Seminar (CareNet): "The Rhythms of Ruin and Regrowth: Coexisting with Fire"

Program

Summary

This seminar will explore the agency of fire, plants and people at a time of environmental change and uncertainty. Eriksen focuses on the narratives of wildfire survivors and the responses of contemporary Australian artists in order to examine how practice and experience are intertwined with ways of perceiving transformation that are other than human. Fire enhances sensory ways of knowing and being, and calls the sustainability of our ways of life into question. By considering the rhythms of ruin and regrowth, she shows how alliances between fire, plants and people are formed, and how they are likely to change because of their interdependencies in the Anthropocene.

Dr Christine Eriksen

Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. She is particularly interested in the social dimensions of disasters, and her widely published and award-winning research is based on two decades of work in Australia, North America, Africa and Europe. She gained international recognition in the field of research by creating a dialogue between human geography, social justice and wildfires. She is the author of two books and more than 80 articles and book chapters, examining social vulnerability and adaptation to risk in the context of environmental history, climate change, cultural norms and political agendas.