Earth(ly) Matters Conference 2021 – Session 3

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted our dependence on each other—The actions of others directly affect our day-to-day life and health, demonstrating how our individual actions matter in the grand scheme of things. This year Earth(ly) Matters turns its attention towards the human as part of wider systems: ecosystems, and social, political, and economic systems. Our place within those systems often impacts our physical and mental health and wellbeing both as individuals and as a collective. These systems also impact other adjacent and interconnected systems, like micro- and macro-ecosystems.

We therefore invite postgraduate researchers and early career researchers to join us this August for our ‘academic summer camp’ to explore the role of humans as individuals, as parts of groups, as cogs in the economic system, and as animals within ecosystems. Through the subheadings of Mind, Body, Nature, & Society, we welcome papers from Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as every other discipline. This conference explores how we as humans depend on, contribute to, rebel against, or actively change the systems around us.

We welcome both academic papers/posters, visual art posters and creative writing in relation to these themes.

This year’s SHU PRSS’s conference continues the theme of Earth(ly) Matters launched in 2020. We believe in the importance of creating an academic community which explores sustainability both as a theme and in practice.

The conference takes place on Zoom across three Friday afternoons in August. Conference material will include both live events and asynchronous material such as visual posters, written, and pre-recorded papers, to give speakers and attendees more time to engage with the material.

We are also organising a poster competition: posters will be displayed online prior to the conference event for attendees to vote on. Read more about submitting a poster here.

Papers might explore, but are by no means limited to:

• Exploring human–environment relationships / Human-animal and human-nature relations
• Analysing the role of humans in Ecosystems / Ecosystems and human well-being / Ecosystems and the anthropocene
• The collective self / the space between us – exploring human relationships
• Migration & global systems
• Our role in climate change, our role in fixing it
• Health and health care systems
• Urban and rural environments
• Accessibility, equality, & inclusion

The Conference website can be accessed via Earth(ly) Matters Conference site