Cabot Institute forum: Building resilience to environmental change

Background
Further to the two workshops on 'Building resilience to environmental change' run by the Cabot Institute in January and February, a regular interdisiciplinary Cabot Institute 'Discussion Forum' is going to be convened for people within the Cabot community undertaking research that is international in focus, and/or relates to international development.

Aim
The aim of these discussion forums is to engage scientists and social scientists in real interdisciplinary discussion with others working on related issues. These will be informal lunchtime sessions taking place once a month, on the second Monday of the month, and participants will be provided with a 'brown bag lunch'.

Matt Watson, Earth Sciences, will be giving an informal short talk at this first forum called:

"Cold comfort: adventures in controversial climate science through an interdisciplinary lens"

Climate engineering is rightly a divisive and difficult research topic. Science does not exist in a vacuum and any consideration of new technologies (even imaginaries) must be carefully considered within the contexts of building resilience, adaptation and justice.

Through the whole seminar series, that will run over the next two semesters, particular questions will be asked:

• Does better knowledge of environmental change and natural hazards contribute to building resilience and, in turn, reducing poverty?
• How can knowledge yielded through research be better communicated? To whom?
• How is/might such knowledge be used by policy-makers?
• How can our research positively impact upon those most vulnerable to the effects of environmental change and natural hazards?

Format
A Cabot member will give a 15-20 minute talk for a generalist audience - on their research, or maybe ideas they've had for writing a grant proposal, a new area that they might want to move into - ending their talk with three accessible questions for an interdisciplinary audience, ideally questions that they might benefit from some feedback/discussion on.
Participants will be seated in interdisciplinary groups and will then discuss and feedback their ideas on the questions raised.

Booking
Places are limited to 20 so you must book your place on this page.

Further information
For more information contact Dr Elizabeth Fortin

Important: This event is only open to UoB staff and students.