Weirding Sustainability Symposium

We live in a time of global weirding, with massive destabilisation of social-ecological worlds, yet much policy and research on “sustainability” offers a green(washed) version of business-as-usual.

This half-day event offers cross-disciplinary talks, discussions and hands-on activities to explore the questions: What does global weirding mean for us as researchers/creative practitioners/citizens? How might weirding of our own imaginations and practices spark more radical and meaningful change?

Speakers include:

• Justin Hopper: a writer interested in landscape, psychogeography, hauntology, memory and myth, as well as the literary and artistic occult.
• Patricia MacCormack: a philosopher working on queer death studies, posthumanism, ecology, animal rights, extinction and monstrosity among other themes.
• Camila Alday: an archeologist working within the Wetlân Research Lab, which aims to break the Nature-Culture divide by proposing wetlands as a collaborator/co-creator.
• Ben Platt: a geographer whose research examines how understandings of Nature are produced and contested within the operational ‘hinterlands’ of the so-called Anthropocene.

With facilitation by Sarah Royston, Tim Jarvis, Annouchka Bayley, Emma Linford and James Norton.

The event is part of the Weirding Sustainability Festival 2026, which is co-ordinated by Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Cambridge. For more info see LEAP Lab: Living Experiments in Arts-Science Practice to Re-imagine Sustainability - CRASSH and for enquiries contact Sarah Royston: [email protected]

Accessbility notes:

This event is on the ground floor of the Alison Richard Building (ARB) which is on the University of Cambridge’s Sidgwick Site. The ARB has step-free access. Accessible toilets are available on all floors. Disabled parking is available outside the Alison Richard Building.

Info: Plenary talk and discussion: "Botanising the Data Centre: psychogeography vs the New Brutal Landscape. A theoretical framework for applying psychogeographic strategies to the physical landscapes of AI"

Info: Thawing cartographies: A hands-on session working with cartography to expand and trouble senses of time and place.

Info: Panel discussion with Patricia MacCormack, Ben Platt and Camila Alday

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