This month, we are pleased to welcome fascinating contributions from members of the Leverhulme-funded Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme at the University of Leeds, as we proudly host a takeover by colleagues. This series of blog posts features seven essays and a downloadable PDF publication at the end of the series. A schedule can be found at the bottom of this page.
Extinction in the Small Isles
On a grey Saturday evening in August 2022, seven PhD students and one researcher from the University of Leeds rolled off the train at Mallaig and onto a waiting boat, the Mary Doune, for the start of a week-long photography field trip to Knoydart and the Scottish Small Isles. Under the expert guidance of Colin Prior, an award-winning Scottish photographer, we were there to explore extinction through the craft of visual communication. With a base at Doune Knoydart, each day Andy, skipper of the Mary Doune, took us across the seas to remote locations including Loch Hourn and the isles of Rum, Eigg, Muck and Pabay.
This collection is a small sample of what emerged from our varied experiences over that week, bringing together images of, and reflections on, our encounters with extinction, loss and change. What you are about to experience are some of our partial reflections from the rich, multisensory world of the Small Isles.
We invite you to share in our exploration over the following pages, to follow our footsteps and see through our eyes as we examine extinction through the lenses of our cameras.
We are a group of interdisciplinary PhD colleagues and friends brought together by the Leverhulme-funded Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme at the University of Leeds. We explore extinction from a range of different angles and perspectives, always working across and between disciplines. Our research focuses on a variety of topics around the question of what extinction means, biologically, socially and culturally. This trip marked the culmination of our first year of experiences and learnings across extinction and interdisciplinary working.
More information on the Extinction Studies Programme: Extinction Studies DTP
Contributors
Alfie Howard
Alfie’s PhD thesis examines anthropomorphism and representations of animal speech in fiction, with an emphasis on threats both to and from power. By analysing a range of texts, Alfie explores different systems of power, including colonialism, class, patriarchy and human-animal relations. Alfie is particularly interested in postcolonial studies and environmental humanities, and he is currently the PGR coordinator for the Leeds Environmental Humanities Research Group.
MT Talensby
MT’s doctoral research explores how UK-based climate change activists navigate experiences of eco-anxiety and eco-grief, whether they differ when occurring within faith-based climate collectives, and how cultural and societal systems for grief and loss might interact with these experiences. This is an interdisciplinary project, working across religion and sociology, and drawing on politics, psychotherapy, eschatology, and thanatology, to reintegrate and re-complicate the different layers to these experiences.
Jon Roberts
Jon studies the interactions of human and nonhuman natures, focussing on the biology and history of parasitic worms and disease eradication. Jon is currently engaged in exploring how humans, hookworms and environments interact and shape each other, and what disease eradication efforts can tell us about extinction, in a project linking the mountains of Jamaica and the shores of the Windward Islands to the tin mines of Cornwall.
Sicily Fiennes
Sicily’s doctoral research focuses on the Asian Songbird Crisis as a phenomenon, but specifically songbird trade in the global songbird trade hotspot: Indonesia. Sicily explores building machine learning tools to optimize species identification in bird marketplaces, which has many applications for monitoring the wildlife trade. Sicily is a conservation biologist by training and has shifted to a more interdisciplinary research focus, working across the various fields of conservation social science, political ecology, computer science and design.
Lydia Woods
Lydia’s research project is looking into marine ecosystem structure over the Phanerozoic, from the Cambrian (541 million years ago) to today. Over deep time, marine biodiversity has been subject to major evolutionary events, including major mass extinctions. The effect of these events on the number of global species has been well-documented, however the effects on community-level interactions have been neglected. Lydia’s project aims to reconstruct ancient food webs from before and after major mass extinctions to pinpoint permanent changes in structure caused by extinction, and to identify the origins of modern marine community structure.
Serena Turton-Hughes
Serena’s research background centres on human perceptions of nature, currently exploring anticipated dark extinctions through cultural, philosophical and biological significance of tree extinctions and the extinction of their epibionts. Serena’s work focuses on less charismatic forest flora, invertebrates, and fungi, in tandem with trees as microhabitats, to explore multidisciplinary perceptions of previously unseen future biodiversity loss.
Jenny Kennedy
Jenny’s research project focuses on understanding how Indigenous communities in Latin America are experiencing and resisting eco-genocidal processes. Specifically, looking at how development policies and megaprojects are driving territorial and cultural destruction in Mexico and Panama. As a trained journalist, Jenny has reported on human rights, conservation and environmental issues in Latin America and beyond. Building upon extensive experience working on Indigenous land rights and grassroots resistance to mining and hydroelectric dams in the region, Jenny conducts fieldwork in both countries, taking a collaborative and comparative approach.
Schedule of Releases
| Date of Release | Title and Link |
| 09/08/2023 | Earthworks, by Alfie Howard |
| 11/08/2023 | The Authenticity of Absence, by MT Talensby |
| 16/8/23 | The Entangling Sea, by Jonathan Roberts |
| 18/8/23 | Awe and Extinction, by Sicily Fiennes |
| 23/8/23 | Small Isles Reflections, by Lydia Woods |
| 25/8/23 | Photography as a Tool for Enhanced Interactions, by Serena Turton-Hughes |
| 30/8/23 | Microcosms, by Jenny Kennedy |
| 1/9/23 | Extinction in the Small Isles – PDF book download |
Click here to read the first essay,
Earthworks by Alfie Howard
Land Lines Project 