The Vital Geographies research group announces our Michaelmas 2021 Term Card!
More detail about each event is available below.
Welcome Event for Vital Geographies
Friday 22 October, 4:30 pm (outdoors, near Department)
As a welcome (and welcome back) for Michaelmas Term, we invite members of the Vital Geographies research group to an informal meet and greet event. We’ll introduce the group and members’ ongoing research, aiming particularly to help incoming members to feel part of the community. We are planning for this event to be outdoors and in-person (with masks and social distancing); scheduling and location subject to change if needed. Please contact one of the student co-convenors to inform us if you would like to attend (due to capacity limits) and we will inform you of the details.
Seminars
These two events celebrate the recent publication of two books on nonhuman and interspecies entanglements: on stories of predatory big cats in India; and on the history and contemporary significance of veganism. Both events are online via Zoom; after Catherine Oliver’s seminar there will be an opportunity to meet the author in person in the Department of Geography.
Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene
Professor Nayanika Mathur
Thursday 28 October, 4 pm (Zoom)
This talk will focus on the methodological ambitions of Mathur’s recently released book – Crooked Cats. Building upon 15 years of research in the Indian Himalaya this book retells the story of big cats that make prey of humans through a centring of the climate crisis. There are many theories on why and how a big cat comes to prey on humans, with the ecological collapse emerging as a central explanatory factor. Yet, uncertainty over the precise cause of crookedness persists. Crooked Cats explores in vivid detail the many lived complexities that arise from this absence of certain knowledge to study both governance regimes for the nonhuman and inter-species entanglements. Through creative ethnographic storytelling, Crooked Cats illuminates the Anthropocene in three critical ways: as method, as a way of reframing human-nonhuman relations on the planet, and as a political tool indicating the urgency of academic engagement.
Professor Mathur is Associate Professor in the Anthropology of South Asia at the University of Oxford.
Book Launch: Veganism, Archives, and Animals: Geographies of a Multispecies World
Dr Catherine Oliver
Wednesday 3 November, 4:30 pm (talk: Zoom), 5:30 pm (meet-the-author: in-person)
Please join us for a seminar and book launch on Vital Geographies members and Urban Ecologies postdoctoral researcher Dr Catherine Oliver’s new book, Veganism, Archives, and Animals: Geographies of a Multispecies World! This book explores the growing significance of veganism. It brings together important theoretical and empirical insights to offer a historical and contemporary analysis of veganism and our future co-existence with other animals. The book draws upon empirical research through archival research, interviews, and multispecies ethnography.
This session will be in a hybrid format, starting first with a book talk via Zoom, followed by a small, in-person ‘meet-the-author’ session at the Department of Geography. More detail on the format and COVID precautions of the event will be available closer to the date. Link and further information available by contacting any of the co-convenors.
Access Information: All Zoom links can be obtained from any of the co-convenors. Zoom seminars will have auto-captioning enabled, with attendees able to toggle the captions on or off depending on preference. Access information for in-person events will be available closer to the date and released via email; please email a co-convenor to be added to the email list or to ask any questions.
Co-Convenors: Dr David Nally (dpn24@cam.ac.uk), Dr Philip Howell (pmh1000@cam.ac.uk), Diane Borden (dmb84@cam.ac.uk), Anna Guasco (aklg2@cam.ac.uk), and Anna Lawrence (aml75@cam.ac.uk).