School of Psychology Research Seminar: How to be an Academic in a World on Fire: Talk & Hands-On Workshop

School of Psychology Research Seminar: How to be an Academic in a World on Fire
Talk & Hands-On Workshop
Dr. Clare Kelly, Trinity College Dublin

Monday 26th February 12:30-15:00

(lunch included)
G065 AMBE, University of Galway

Addressing the climate crisis requires radical and urgent action at all levels of society. Universities are ideally positioned to lead such action but are largely failing to do so. At the same time, many academic scientists find their work impeded by corporatization and bureaucracy, a loss of academic freedom, overwork, casualisation, and poor mental health. In this talk, I will describe a recent paper that draws on Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics framework to rethink academia, which increasingly transgresses human and planetary limits while failing to provide a socially just foundation for its communities. In response, we suggest seven new principles for reimagining the norms of academic practice (Urai & Kelly, 2023). Based on these principles, we propose a call to action, and encourage academics to take concrete steps towards a thriving scientific enterprise that both works better for people and responds to the climate crisis.

Do you want to learn more? Following the talk, a hands on workshop (see https://anneurai.net/doughnut-academia/) will support participants to take concrete steps toward action. Participants will analyse current academic norms through a doughnut lens to identify and rethink unhelpful practices and to identify actions that will institute new ones. Activities will equip participants with new knowledge, motivation, and allegiances that will support them to take action – in their local context and as part of the global community.

Sign up for the workshop (and reminder!) here: https://forms.gle/Speanj9xkeZiyuJ46

Clare Kelly PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology and Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, and a Principal Investigator at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (https://immalab.wordpress.com/). Clare is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist whose research to date has largely focused on using translational brain imaging techniques to better understand psychiatric conditions such as depression by tracing the origins of these conditions in the developing brain. More recently, Clare’s focus has broadened to include teaching, research, and advocacy on the climate and biodiversity crisis. She was recently awarded a Sustainability Leadership Award and a Teaching Award for her undergraduate teaching on the psychology of the climate crisis. Working with Anne Urai (https://anneurai.net/), she argues that many aspects of scientific culture and practice act as a barrier to climate action, and that we need reimagine academia in a way that works better for people and enables climate action.