In this episode, Ben is joined in conversation by Dr Jude Parks, Senior Lecturer in Geography, and Dr Catherine Heinemeyer, Lecturer in Arts and Ecological Justice, both of York St John University, to discuss the concept of ‘ecological justice’ and its implications for understanding and responding to contemporary climate crisis. The conversation includes discussing how best to make questions of justice in the context of human-environmental relations tangible for students in the classroom, and Jude and Cath also touch on their work at YSJU as part of the Ecological Justice Research Group, which has run a ‘Living Lab’ project to use a nearby congested junction as a place to think through the everyday relations and experiences of environmental (in)justice. You can read more about their work via the YSJU Institute for Social Justice blog here: https://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/isj/the-living-lab/. You can also follow the YSJU Ecological Justice Research Group on Twitter @YSJEcolJustice.

Below, for those who are interested, are some links to relevant readings mentioned in conversation and that further flesh out the concepts / topics discussed...

Key Reading #1: Julian Agyeman’s book Just Sustainabilities from 2013 explores the various dimensions of justice as they relate to questions of sustainable environmental (and broader) practices. In particular, Chapter 3, ‘Space and Place’ (pp.96-135), connects these ideas to geographical concerns. Link:  https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Just_Sustainabilities/XImxKppJsNEC?hl=en&gbpv=0

Key Reading #2: Farhana Sultana’s 2021 paper in Social & Cultural Geography, entitled ‘Climate change, COVID-19, and the co-production of injustices: a feminist reading of overlapping crises’, demonstrates the kind of feminist intersectional geographical approach that Jude describes near the end of the conversation, applied in the context of analysing the interrelated and unequal consequences of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649365.2021.1910994

Further Reading: ‘Racism and the Anthropocene’, a 2018 chapter by Laura Polido published in in Greg Mitman et al’s edited collection, Future Remains: A cabinet of curiosities for the Anthropocene, examines the intertwined issues of racial and environmental injustice as they affect our current epoch of ecological crisis. You can access part of the book (and her chapter) via Google Books but there are some websites out that that appear to host the chapter in full... Link: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Future_Remains/tOpODwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Further Reading: A recent article by Perpertua Kirby and Rebecca Webb (2021) in Educational Review (‘Conceptualising uncertainty and the role of the teacher for a politics of climate change…’) informs much of Jude and Cath’s approach to teaching Ecological Justice in the classroom, as well as the ‘thing-based approach’ that Cath describes. Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131911.2021.1933392

(C) 2022. Produced / Edited by B. Garlick