📰 Staff Newsletter 16 February 2024
- Annabel Jackson (Deactivated)
Important Information
International Women's Day celebrations!
Click here to sign up for a session of inspiring talks on Tues 5th March, “Beyond the Norm: Narratives of Academic Achievement Amidst Challenges." The session will be chaired by the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Enterprise, Partnerships & Engagement, Prof Kiran Trehan. Prof Sarah West will be sharing her unconventional journey to becoming a professor and Dr Karen Parkhill will be sharing her inspiring story of triumph. Reserve your spot and be part of this empowering event!
There will also be a Wall of inspirational women displayed in the Environment Foyer - submit a poster for the Wall by 23rd Feb! There is a condensed version if you are pressed for time. The Wall will be available to view all week between 4th and 8th March.
Click here to sign up for our International Potluck lunch on Fri 8th March between 12pm and 2pm. Please join us and bring something delicious, either sweet or savoury, that represents you/your culture!
Departmental Events
DEG Seminar
Date / Time: Tuesday 20th February at 12:05
Location: Zoom
Speaker: Amy Thompson
Title: Evaluating inequality and human-environment interactions among the Maya: Geospatial perspectives on societies past and present
Blurb
Dr. Amy Thompson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. In her presentation she will be exploring inequality among and within Mayan communities. Inequality is present in nearly all human societies. Today, we experience wealth inequality in our daily lives materialized through differences in incomes, technologies, and personal and professional networks. In the past, wealth differences were often displayed through prestige goods and the size of domestic spaces. Here, she evaluates wealth inequality based on size differences and distributions of residential units, addressing both spatial and temporal trends. Using GIS, she explores disparities at a macro-level scale of the entire Maya region, and at a micro-level scale, within Maya communities. She also evaluates the distribution of inequality and differential access to resources in the Classic period (250 – 800 CE) and modern times. Understanding the complex relationships of past and present communities on the same landscapes help elucidate how processes of inequality and human-environment interactions may affect current and future communities, potentially providing insights on how to mitigate the long-term effects of inequality in varying social and environmental conditions.
Sustainability Education Conversation
Date / Time: Wednesday 21st February at 12:05
Location: Zoom
Speaker: Dr David Cross
Title: Climate Justice: students and staff for whole institution transformation
Blurb
This seminar will begin with a presentation narrating a series of actions and encounters by students and staff to advance Climate Justice in one UK university. Aligned with the principles of transformative learning (Freire, 1970), we have critically engaged with our conditions of education, to offer a model of learning that bridges the separation between the university’s curriculum and its operations, and aspires to Whole Institution Transformation (UNESCO, 2017).
Other Events
Yorkshire Universities Student Sustainability Research Conference
Date: Wednesday 6th March 2024
Location: University of Leeds
The Yorkshire Universities Student Sustainability Research Conference is on Wednesday 6th March in Leeds. Staff and students are invited to attend this free event. You can find out more about the event here and need to register for tickets. Return coach travel from York - Leeds will be provided if required. Environment and Geography are well represented at the event, with undergraduate, taught masters, and postgraduate research students presenting!
Climate action and hopefulness in teaching
Date: Wednesday 21st February
Time: 1-2pm
Location: Online
The next GeogEd Teaching and Scholarship Forum is on Wednesday February 21st 2024, 1-2pm UK time. During this session we will hear from three speakers about their work around climate education, with a focus on climate action and hopefulness in teaching. This will be followed by Q&A.
Bee Gan, Sheffield Hallam University - The Climate Emergency: a collaborative online international learning project
Dr Ankit Kumar, University of Sheffield - Contingencies of hopelessness and hope in a radical politics of climate justice
Prof Larissa Naylor, University of Glasgow - Creating windows of opportunity to become 'Sea Level Wise'
Questionnaires and Surveys
Please help Maddie Butcher by filling out her dissertation questionnaire regarding attitudes and preferences towards Invasive species in the UK as part of her third year EEE dissertation research. The questionnaire should take around 10-15 minutes to complete.
Please help Carys Jones, a third year undergraduate student, who is desperate for more responses for their Dissertation Survey on food waste!
Please help George John, a third year Human Geography and Environment student, by filling out their survey on whether York's current transport system is adequate in achieving SDG 11. It should only take 3 minutes to complete. It should only take 3 minutes to complete. Thank you.
Good News and Media Engagement
Pete Tuckett is a co-author on a review paper discussing short- and long-term variability of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, published in Nature Reviews: Earth & Environment.
Congratulations to Steve Cinderby (SEI), Gary Haq and Howard Cambridge whose paper on inclusive climate resilient transport in Africa was selected as a research highlight in Nature Climate Change.
Josh Kirshner organized a webinar on 'Empty signifiers: New approaches to discourse analysis in infrastructure,' for York's IGDC seminar series on Feb 8th. Speakers included Ed Aktins (Geography, Bristol University), Aurora Ganz (Politics, QMUL) and Josh Kirshner (E&G, York), with Barnaby Dye (Politics, York) as discussant. Click here to view the full description and recording.
Lindsay Stringer was involved in the "Regreening Africa" project as part of her role in the Economics of Land Degradation Intiative in Rwanda and Somalia. Regreening Africa is one of seven Ecosystem Restoration Flagships recognised by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The World Restoration Flagship awards are part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration which aims to prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. More information about all seven flagships is available in the press release. Lindsay was also involved in the "Regreening Africa" project as part of her role in the Economics of Land Degradation Intiative. Regreening Africa is one of seven Ecosystem Restoration Flagships recognised by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. More information about all seven flagships is available in the press release.
Kate Arnold had a new opinion paper published in Lancet Planetary Health on The need for One Health systems-thinking approaches to understand multiscale dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. Kate also had a new research paper published: Maskrey DK, Killen SS, Sneddon LU, Arnold KE, Wolfenden DCC, Thomson JS. Differential metabolic responses in bold and shy sea anemones during a simulated heatwave. Journal of Experimental Biology. 2024 Jan 18. Epub 2024 Jan 18.
The news isn't being shared publicly yet, but a paper Oliver Wilson published last year - with a colleague from CEH, also called Oli – has been shortlisted for Journal of Applied Ecology’s 2023 Southwood Prize for Early Career Researchers.
Research Opportunities and Updates
Soapbox Science in York this summer - Call for speakers
Soapbox Science is a public outreach platform for promoting women and non-binary scientists and the science they do. This year, the event will be held on the 8th of June in York city centre. The event will involve standing on a soapbox and explaining your science to small groups of members of the public for approximately an hour session. This year 42 such events (including York’s) are happening in 15 countries.
Women and non-binary scientists at all career stages from PhD to Prof are welcome to apply, and support and training is provided for speakers - and a soapbox of course! The deadline for registering is the 29th February 2024.
The call for speakers is NOW OPEN, with more information and a link to the registration page available here! If you have any questions, please email daphne.ezer@york.ac.uk.
Urban Synergies Summer school in Berlin, applications open
I am excited to annouce that I am again organizing a summer school, this time in Berlin and on the topic of "Urban synergies: Co-creating thriving connections for humans with nature".
Similar to last year, we are putting together a transdisciplinary programm involving (few) lectures and many different interactive and creative sessions that aim to shed light on the many perspectives and complex human-nature relations occuring in the urban space.
We've just opened the call. There you find more information and how to apply. Feel free to invite anywone who could be interested. The deadline for applications is 7 March 2024. Participation is free of cost and we have some travel grants for students coming from EU and Cost member countries.
-Dr. Julia Bentz
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