The CCRI Winter School 2024 will take place at the University of Gloucestershire’s FCH campus on February 29th and March 1st. The theme for the Winter School will be ‘Climates of Change’ and we are now inviting abstract submissions for those wishing to attend.
The Winter School offers current offers current PhD researchers a chance to present work-in-progress to a group of peers in a conference-type setting. Experienced staff from the CCRI and other departments of the University will attend to offer constructive, friendly and critical responses to the presenters.
There is little sign so far that the targets for reducing carbon emissions and thereby checking the rate of global warming are being met. In March 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its 6th Assessment Report. It noted that sea level rises and ocean acidification corresponded with record glacier retreats and that the last decade has been warmer than any period for around 125,000 years. The consequences of this, it warned, are now being felt in every continent.
Such stark, global headlines nevertheless mask innovations at local, regional and national levels. Different scales of government have signed legally binding commitments to tackle a ‘climate emergency’, which offer space to consider broad and multiple objectives of ‘circular’ economic activity. The switch away from fossil fuel consumption includes a surge in tree-planting, solar panel installation and wind and wave energy production that could reconfigure land use patterns. Net zero targets in agriculture will have impacts across the agri-food system. Urban migration, associated with myriad social and environmental challenges, may leverage change towards different types of rural land use opportunities, while also expanding agriculture (back) into the city as a form of green infrastructure. The complexities of organising such changes (and their experimental nature) is generating new co-operative, cross-sectoral and consensus-building governance arrangements. And finally, dizzying advances in technology such as AI, the Internet of Things and the digitalisation requirements of smart settlements indicate a revolution in knowledge sharing which can usefully support collective action to address climate challenges.
In this Winter School, we want to explore how society is managing the present and future challenges that come with the changes being recorded in the climate. We welcome applications from across a broad spectrum of social and natural sciences, as well as fine arts, humanities and technology studies to explore themes such as (for example):
- Creating and managing future expectations (e.g. through policies) at local and regional scales;
- Social justice, democracy and inclusive governance in relation to sustainable transformation proposals and their acceptability in practice;
- Personal, place-based or professional identities and how climate change affects these;
- The meaning and maintenance of cultural and rural landscapes and their environmental performance/ecosystems services;
- Subjective and hopeful expressions of personal and community solidarity for the future;
- Innovations in settlement designed to combat (e.g.) urban heat, water and food provisioning challenges;
- The fabric of architectural heritage and its conservation, renewal and enjoyment;
- New business models and labour market arrangements with circular economy potential;
- Policy studies linked to food and/or water security, and/or flood risk management;
- The use of innovative methodologies to capture perceptions of, and reactions to, the impacts of changing climates
Please send an abstract of max 250 words, along with your name, institution, and contact details by Friday 15th December 2023 to Daniel Keech (dkeech@glos.ac.uk) and Aimee Morse (amorse1@glos.ac.uk).
The event will use the hashtag #CCRIWS24.
For an idea of what to expect at the event, take a look at the video from our Winter School in 2014.
