EGENIS seminar: "Forests as Technologies", Prof Jennifer Gabrys (University of Cambridge)
Egenis seminar series
There are no shortage of technologies and systems that would diagnose and fix the problem of planetary collapse. On one level, technologies have been instrumental to the formation of forests as spaces of conservation, production, and extraction. Their variable development as plantations and state territories, resources and commodities, as well as Indigenous sites for wildfire management and agroforestry, shows how designations of technologies and forests have been differently configured. Similarly, the framing of trees and forests as carbon-capture and “negative emission” technologies is a common thread within environmental development projects, where the aspiration to create climate-repairing technologies reconstitutes trees and forests as technological operators and operations.
| An Egenis, the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences seminar | |
|---|---|
| Date | 20 November 2023 |
| Time | 15:30 to 17:00 |
| Place | Hybrid |
Event details
These infrastructures co-constitute and mobilize forests as proxies and probes, carbon scrubbers and climate mitigators. Digitalization has contributed to the optimization of trees and forests as productive entities for addressing environmental change. As sites equipped with and monitored by digital technologies, smart forests typically consist of satellites and sensors, Lidar and robots, data dashboards and civic apps. Drawing on work from the Smart Forests project, this presentation will consider the shapeshifting relationship between forests and technologies, where forests increasingly perform as technologies. The presentation will further consider the reconstitution of forests and technologies as they are mobilized to address environmental change.
Register here
Venue: Byrne House, Streatham Campus (places limited)
Virtual: via Zoom
