World/Water Futures Part One: Coastal Futures

Coastal Futures, Friday 26th March 2021

In a recent public lecture on ‘Coastal Thinking’, Margaret Cohen prompts consideration of the coast as an ‘impact zone’. Referring to the place where a wave breaks and its accompanying energy crashes at the edge of the land, the impact zone is a space that emerges at the border of pleasure and precarity. Get your timing right and you can ride the energy of the impact zone all the way to shore, mistime your launch and the force of the wave will drag you under. The concept of the impact zone taps into discourses of danger and desire that emanate from coastal environments. Often positioned at the forefront of our climate imaginaries the coast is frequently configured as a key site to think through these conditions of risk, resilience, sustainability and survival. This event invites researchers from across the disciplines to imagine the future of life in the impact zone.

This event will gather a series of interdisciplinary researchers from across the arts, humanities, and earth sciences to explore the imaginaries and ecologies of future coasts. We invite academic researchers from all levels and disciplines to join us for a series of workshops and special masterclass and to think through the following questions: How might fathoming the histories of undersea environments help us to navigate the tempestuous waters of the future? Might a multispecies attentiveness to ‘things that cling’ at the coast help to inform ideas of sustainability and resilience? How can coastal heritage and storytelling assist us in traversing those geopolitical transformations that are shaped by water?

Masterclass (Dr Killian Quigley)

Workshop 1: ‘Coastal Storytelling’ (Dr James Louis Smith)

Workshop 2: ‘Futures of the Seabed’ (Dr Laurence Publicover, Dr Kate Hendry)

Workshop 3: ‘Rockpool Methods’ (Dr Rachel Murray, Dr Isabel Galleymore, Jen Hadfield)

The event will be accompanied by an open roundtable discussion. To this end we ask that event attendees provide us with a short sentence or two about their research and why they wish to attend the event.

Please note: as ‘Coastal Futures’ is an international virtual event and will be hosted in accordance with Central European Time (09:00-17:30 CET). Event schedules will be shared with attendees upon receipt of tickets.

This event is part of the Arts & Humanities Research Workshop series ‘World/Water Futures’ and is funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. For more information or any questions about the event please contact: [email protected]