Climate Conversations Speaker Series
Climate Conversations, hosted by the Office of Sustainability, aims to engage the UCalgary campus community and Albertans in transformative conversations on climate action. By mobilizing climate change expertise from diverse perspectives and worldviews that are critical for implementing impactful and equitable climate solutions, this speaker series aspires to empower participants to take meaningful action in their own ways and to connect with the climate action community.
Climate Conversations Speaker Series 2024-25
The Psychology of Care: Learning How to Lead in the Anthropocene
Date: Nov. 12, 2024,
Time: 12 – 1:30 p.m.
Join Dr. Renée Lertzman for an interactive session exploring the psychology of existential threats, and what is being asked of us as practitioners, educators and leaders to unlock our care for the planet. She will share highlights from her research on the psychology of existential threats over the past two decades and introduce tools she has developed to help organizations, leaders and teams accelerate action on climate and planetary systemic issues.
Lertzman is a researcher, educator and strategist who translates relational psychological insights to transform our approach to our planetary crisis. Applying her graduate training as a psychosocial researcher specializing in deep human insights, she designs frameworks and methods, grounded in public health, clinical psychology and neurosciences, to guide people to take action and create impact on climate and sustainability issues.
Dr. Lertzman partners with leaders, founders, teams, startups, innovators, companies and organizations across public and private sectors that are looking to strengthen climate and sustainability initiatives, aiming to harness the creativity and innovation needed to address our most complex and intractable problems. A sought-after international keynote speaker, trainer and facilitator, she advises and develops programs with organizations, leaders, and teams across sectors and regions.
In 2018, she received an award from the KR Foundation to launch a new initiative called Project InsideOut to create tools and resources based on psychological insights for existential planetary change. Her past and current clients include Google, Johnson & Johnson, VMWare, IKEA, California Academy of Sciences, WWF, Skoll Global Threats Fund, Transport for London, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Dr. Lertzman holds a PhD in social sciences from Cardiff University and an MA in communications from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She can be found at reneelertzman.com.
Speculative Futures: new ways of thinking about energy, culture and climate change
Date: Feb. 12, 2025
Time: 12 – 1:30 p.m.
Join Dr. Kimberly Skye Richards and Dr. Sourayan Mookerjea for a fascinating conversation on how speculative futures can help build just, sustainable and healthy futures for the whole planet, and how we can start practicing it today. Speculative futures is an envisioning process and design approach that brings together arts, social sciences and humanities perspectives to address complex societal issues by inviting people to visualize new and potential futures. Increasingly, speculative futures is used to create solutions for the climate and biodiversity crises, as well as the entangled injustices and inequities faced by communities.
In this talk, Dr. Richards will discuss the genesis of a collaborative project, the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters (DUAL), within the climate art movement and how their courses help build imaginative and creative skills to work towards “eco just” futures. Without investing in naïve hope or magical thinking, Dr. Richards says, we fundamentally understand that to prepare for and survive the unfolding, intersecting crises of the present, we need to expand our imagination beyond the “monocultures of the mind” that limit our creativity and thus our capacity to adapt. The project hires artists as faculty to create syllabi for classes that offer creative approaches to tackle the “wicked problems” of our time and possible pathways to new worlds and alternative ways of being. These open-learning resources are freely available on the department’s Mighty Network platform.
Dr. Mookerjea will discuss his current research on speculative media, including The Energy Emergency Repair Kit (EERK), a research-creation probe co-created with Jessie Beier, Joan Greer, Tsema Igharas, Sourayan Mookerjea and Tegan Moore for SEF’s FluxKit for Energy Transition. EERK explores the ecological, cultural and political resonances of the three concepts named in its title: energy, emergency, and repair. It combines image, text and sound to play on the concept of a repair manual — a staple genre of self-help and self-making — while exploring energy emergency and energy emergence in several entangled registers.
Richards is an Alberta-born scholar and dramaturg who engages performance as a vehicle for resisting extractivism, inspiring just transitions and moving through impasses. She obtained a PhD in performance studies from the University of California-Berkeley in 2019, and she was a 2021 Public Energy Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in Transition in Energy, Culture, and Society at the University of Alberta. She is currently teaching in the School of Journalism, Writing and Media at the University of British Columbia and is the librarian for the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters.
Mookerjea is the director of the Intermedia Research Studio in the Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, and co-investigator on Speculative Energy Futures project. This project uses research-creation practices and strategies to imagine alternative futures of social and environmental justice beyond the crisis cycles of fossil capital’s petrocultures and its green growth neocolonialisms.
Seidel is an associate professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Her scholarship explores interdisciplinary and existential meanings of the climate and nature crisis for teaching, learning and curriculum. She has a particular interest in how conceptualizations of time affect understandings of the work and purpose of education at all levels. Dr. Seidel seeks to integrate ecological, relational, multispecies and pedagogical well-being throughout her academic work through arts-based and contemplative methodologies. Her teaching and scholarship are guided by principles of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility, focusing on the right to life of humans and other species made vulnerable by violent systems.
Access previous speaker series webinars
Learn about the vital importance of Indigenous science and the Three-Eyed Seeing approach for implementing meaningful climate action that protects communities, biodiversity and ecosystem health, and honours the reciprocal relationship Indigenous communities maintain with the land. Dr. Ballard explains Indigenous science, “is the knowledge of survival since time immemorial and includes knowledge of plants, the weather, animal behaviour and patterns, birds, and water.” She will also share how essential it is to apply foundational concepts such as bridging, braiding and weaving Indigenous science into climate action work. Joining her will be Gavin Woodburn, a UCalgary master’s geoscience student, who will share his research and knowledge.
Speakers:
Dr. Myrle Ballard, PhD, MSc., BSc, BA is an associate professor in the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment at the University of Calgary. She is the first director of the new Indigenous Science Division at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Anishnaabe from Lake St. Martin First Nation, Dr. Ballard’s latest research explores Three-Eyed Seeing and how her fluency in Anishinaabe mowing can transform approaches to water resource management using Anishinaabe mowing baseline indicators. Dr. Ballard also serves on a number of committees and working groups, including recent appointments as scoping expert for the second IPBES global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services and expert for the IPBES task force on Indigenous and local knowledge. She currently holds NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) and CIHR (Canadian Institutes for Health Research) grants. Her other research interests include, but are not limited to, climate change and sustainability of flooding/displacement.
Gavin Woodburn, MSc. is a Kwiakah First Nation member from the West Coast of British Columbia. Woodburn is currently completing his Master of Science degree in geoscience at UCalgary, where he is focusing his research on regenerative forestry and rebuilding knowledge systems within his traditional territory in the remote inlet of Phillips Arm, B.C. During his undergraduate studies at Carleton University and his time working with the Indigenous Science Division at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Woodburn has led a research project on clam gardens, an Indigenous technology that involved a deep understanding of the ecosystem to modify intertidal beaches to give clams a habitat to thrive and be managed as a food source. One of Woodburn’s goals in his research is to effectively communicate and translate these knowledge systems and unique ways of knowing so that his community, the public, and Indigenous and Western-trained scientists can learn about science through different perspectives.
Moderator:
Patricia Taylor is a research associate with the UCalgary Faculty of Science. Over the past 14 years, Patty has worked at the University of Calgary as an instructor in English and Academic Research, a research assistant, a researcher, and presently, a student pursuing a doctorate degree. Patty's present degree is in the Faculty of Science – Geoscience. Her degree focuses on aquatic ecosystems within the riparian tracts along the Bow River shorelines west of Cochrane. Her family continues to pursue their Indigenous heritage as a Metis person through the Red River Settlement in Manitoba. Patty's Indigenous research reflects both Indigenous and Western Sciences, a Two Eyed Seeing approach to academic research.
October 21, 2024
Drawing upon a variety of youth-created projects such as computational simulations, animations, documentaries and a community garden they grew in partnership with the research team, the speakers will illustrate how the youth developed and centre care for More Than Human worlds within the sociopolitical context of regimes of forced migration.
The session will illustrate how caring about the climate crisis and more broadly, More Than Human worlds, emerged from the interplay between regimes of forced migration — i.e., a combination of colonialism, wars, and experiences of racialization during resettlement imposed on the youth and the youths’ heterogeneous perceptions of time and place (i.e., multi-temporality and nonlocality). The presentation will feature the work of newcomer youth and include conversations with research team members of the YARI Collective.
Dr. Pallavi Banerjee PhD, MA. is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Research Excellence Chair at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include sociology of gender, immigration, refugee resettlement, intersectional feminist theories and families. In particular, she examines how the intersections of gender, race and class play out in the everyday lives and interactions of immigrants and transnational families as a consequence of Western state policies and other institutional mandates. She directs the Critical Gender, Intersectionality & Migration group and is the lead of the YARI Collective project.
Dr. Pratim Sengupta, PhD, MPHYS is a Professor of Learning Sciences at the Werklund School of Education and a graduate faculty for the Faculty of Science and Computational Media Design at UCalgary. He has also served as Research Chair of STEM Education. His research focuses on integrating computational science with public education in justice-oriented ways, with a particular focus on the intersectionality of race, gender, migration and urban sustainability. He directs the Mind, Matter and Media Lab and co-leads the YARI Collective project.
The YARI Collective is a critical intersectional, anti-racist collaboration that brings together researchers from UCalgary, newcomer youth of colour, community partners from four Calgary-based resettlement agencies and creative professionals.
Oct 21, 2024
A talk on climate change and emotional resilience by Dekila Chungyalpa, founder of the Loka Initiative, and Christine Wilson, PhD, research assistant professor at the Centre for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Chungyalpa and Wilson discussed the emotional impacts climate change has had on various populations and presented the latest research and knowledge around eco emotions. They also covered strategies for emotional regulation and coping with grief, distress, and other challenging emotions related to climate change.
Dekila Chungyalpa is the founding director of the Loka Initiative, an award-winning capacity-building and outreach platform at the University of Wisconsin – Madison for faith and Indigenous leaders working on environmental and climate issues. She has over two decades of experience in designing and managing global conservation and climate strategies. Known as an innovator in this field, Dekila received the Yale McCluskey Award in 2014 for creating faith-led environmental and climate partnerships in the Amazon, East Africa, the Himalayas, the Mekong, and the US. She originally hails from Sikkim, a Tibetan Buddhist kingdom turned Indian state in the northeastern Himalayas.
Christy Wilson-Mendenhall is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Expanding on affective science expertise developed early in her career, Christy joined the Center for Healthy Minds to advance interdisciplinary research on cultivating well-being and resilience. Her research seeks to conceptualize and understand emotional skillsets and how such skills may be cultivated through contemplative practices. This work is grounded in pursuing a contextual, situated understanding of emotional experiences and the conditions under which specific skills may be of benefit. Christy is grateful to work with incredible interdisciplinary partners and scholars on these complex questions.
Presented by UCalgary’s Campus Mental Health Strategy and the Office of Sustainability as part of Mental Health Week and the Climate Conversations Speaker Series.
May 8, 12-1:30 p.m.
Climate Conversations 2023-24 speaker series hosts its second keynote speaker, Dr. Vanessa Andreotti, Dean of Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria.
Dr. Andreotti shares with us key learnings from the Climate and Nature Emergency Catalyst Program, a transdisciplinary educational program at the University of British Columbia. This program brought together scholars, students, community partners and artists using an educational inquiry approach to engage with urgency, scale, complexity and the central causes/drivers of the climate and nature emergency. The program also examined the role of higher education institutions as change catalysts in society. Learn about the new approaches the cohort experimented with to address climate change, climate justice, and biodiversity loss both locally and globally, and discover new ways you and your community can contribute to addressing these urgent complex global challenges.
Speaker:
Dr. Vanessa Andreotti, was appointed the Dean of the Faculty of Education with the University of Victoria effectively in July 2023 with a mandate to advance decolonization, Indigenization, equity, justice and climate resilience efforts. Dr. Andreotti is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and a former David Lam Chair in (critical) Multicultural Education. Dr. Andreotti has held academic positions in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Finland. She has worked extensively across disciplines, sectors and communities problematizing and offering alternatives to common approaches to social change that reproduce simplistic solutions to complex problems, paternalistic relationships with historically and systemically marginalized communities and ethnocentric ideals of sustainability, equity, and justice. She is one of the co-founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, an Arts/Research Collective. Dr. Andreotti is also a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada.
Moderator:
Melanie Kloetzel, MFA, PhD, is a settler performance maker, scholar and educator based in Treaty 7 territory (Moh’kinsstis/Calgary). Director of the dance theatre company kloetzel&co. and co-director of the art intervention collective TRAction that produces the Climate Art Web, Kloetzel has created films, events, workshops and encounters that have been shared in theatre spaces, alternative venues, spaces of public assembly, and online environments across four continents. Kloetzel is a professor of dance at the University of Calgary.
January 26, 2024 12–1:30 p.m.
The Climate Conversations 2023-24 speaker series brings you it’s first keynote speaker, Dr. Nicole Redvers ND, MPH Deninu K’ue First Nation, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Western Research Chair & Director, Indigenous Planetary Health.
Learn about the interconnections between planetary health, human health, and biodiversity, and the importance of reciprocal relationships with the planet from an Indigenous worldview. Increase your awareness and knowledge of the importance of Indigenous languages and knowledge systems to planetary and human health. We will discuss ways to support and advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives in planetary health at local, regional, and international levels. We will also learn how the campus community can implement planetary health principles and practices, and ways to support the leadership of Indigenous communities in this area.
Speaker:
Dr. Nicole Redvers, ND, MPH, is a member of the Deninu K’ue First Nation (NWT, Canada) and has worked with Indigenous patients, scholars, and communities around the globe her entire career. She is an Associate Professor, Western Research Chair, and Director of Indigenous Planetary Health at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University. She has been actively involved at regional, national, and international levels promoting the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives in both human and planetary health research and practice. Dr. Redvers is the author of the trade paperback book titled, ‘The Science of the Sacred: Bridging Global Indigenous Medicine Systems and Modern Scientific Principles’.
Moderator:
Clark Svrcek, MD, CCFP, P.Eng., M.Eng., is a Family Physician at the South Health Campus Academic Teaching Clinic and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Calgary. His previous life as a civil/environmental engineer has informed his research and education interests in Planetary Health, the intersections of nature and the built environment, and how that all comes together in active, healthy communities.
Oct 24, 2023 12–1:30 p.m.
Mobilizing Alberta Climate Conversations speaker series brings you its second keynote panel session — Sharing Diverse Perspectives on Just Energy Transitions.
Explore what just energy transitions can look like from diverse perspectives, worldviews and Knowledge Systems. Panelists will discuss ways just energy transitions can support climate justice in Alberta and Canada, how they can influence climate policy, current challenges and solutions to implementing just energy transitions, and ways one can support just energy transitions.
Speakers:
Jacob Crane is a citizen of the Tsuut'ina Nation, Alberta, Canada. He is the Community Engagement Coordinator for Indigenous Climate Action, an Indigenous women-led organization dedicated to creating a world with sovereign and thriving Indigenous Peoples and cultures leading climate justice for all.
Dr. Julie Drolet, PhD, professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary and Project Director of Transforming the Field Education Landscape partnership. She leads an international social work research program to advance knowledge in the fields of social work and social development.
Dr. Jennifer Winter, MA'07, PhD'11, is an associate professor in the Department of Economics and the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary. Winter’s research evaluates climate policies and examines the effects of government regulation and policy on energy development and the associated consequences and trade-offs.
Moderator:
Sarah Winstanley, BSW'11, MSW'15, is an instructor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary. She is a feminist social worker who specializes in community development and has spent a decade working with girls and women leaders in Calgary and across the UK.
Nov. 22, 2022 12:30–2 p.m.
Exploring the Intersections of Human Rights, Equity & Climate Change
Kicking-off the Mobilizing Climate Conversations Speaker Series with our first keynote panel session. We will discuss what climate justice means from diverse perspectives, worldviews and knowledge systems, and what it is to decolonize climate change dialogues. We will explore how tackling racism, discrimination and structural inequities are all essential to advancing climate justice, and share meaningful actions to support climate justice.
Speakers:
Dr. Deborah McGregor is the Canadian Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. Her research focuses on Indigenous knowledge systems and their various applications in diverse contexts, including water and environmental governance, environmental justice, forest policy and management, and sustainable development.
Dr. Deb L. Morrison works at the intersection of justice, climate science, and learning. She is a climate and anti-oppression activist, scientist, learning scientist, educator, mother, locally elected official, and many other things besides. Deb works in research-practice-policy partnerships from local community to international scales.
Larissa Crawford is the founder and managing director of Future Ancestors with expertise in anti-racism, climate justice, race-based data collection, public policy and governance, restorative practices and conflict resolution, global development, youth engagement, Indigenous engagement and decolonization.
Oct. 25, 2022 12:30–2 p.m.
Learn from an amazing panel of artists and discover the ways artistic practices are making an impact in how we talk about climate change, implement climate action, and imagine a healthy future. Understand ways artistic practices can bring together diverse voices, stories and experiences to:
- support transformative conversations,
- support community,
- influence wider cultural conversations on climate change to advance climate justice, and
- empower people to take action.
Speakers:
Chantal Chagnon is a Cree/Métis singer, drummer, artist, storyteller, actor, educator, workshop facilitator, social justice advocate and activist with roots in Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan. She shares Traditional Indigenous songs, stories, culture, history, arts, Indigenous Craftsmanship and teachings. A Two Spirit single mother of two boys and twin girls, Chagnon has been an activist for more than 25 years, advocating for marginalized voices, including Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women, Girls and Two Spirit (MMIWG2S), Women’s Rights, Racial Inequity and Environmental Initiatives. Chagnon is passionate about building awareness and sharing understanding of Indigenous culture, spirituality, social justice and political issues.
Alana Bartol (she/her), MFA, BFA, is an artist and educator working at the intersection of art and ecology. She creates individual and collaborative site-responsive artworks that examine our relationships with the earth, the elements, and what are colonially known as “natural resources”. In 2019 and 2021, Bartol was long-listed for Canada’s Sobey Art Award representing Prairies and North. Spanning video, performance, drawing, sculpture, photography, environmental and socially engaged art, her work has been presented in in Germany, Hong Kong, Belgium, Romania, Argentina, Turkey, Colombia, Mexico, United States of America, and throughout Canada. Of mixed-European ancestry, Bartol is a white settler Canadian based in Treaty 7 Territory in Mohkínstsis/Calgary, Alberta where she teaches at Alberta University of the Arts.
Nicole Martens (she/they), is an artist and educator of Grebo, Mennonite and Celtic heritage. They are the founder of Plein Air Outdoor Arts, a nature-based art program, and co-founder of The General Store, an ongoing performative installation questioning economics. Martens makes use of pedagogy to explore relationships within self, within community, and with the more-than-human world. She gratefully recognizes the people, flora, fauna, funga and elements of Treaty 7 as her adopted home.
Moderator:
Dr. Melanie Kloetzel, MFA, PhD, is a settler performance maker, scholar and educator based in Treaty 7 territory (Moh’kinsstis/Calgary). Director of the dance theatre company kloetzel&co. and co-director of the art intervention collective TRAction that produces the Climate Art Web, Kloetzel has created films, events, workshops and encounters that have been shared in theatre spaces, alternative venues, spaces of public assembly, and online environments across four continents. Kloetzel is a professor of dance at the University of Calgary.
March 8, 2023 3–4:30 p.m.
Join us to listen and learn from Melanie Goodchild sharing a presentation titled Niigani Miinigowiziiwin (We Give These Gifts to the Future). Goodchild will describe how to heal self and systems through a dibaajimowin (story), and about her apprenticeship with complexity anchored in the principle of gidinawendimin (we are all related). She will be discussing an Anishinaabe approach to systems thinking and complexity science.
This event is hosted in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Engagement's Indigenous Knowledge Lecture Series.
Speaker:
Melanie Goodchild is moose clan Anishinaabekwe (Ojibway woman) from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg and Ketegaunseebee First Nations in northern Ontario. She is a PhD candidate in Social & Ecological Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Melanie is a systems thinking and complexity science scholar. She lives with her family in Baawaating (the place of the rapids) in Three Fires Confederacy territory, currently known as Sault Ste Marie. She is on faculty with the Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning, the Academy for Systems Change, and the Presencing Institute and teaches part-time at the University of Vermont.
April 4, 2023,12–1:30 p.m.
UCalgary climate focused events
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