Climates of Listening: Amplifying Pacific Experiences of Environmental Crisis

Climates of Listening: Amplifying Pacific Experiences of Environmental Crisis (CoL) is the first practice-led research project to use sound and listening as a framework for expanding understandings of Indigenous Pacific human-environmental relations in the face of rapid ecosystemic transformation.

Sonic practices such as storytelling, poetry, singing, music and listening are widely used in Pacific cultures to connect to, make sense of, and communicate knowledge about, the world.

Drawing on these practices, this project innovates an interdisciplinary ""sonic geography"" to help scholars and advocates better conceive of the holistic, multifarious and hyperlocalised ways that environmental crisis is felt and attended to.

In doing so, it expands existing literature beyond narratives of ""vulnerability"" and ""resilience"", and problematises the politics of representation and translation of Indigenous Pacific experiences into Western ideas and knowledges.

CoL deploys ethnographic material from five frontline Pacific Island sites as a foundation for understanding and communicating Pacific Indigenous-environmental relations through written and artistic forms, including a research monograph, workshops, original sound art pieces and a research exhibition.

Based at the world leading Centre for the GeoHumanities (RHUL) in the Department of Geography, the Fellow will be supported in a rich research environment.

The Fellow's time at the CGH will not only enhance their trajectory as a research leader in their discipline of Geography, but will also advance their transferable research skills and build their Geography teaching profile.

Through a comprehensive suite of research, dissemination and career training activities, this MSCA will greatly increase the Fellow's capacity to secure a permanent academic post in the UK or Europe.