📰 I have a new paper out with Peter Sands @anthropocenebio.bsky.social in Society & Animals - setting out the idea of a #PoliticalEcology of reanimating to understand current trends in #rewilding through the lens of individual animal lives brill.com/view/journal...
Would You Jump Into Your Local River? Swimmable Cities May Be Within Reach as Once-Polluted Waterways Are Restored - www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu... @smithsonianmag.bsky.social
There's still just over two weeks left to apply to our workshop exploring historical approaches to non-human life.
It will take place on 9-10th April 2026, and aims to bring together scholars across disciplinary divides.
PGR and ECR support available thanks to the generosity of our sponsors!
Rooted in environmental psychology, nature connection can be understood as an eighteenth-century phenomenon. Here Harrie Neal explores how nature connection has become a highly influential psychological framework across the environmental sciences and civil society.
www.york.ac.uk/anthropocene...
Please consider joining our 2026 Political Ecology spring school!
Planetary Political Ecologies: Environmental disasters, conflicts and possibilities in & beyond capitalism
▶️ 13-17 April 2026
▶️ Wageningen
With Annah Zhu, Erik Swyngedouw, Sumit Vij & others!
wass.crs.wur.nl/courses/deta...
Closing tomorrow!
And you too @helephantmylne.bsky.social 🐘 — keen to hear what you've been up to in your new life
Missing you in the office already @molly-rc-brown.bsky.social, come back and visit us soon! 🌿
cc my fellow panel convenors – @riverreflections.bsky.social, @jmcvos.bsky.social, Rutgerd Boelens, Nuria Hernandez-Mora & Carles Sanchis Ibor. Already looking forward to the discussions
Excited that our session — 'Cyborg rivers and riverhood movements: potentials of re-imagining, re-politicizing and re-commoning relations between rivers, nonhumans and people' — was accepted for #POLLEN2026. Call for papers is open until 5th December! 🦦
pollenpoliticalecology.network/pollen-2026/
Winter Well is on air BBC Radio 4 this week.
An audio guide to thriving in winter, with advice from medics, artists, poets and future-gazers on simple but effective ways to bring light into your life during the darkest part of the year.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
@hesterparr.bsky.social
Finally made it along to ‘More-than-human’ at the Design Museum with @riverreflections.bsky.social. A really vibrant & engaging exhibition about learning from and designing with other beings — it’s very cool & heartening to see this thinking reaching wider audiences 🦋
A big week continued with Fran Mahon’s brilliant ‘Flooded Memories’ exhibition, exploring river agency. In a space overlooking the River Ouse, he illuminated the ability of Rivers Ouse and Foss to effect change — reshaping local architectures, histories and memory @hgcresearchcentre.bsky.social
Loved roaming Yorkshire Arboretum & Bog Hall last week for the LCAB field trip. Mushroom season is in full swing! @anthropocenebio.bsky.social
What do we mean when we say that carnivores and other wildlife are "habituating" to people? Who actually habituates to whom? Is this bad or god? Who decides? All of this and more in our new paper, expertly led by @ethanddoney.bsky.social, out now in @peopleandnature.bsky.social.
Swimmers and river lovers of Yorkshire! Rave On for the Avon is coming to York THIS THURSDAY 🏊🏻♀️💦💙
Please share…
www.picturehouses.com/movie-detail...
@righttoroam.bsky.social @yorkswildlife.bsky.social
And Yorkshire Water applies for drought orders, to extract water from Rivers Ouse & Wharfe. Yet 'the sector has been criticised for failing to build reservoirs and to fix leaking pipes, while attention has also focused on the large pay packets awarded to some water company bosses'
Lou & I are continuing our nature journaling practices to pay deep attention to local natures and shifting seasons — highly recommend for anyone who likes to scribble
Had a great week in Mons for the Society of Human Ecology conference — lots on relational thinking, rights of nature, emotions & affects. Cherry on top was winning the Richard J Borden award for my poster, ‘Experiences of outdoor swimming’
Grateful for the opportunity to share my ongoing PhD research at the end of May - as part of a panel on biodiversity & wellbeing @anthropocenebio.bsky.social 🌊
An important @theguardian.com article on @alistairboxall.bsky.social's research: "A study of #Yorkshire’s rivers is helping scientists understand the impact everyday pollutants are having on waterways – and the results are sobering" 👇🌍
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
#York #YorkResearch
📣 Time to get your panels and abstracts in @pollenetwork.bsky.social conf 2026 is open for submissions. @icta-uab.bsky.social is a great place to host it - and it promises to be a blast (as always!) @danbrockington.bsky.social
pollenpoliticalecology.network/pollen-2026/
Our new seminar series Anthropocene Biopolitics starts on 3 June with a session on microbes.
We’ll think about how microbial imaginaries necessitate a reimagining of how the human relates to the biodiversity that criss-crosses its boundaries.
Learn more & register: www.york.ac.uk/anthropocene...
Looking forward to contributing to the conversation tomorrow, on human-nonhuman relations and links to wellbeing. Please join us if you're free and in York
The Flow (2022), Amy-Jane Beer
Excerpt from Amy-Jane Beer's chapter in 'By the River' (2024)
To continue the watery theme, it was a real treat to have
@amyjanebeer.bsky.social visit @anthropocenebio.bsky.social last week to share her wisdom 🔮 on writing well and on engaging with audiences beyond the specialist. Unsurprisingly this was very well received by our research group!
Powerful evening with @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social & @amyjanebeer.bsky.social in Leeds, on the urgent need to remember that life is lived in relation, and to reimagine rivers as life sources rather than resources. 'Our fate flows with that of rivers and always has' 🌊
Agh you went!!! 🌊 can’t wait to hear what you thought
Great to meet you Barbara! 👋🏼
Also worth repeating another of his key insights, that ‘if it’s not profitable for capitalism to save the world, it won’t do it’, we need economic democracy
Degrowth is not about reducing all production, but reducing the ‘damaging and unnecessary forms that exist to service elite accumulation’ and needs to be accompanied by universal public services - @jasonhickel.bsky.social to a packed lecture hall in Sheffield last night
