World Ocean Day x RCSC Hybrid Colloquia

In honour of the World Ocean Day on Thursday 8 May, the RCSC closes its colloquia series on Ocean with Michelle Bastian, University of Edinburgh and University of Oslo, presenting remotely her research about:

“Temporal Ecologies of Extinction in the Oceans: What Can We Learn from Phenology?”

Phenology is the study of life-cycle timing in living beings and since the early 2000s has been developed as a key indicator of the effect of climate change on ecosystems. The field offers understandings of time as relational and adaptive, operating as a key element of webs of living interactions. What happens, though, when the environmental cues guiding timing are shifting and changing? In the oceans, for example, warmer sea surface temperatures, changing currents and shifting weather patterns combine with steadier cues such as length of day, or the tides, to unsettle rhythms and potentially create dangerous mismatches. This talk will explore how phenology might open up novel ways of thinking about the temporalities of ocean life and ocean extinctions, in a time of accelerating climate change.

Michelle Bastian is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Humanities at the Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh and an Associate Professor II at the University of Oslo in the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities. Her work crosses critical time studies and environmental humanities, with a focus on the role of time in human and more-than-human communities. She is Editor-in-Chief for Time & Society (SAGE) and a co-editor of a number of collections including; The Social Life of Time (Time & Society), Field Philosophy and Other Experiments (Parallax) and Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds (Routledge). Michelle has recent publications in Environment and Planning E, Environmental Humanities and GeoHumanities. From 2021-2022, Michelle was a Mid-Career Fellow supported by the Independent Social Research Fund, looking at the scientific study of seasonal lifecycle events (phenology) and how it could contribute to work in the environmental humanities.

on-line: https://radbouduniversity.zoom.us/j/87639020845?pwd=UTJGdG5vT25PdGZUZHg4NHdKYlF0Zz09#success

in-person: EOS 1.150