Interdisciplinary conference
8th-10th June 2025
V&A Museum, Dundee
We exist in a vibrant, beautiful, and resilient living world. We also face spiralling climate change, ecological breakdown, and biodiversity loss at an unprecedented rate; all driven by human activity. While grappling with human responsibility through the discourse of the ‘anthropocene’, we also respond to a global energy crisis that is entangled with war, geopolitical tension, and rising energy demand. Meanwhile accounts of climate anxiety, ecological distress, and climate grief are increasing around the world.
The arts have offered a unique opportunity to respond to times of crisis, helping people process complex emotional experiences, and establish ways to imagine and act together. Creative work can connect to, complement, challenge, and expand the important empirical and theoretical work done in both the natural sciences and the social sciences. With this in mind, Energy in Motion invites scholars, artists, writers, organisers, and the public, to come together to share innovative scholarly work, to collaborate beyond disciplinary boundaries, and to embark on new creative co-creations. The event will take place over two days, with opening events the evening prior, and will feature a range of spoken paper presentations, workshops, films, exhibits, and performances responding to the following questions:
- How might we understand, represent, and respond to the emotional demands of the climate crisis, across diverse cultural, geographic, and political contexts?
and
- How can the arts further academic thinking, and scholars in turn support creative practitioners, towards imagining more sustainable energy futures together?
Remote presentations and digital participation will be supported in most sessions.
If you have any questions about the conference, please email us at [email protected]
This event is co-convened by Bridget Bradley, Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, and Susan Wardell, Social Anthropology, University of Otago, with support from the Centre for Energy Ethics