Copenhagen Climate Sound Series #1: Conservation Justice
Talk with Joycelyn Longdon with Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen and Natalie Marie Gulsrud. Hosted by Kara Oehler (Institute for Climate Sound & Society).
In our opening event for the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series, we are very excited to host author and scholar Joycelyn Longdon. She will discuss how Indigenous wisdom, modern technology and finding awe in nature can inspire us to approach climate action as a shared goal.
Longdon’s new book, Natural Connection: What Indigenous Wisdom & Marginalized People Teach us about Environmental Action is a love letter to the living world and the frontline communities who have, and continue to pave the way for today's environmental movement in spite of traumatic pasts and presents. It is also an offering to anyone craving deeper relationships with the Earth and others amidst the intersecting ecological, climate and social crises.
Longdon writes: “We are living through a time of horrors: violence, genocide, and environmental collapse. And in these times, it often seems easier to accept the end of the world than to hope and act for its survival. I wrote this book to show that we are more resourced, more powerful and wiser than we have been made to believe. That we come from a lineage of individuals deeply connected to and fiercely protective of the Earth, individuals who continue to live through us today.”
Longdon presents 6 key alternative roots necessary to cultivate a natural connection between ourselves and the living world: RAGE, IMAGINATION, INNOVATION, THEORY, HEALING and CARE. These roots represent practices, teachings and considerations for environmental action inspired by the legacies and ongoing resistance of marginalised communities.
In addition to her book, Longdon will also present her current fieldwork. Her research centres on the design of justice-led conservation technologies for monitoring biodiversity with local forest communities in Ghana (her place of heritage), specialising in biodiversity monitoring through machine-learning powered bioacoustics – essentially Shazam for nature. Uncovering the inherent connection between ecology, sociology and technology, her research has disrupted a stagnant and often colonial and extractive field of study and made clear the need for a justice-centred approach to the application of technology in conservation.
Following Longdon’s talk, a discussion will be hosted by Kara Oehler, Executive Director of the Institute for Climate Sound & Society with Longdon, CApE Director Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen and University of Copenhagen’s Natalie Marie Gulsrud.
Bios
Joycelyn Longdon
Joycelyn Longdon is an award-winning environmental justice researcher and educator. Her PhD research at the University of Cambridge centres on the design of justice-led conservation technologies for monitoring biodiversity with local forest communities in Ghana. Her work makes more accessible topics of climate justice, climate colonialism, activism, creativity and systems change across a variety of forums on and offline and for platforms including Meta, The United Nations Geneva Dialogues, Channel 4, Cheltenham Science Festival, Oxford University, The National Lottery, The Design Council and The Wellcome Collection.
Joycelyn was 2022’s winner of the Emerging Designer London Design Medal, was featured in British Vogue’s December 2023 ‘Forces for Change’ Issue and is a and is a TEDx Alumni. Most recently, she has been listed as one of Pique Action and Harvard Chan C-CHANGE's 2024 Climate Creators to Watch and as one of Country and Town House’s Future Icons Power People 2024. Her new book, Natural Connection: What Indigenous Wisdom & Marginalised People Teach Us About Environmental Action explores examines 6 key pillars: Rage, Imagination, Innovation, Theory, Healing and Care to showcase the wonder of the natural world and inspire us to view climate action as a shared goal rather than individual burden.
Natalie Marie Gulsrud
Natalie Marie Gulsrud is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen in the Section for Landscape Architecture, Planning, and Society. Her work focuses on how listening, care, and democracy can guide the way we plan and govern urban environments. She studies how meaningful relationships with nature can be created and sustained in rapidly growing cities, supporting both people and ecosystems. Her research highlights the importance of just, place-based approaches that include community voices in shaping climate resilience. Across her projects, she works to connect ethics of care with democratic planning to help build more inclusive and resilient cities.
Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen
Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen is director of CApE and PI of the Carlsberg Accelerate project Climate Justice Temporalities in Denmark (JusTiDe).
About the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series
We are very excited to announce a new partnership with Institute for Climate Sound & Society at metaLAB Harvard, whose founder and executive director Kara Oehler is now based in Copenhagen. Our initial project together is the Copenhagen Climate Sound Series, a three-part event sequence hosted by Oehler that brings together pathbreaking scholars and artists working with sound, which has taken on an increasingly crucial role as a medium and research tool for understanding the impacts of climate change, and also as a way for people to engage with and listen to the non-human world, expanding our relationship to nature.
Combining the potential of new technologies like passive acoustic monitoring and AI with centuries of Indigenous knowledge and decades of work in fields such as bioacoustics, ecoacoustics, and sound studies, sound is being used to monitor species, support conservation justice, and explore new arenas of human and nonhuman relations. The series will feature pathbreaking leaders across these fields, including Joycelyn Longdon, Jana Winderen and Elodie Mandel Briefer.