York Climate Talks series

As a co-chair of the YUFA Climate Emergency Committee (YCEC) with Dr. Sheila Colla, we are organizing the Inaugural Climate Talks series:

This series will highlight the scholarship, research and activism of scholars and climate organizers across York University and beyond. The aims of this series are to advance the discussion on climate issues and to build a strong community of people in order to collectively strategize for climate action at York University and through YCEC.
YCEC was created by the York University Faculty Association to address climate issues and advance climate actions and activities at York University. Working with staff and students, YCEC is building a strong coalition of researchers and activists concerned with the climate emergency.
To be added to the YCEC listserv or to learn more, contact us at: yufaclimateemergency@gmail.com

Save the date for upcoming talks in the series:

July 16, 2021, Indigenous Energy Sovereignty and the Politics of Climate Change with Brock Pitawanakwat & Candis Callison  Brock Pitawanakwat, an Anishinaabe from Whitefish River First Nation, is Associate Professor and program coordinator of Indigenous Studies in York University’s Department of Humanities. He is a research fellow with the Yellowhead Institute and a regular panellist with Media Indigena’s weekly round table.  Candis Callison is a Canadian environmental journalist and academic of journalism, who works as an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, affiliated both with the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC. 

August 13, 2021, On thin ice: Are lakes feeling the heat? with Dr. Sapna Sharma

Dr. Sharma is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at York University and a York Research Chair in Global Change Biology. She is head of the Sharma Laboratory which is currently researching the impacts of multiple stressors on lake ice phenology, water temperatures, water quality, primary production and fish communities.

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ycec-climate-talks-series-tickets-152850087727

Past Talks:

Friday April 30th at 1:00PM
Political Economies of Climate Change and Indigenous Rights in the North with Gabrielle A Slowey

Gabrielle Slowey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics at York University and is a member of the graduate programs in Politics and Socio-Legal Studies. She is also the Director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York. She was the inaugural Fulbright Chair in Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College (USA) and a York-Massey Fellow. Her research focuses on the political economy of land claims, treaties and self-government, especially across the north/Arctic and in areas where resource extraction takes place. Her work considers questions of community health, environmental security, climate change and Indigenous rights in these contexts. Her approach is very much community-based and community-driven research. It draws upon broader theoretical concerns of colonialism, reconciliation, staples and democracy.

May 28, 2021, Cinema, Media, & Climate Change with Janine Marchessault & Melanie Wilmink and their exhibition titled Life, A sensorium. 

 Janine Marchessault is a professor in Cinema and Media Arts and holds a York Research Chair in Media Art and Social Engagement. Her research has engaged with four areas: the history of large screen media (from multiscreen to Imax to media as architecture and VR); diverse models of public art, festivals, and site specific curation; 21st century moving-image archives and notions of collective memory/history. She is a founder of the Future Cinema Lab, and the 2014-2016 inaugural Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts Research. A Trudeau Fellow, she is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She belongs to the CinemaExpo67.ca research group and is a founding member of the Public Access Curatorial Collective. Her latest project is an expanded cinema festival Outer Worlds outerworlds.org—commissioning five IMAX films by artists which premiered at the Cinesphere in 2019 as part of Images Festival. She is also the PI of Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Audio-Visual Heritage (2018-2025) counterarchive.caMelanie Wilmink holds a PhD in Art History at York University. Her research examines the relationship between spectatorial experience and exhibition spaces within interdisciplinary media installations. This academic research is supported by her curatorial work including various projects as Programming Coordinator at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (2007-2012), the Situated Cinema Project mobile micro-cinema (Pleasure Dome, 2015), and the Winter Warmer (Sidewalk Labs Toronto, 2019). Her recent publications include the anthology Sculpting Cinema (2018) and Landscapes of moving image: prairie artists’ cinema(forthcoming), both co-edited with Solomon Nagler. www.melaniewilmink.com.

June 18, 2021, Climate Change, Energy & Indigenous Lifeways with Angele Alook

Dr. Angele Alook is a proud member of the Bigstone Cree Nation, and is an Assistant Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University. She specializes in Indigenous feminism, life course approaches, Indigenous research methodologies, cultural identity, and the sociology of family and work. She is a co-investigator on the SSHRC-funded Corporate Mapping Project, where she is carrying out research with the Parkland Institute on Indigenous experiences in Alberta’s oil industry and its gendered impact on working families. Currently, the CMP is funding Angele with five other authors and activists to write a book on what a green new deal would look like in Canada if Indigenous-settler relations were central to discussions on a just transition.

On the Just Powers project, Angele is researching traditional subsistence practices in her Indigenous community; simultaneously, she is investigating the practices of settler allies who are also stewards of the land in her traditional territory, all while exploring peoples’ relationships to industry in the area. She is interested in synergies and disjunctures between ways of being, knowing and doing on Bigstone lands. She is directing her research toward a just transition of Alberta’s economy and labour force and the impact climate change has on traditional Treaty Eight territory.