the changes needed to address the global biodiversity crisis.

🌲 Sustainability Education Conversation

Date / Time: Wednesday 17th April at 12:05

Location: Zoom

Speaker: Dr Andy Brookes

Title: Developing a sustainable mindset - our role as educators?

Blurb

Contemporary society is facing multiple global crises yet it is failing to take sufficient and meaningful action to bring about substantive change. There is plenty of sustainability talk, but not enough action! An example of this collective failure is that global temperatures have continued to rise with 2023 being the hottest on record. In this session Andy Brookes will present some ideas about how we can reframe the sustainability problem and its underlying causes. This framework, a ‘sustainability transitions paradigm’, can also provide a useful lens for reflecting on our role and responsibility as higher educators.

Other Events

Workshop on Wildlife Fertility Control

The Botstiber Institute for Wildlife Fertility Control  (BIWFC) will host a 2-day workshop entitled Wildlife Fertility Control: What Now? What Next? Where to?  that the BIWFC  at the University of York on 17-18 June 2024. Read the Agenda for this workshop.

This event will explore multiple facets of practical applications of wildlife fertility control in Europe. Attendees will include representatives from public and private sectors, academia, practitioners and non-government organizations. Registration is still open!

Tree Researchers Assemble!

Date / Time: Tuesday 30 April, 9:15am to 12pm

Location: YH/001b

Do you work on or with trees in any form or discipline? This event is designed for researchers across ALL faculties, so join us for a half-day workshop where you will engage in interactive exercises and discussions to map out tree-related research.

Book your place or register for future meetings.

Rachel Drinkhill, YESI Senior PA & Initiatives Co-ordinator

🎫 Heritage at York

Date / Time: Friday 10th May, 2 - 5pm

Location: Treehouse (BS/104, Berrick Saul Building)

We would like to let you know about an event we are running to bring together staff across the University who are researching and/or teaching in the field of 'heritage' because we would like to explore ways of collaborating more effectively in this area. A first step is to learn more about relevant work that is happening in the institution. 

We would like to invite colleagues whose research/scholarship touches in any way on the idea of 'heritage' (however they define that term) to participate in a workshop on 10 May 2024, 2-5pm in the Treehouse (BS/104, Berrick Saul Building). We ask participants to introduce their own heritage-related work in a short presentation of no more than 5 minutes and 5 slides.

If you have colleagues in your department who work within heritage, please do encourage them to come, or if they can't, to get in touch with us! We are aware of some staff in E&G, Law and Management who do, but we are sure there are probably others! 

Please could you send to relevant colleagues and ask them to register their interest by sending a short title for their 5-minute presentation to Laura Reid in History of Art (laura.reid@york.ac.uk) by 1 May 2024. The aim is to include all relevant research, so there will be no selection process, but we will try to organise the presentations into logical (or at least interesting) groups, and send a running order before the event.

Colleagues are also welcome to attend and participate in discussion without giving a presentation, though we hope that many colleagues will feel inspired to present their research. There will be a drinks reception after the workshop (5-6pm in the Treehouse).

Please join us if you can!

Nicky Milner, Laura Stewart, and Liz Prettejohn, The Heads of Department of Archaeology, History, and History of Art

Good News and Media Engagement

⭐ Congratulations to Connie O'Neill (SEI) and co. on their new publication: Air pollutant emissions and sources in Lao PDR: a provincial scale analysis for years 2013-2019

⭐ Ed Garrett and Roland Gehrels have a new paper on Organic carbon accumulation in British saltmarshes published in STOTEN. Together with a recent paper on the total stock, this research suggests saltmarshes in Great Britain store a relatively large amount of carbon, but the rate at which this carbon builds up is much lower than previously thought.

⭐ Congratulations to Lindsay Stringer who is a co-author on a new paper published in Nature Communications: Huynh LTM, Su J, Wang Q, Stringer LC, Switzer AD, Gasparatos A. 2024 Meta-analysis indicates better climate adaptation and mitigation performance of hybrid engineering-natural coastal defence measures.

⭐ A new research paper has been published by Tabitha Kabora, Daryl Stump, Chris D. Thomas and Colin M. Beal (through the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity): Kabora et al. 2024 assessing inconsistencies in historical land-use reconstructions for Africa at 1800. Reg Environ Change. **Link updated**

⭐ A new research paper has been published: Bethany J. Allen, Daniel J. Hill, Ariane M. Burke, Michael Clark, Robert Marchant, Lindsay C. Stringer, David R. Williams, Christopher Lyon 2024 Projected future climatic forcing on the global distribution of vegetation types Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B37920230011. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2023.0011

⭐ Four of the student groups who took the Sustainability Clinic in Semester 1 will be celebrated at the University of York Student Community and Volunteering Awards. The awards ceremony will take place on 8th May, at Merchant Taylors' Hall, with the Lord Mayor of York and Lady Mayoress in attendance, and will be compered by Elly Fiorentini from BBC Radio York. The projects which have been highlighted are the Woodthorpe Primary School Eco Council Project, led and facilitated by Naomi Holmes; Crambe Grange Farm Hedgerow Project, led and facilitated by Laura Chapman; RFL Greener Rugby Pitches Project, led by Darpan Das and facilitated by Sarah Foster; and RFL Transport Project, led by Josh Kirshner and facilitated by Isabel Navarro Law. A huge congratulations to our students for their incredible efforts.

⭐ Naomi Holmes ran a participatory workshop (with Lynda Yorke, Bangor University) 'Co-creating an inclusivity benefit assessment for fieldwork' at the Geographical Association Annual Conference in Manchester. Naomi is also a member of a UK-Icelandic team (led by colleagues at Sheffield Hallam) which has received a NERC Arctic Office UK-Iceland Arctic Science Partnership bursary to create new science partnerships through the creation of 'A research and public engagement hub for understanding glacial and environmental change in Iceland'.

⭐ Felicia Liu has recently had a white paper published with the Singapore Green Finance Centre on 'Green FinTech and Data Centres in Singapore', targeted at industry and regulatory stakeholders. It details the key opportunities and challenges of developing and investing in 'green' data centres in Singapore, with transferable lessons to other tropical geographies. Based on more than a year of data collection, including 50 stakeholder interviews and two in-person workshops, we have distilled our research into recommendations for DC operators, investors, and regulators on how to support a sustainable transition for this critical sector. Felicia has also had a research paper titled "How Sustainable Finance Creates Impact: Transmission Mechanisms to the Real Economy" accepted in the Review of World Economics. This paper is co-authored with Ben Caldecott, Alex Clark, and Lizzy Harnett. Finally, ShareAction (London) published a report on "Insuring Disaster 2024" surveying the climate commitment and progress of the world's 65 largest insurers, to which Felicia is one of the contributors. The report serves as an unequivocal and urgent call to action for the insurance sector to better safeguard society and the broader economy against systemic risks.

⭐ From Smriti Safaya: Help York be #1 in its first City Nature Challenge by joining the Launch event at 12:30pm on 26th April, and the many events or on your own time, during the challenge phase from 26-29th April! There are even campus-based events on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so bring family and friends and join in when you can! Learn more about how to participate on the York City Nature Challenge website, and the spark behind the project!

⭐ You're Invited to an Environmental Storytelling event in York at Theatre 41 - 22nd May from 2-4 p.m. Come and see three re-imagined fairytales about the environmental issues young people feel are important to York's river systems today. All three stories were re- written, directed and will be performed by young people from local schools as a part of Sarah Foster's PhD research. If you would like to attend or have any questions, please email Sarah to be placed on the guestlist.

⭐ Giovanna Massei gave a key-note lecture entitled ‘Eight reasons for investing in research on wildlife fertility control’ at the 31st Vertebrate Pest Conference in Monterey (California, US) on 12th March 2024.

MTD Award Nominations are now OPEN! 🎉

The Making the Difference Awards are back so it's time to get nominating! 🎉

The University recognises and values the hard work, commitment and achievements of all staff. The 'Making the Difference' awards are intended to provide recognition to any member of staff whose contribution on a one-off or short-term basis has been exceptional or outstanding and is worthy of particular note. The scheme provides staff, managers and colleagues with the opportunity to nominate an individual or a team for a recognition payment worth up to £250 per person (subject to normal pay deductions, e.g. PAYE). (The university also recognises and values outstanding contribution of a sustained nature. Staff should refer to details of the 'Rewarding Excellence' scheme for information about awards of that kind.)

For more information about MTD awards, including the criteria, all past nominations and winners, please visit our Making the Difference Wiki Page. Please note that nominees must have been in post for a minimum of 6 months to be eligible to win an award. 

If you would like to nominate someone for a Making the Difference Award, do fill in the form. 

Deadline for nominations: Wednesday 17th April at 17:00.

We look forward to receiving your nominations

Nominees so far:

• Victoria Batty

• Matt Pickering

• Chloe Mitchell

• Angela Purdham

Congratulations to all our nominees!

Research Opportunities and Updates

Contacting the Pre-Award Team

Please use environment-research@york.ac.uk to contact the Pre-Award Team around any research pre-award queries rather than using personal email addresses. The team are now using one shared inbox across all of the Departments they cover, and emails to environment-research will automatically filter through to this inbox. Emails to other email addresses will not!

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