Vertical Indian Ocean: Postcolonial Cultural Studies, Climate Change and Deep Sea Science
Written by Charne Lavery (PhD)
Presented by Charne Lavery (University of Pretoria)
In a time of melting ice and rising seas, postcolonial humanities research is widening its range of interdisciplinary engagement, from anthropology and history to climate science and marine biology—an expansion that can be both enabling and overwhelming. This talk will present for discussion two kinds of engagement from the perspective of my research, roughly described as humanities-for-science and science-for-humanities. The first, briefly, is involvement in the Africa chapter of the recent International Panel on Climate Change report (Ch 9, Working Group II, 2022), which drew on a humanities background to facilitate narrativization and communication. The second is a book project, provisionally titled By the Deep Sea: Vertical Indian Ocean, which draws on deep sea science to explore postcolonial literature and art about the Indian Ocean beneath the surface.
This colloquium took place at the Department of Journalism, located at 26 Crozier Road, Stellenbosch Central. You can watch a recap of the colloquium on our YouTube page.