Our Members

Rebecca Macklin is an Interdisciplinary Fellow at the University of Aberdeen’s Interdisciplinary Institute and School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, working at the intersections of Indigenous studies, energy humanities, petrocultures, arts-based research methods and community-engaged scholarship.

She is involved in projects including Just Reverberations: Listening to North Sea Multispecies Communities, JUST-Systems, Intersecting Energy Cultures and Entwined Futures: Indigeneity, Gender and Extraction, and teaches on SX1022 Arts for a More Sustainable Planet and the MLitt course Places and Environments: Critical Dialogues.

Email: rebecca.macklin@abdn.ac.uk

Jesse Barker is a senior lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Aberdeen, whose work traces how contemporary culture responds to social and ecological crisis. His longstanding interest in Spanish film and literature, especially critiques of individualism, has gradually led him towards questions at the heart of environmental humanities.

His current book project examines how historical and contemporary Spanish film engages with ecological themes and social-ecological conflict. This trajectory also informs his teaching, including a new honours course, Spanish Ecocinema.

Webpage: Dr Jesse Barker

Email: jbarker@abdn.ac.uk

Elizabeth Anderson, Senior Lecturer, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Elizabeth Anderson

Email: sarahelizabeth.anderson@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Literature and environment, religion and environment

Teaching: EL40/45/JA: Wandering Women: Literature, Place and Environment; MLitt Literatures, Environments and Places; MLitt Modules Locations and Dislocations; Environments and Places

Timothy C. Baker, Professor, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Timothy C. Baker

Email: t.c.baker@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Contemporary literature, Scottish literature, blue humanities

Projects: New Forms of Environmental Writing, Gleaning and Fragmentation. Current research focuses on homosocial communities in literature, using ecocritical and queer theories to examine, for instance, the life of sailors in nautical fiction.

Teaching: Vulnerable Bodies, Precarious Lives; Places and Environments: Critical Dialogues

Jennifer Clarke, Associate Professor, Gray’s School of Art, RGU

Webpage: Dr Jen Clarke Worktribe page

Email: j.clarke5@rgu.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Environmental arts and humanities; Anthropology; Artistic research and research-creation; Climate and ecological futures; Multispecies and place-based methods

Projects: Anthropologist and artist working through practice-based and research-creation approaches to environmental change, ecological futures, and care. Recent projects include agroforestry and climate futures research, such as Grounding Truths , exhibited at the Sill and accompanied by an open access Volume 0 artist book ; multimodal anthropological work developed through Knowing from the Inside (Aberdeen); and ongoing, long-term work in Japan, including the feminist research-creation platform Voicing Care . She also regularly designs and leads public-facing and student workshops engaging environmental issues through embodied and practice-based methods (e.g. Body as Weather Station, material- and land-based workshops at Scottish Sculpture Workshop).

Teaching: Environmental and ecological issues within MA/MFA Critical & Contextual Studies and research methods at Gray’s School of Art, as well as interdisciplinary courses spanning art, anthropology, and environmental research. Additionally, Jennifer regularly designs and leads public-facing and student workshops engaging environmental issues through embodied and practice-based methods (e.g. Body as Weather Station, material- and land-based workshops at Scottish Sculpture Workshop).

Abbe Brown, Professor in Intellectual Property Law, School of Law, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Abbe Brown

Email: abbe.brown@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Intellectual property, rights of nature, human rights, intersections between biodiversity and IP, approaches to local knowledge

Projects: Ocean and Us 

Ben Collins, Lecturer, Politics & International Relations, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Ben Collins

Areas of Interest: Political Ecology, Decolonial Ecologies, Indigenous Studies, Settler Colonialism, Environmental and Climate Governance, Epistemic and Cultural Violence, Climate and Environmental Justice.

Projects: River Restoration as Decolonial Transition: Critically Examining Politics of Local Opposition to Dam Removal in Central Maine. The British Academy and Leverhulme funded project examines localised opposition to dam removal initiatives across the state of Maine. At a time when there is growing water and energy insecurity across the US and the world, the project seeks to qualify the logics of why communities oppose dam removal, especially when Indigenous communities and nations lead such campaigns.

Teaching: Director of MSc Climate Politics and Policy; Coordinator for the PGT 1HS courses: Critical Climate Politics and Policy and Climate Policies, Realities, and Justice. Coordinator for 4th-year course: Climate, the Environment, and Colonialism.

Laura Donkers, Artist, Limen Lab

Webpages: https://www.lauradonkers.art/ ; https://www.limenlab.org/

Email: laura.donkers.art@googlemail.com

Areas of Interest: Creative encounters in nature

Projects: Blue Radius (Sea level rise exhibition); Community drawing project ; Meeting Ground (local food project); Re Generation (regenerative planting project); Machair Art

Teaching: Nature Printing workshops offered as bespoke workshops to a range of organisations and businesses

Jo Hicks, Lecturer, School of Languages, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Jo Hicks

Email: jonathan.hicks@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Music history, especially in C19 Britain, with a focus on the built environment

Projects: AHRC research network on mapping music history; longstanding interests in music and landscape; publications in progress on music and the built environment

Teaching: SX1022: Arts for a More Sustainable Planet

Marcel Jaspars, Professor of Chemistry, School of Natural and Computing Sciences, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Marcel Jaspars

Email: m.jaspars@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Ocean conservation using science and law, drug discovery from marine bioresources

Projects: Song of the Oceans

Teaching: SX3002 Science and Society

Nevena Jevremovic, Lecturer, School of Law, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Nevena Jevremovic

Areas of Interest: Nevena is an interdisciplinary scholar examining how discourse, at the intersection of law, language, and power, shapes the normative and interpretive dimensions of private law in international governance contexts.

Projects: Death and Law: Interdisciplinary Explorations

Teaching: Legal Architecture of Global Commerce; Law and Sustainable Development

Ines Kirschner, Teaching Fellow, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture

Webpage: Ines Kirschner ORCiD

Email: ines.kirschner4@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Contemporary literature; new formalism; conservation biology; science and technology studies; more-than-human approaches; environmental education.

Projects: Current and recent projects include an article on eco-evolutionary dynamics in surrealist fiction (‘Surrealist Becomings’); an article on narrative and epistemic closure in rewilding novels; and a co-authored survey of birds in contemporary literature and music.

Dr Gemma McGregor, Teaching Fellow, Artist, Curator, Composer, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Gemma McGregor

Email: gemma.mcgregor@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Performance art, installations, music composition, new energy

Projects: 'Critical Raw Materials' - a choral composition that lists the thirty-one dwindling raw materials earthwide; 'Sounding the Sound' - a presentation about the multidisciplinary work of Gemma McGregor & Anne Bevan (UHI) at the 'Creative Islands: Land, Sea, Pasts, Futures' conference at Orkney Research & Innovation Centre on 24.02.23; 'Waveform' - a multidisciplinary event in 2018 about tidal energy performed at The Pier Arts Centre

Elisabeth Niklasson, Lecturer, School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Elisabeth Niklasson

Email: elisabeth.niklasson@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Archaeology and political polarization, heritage policy and governance

Dr Lourdes Parra Lazcano, Teaching Fellow, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Dr Lourdes Parra Lazcano

Email: lourdes.parralazcano@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Mexican herbalists and medicinal plants, travel writing, and animal studies

Projects: Collective online exhibition

Teaching: SP30YB Key Topics in Spanish and Latin American Culture - The Impact of Plants on Latinx Narratives and a seminar called 'Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Anthropocene' for the course Comparative Literary Studies

Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi, Lecturer, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi

Email: alejandra.rodriguez@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Petroculture, just transition, arts-based research

Projects: Reflecting Oil: Arts-Based Research on Oil Transitionings (University of Applied Arts Vienna/Austrian Science Fund, 2019-24); Creative Approaches to the Energy Crisis (University of Aberdeen/Aberdeen Grants Academy, 2023-24)

Teaching: FS3516/FS4516 Art and Oil: Crude in Film and Visual Culture; SX1022 Arts for a More Sustainable Planet

Rachel Shanks, Director for Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity, Interdisciplinary Institute, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Rachel Shanks

Email: r.k.shanks@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: School policies; affordability, comfort and sustainability of school uniform and dress codes; children's human rights education

Teaching: SX1011 Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities

Edda Starck, PhD student, Department of Anthropology/Elhpinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Edda Starck

Email: e.starck.23@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Multispecies ethnography; forests; plants; musical instruments; craft; creative practice; supply chains; colonial ecologies; phenomenology

Projects: PhD research investigates the connections between the heritage craft of violin making and forested landscapes in the Northern Alps and in Brazil. Following the supply chains of three tree species that serve as crucial resources for violin and bowmakers, it explores the intersections between creative practice, ecology, and environmental politics.

Shane Strachan, Lecturer in Creative Writing, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Shane Strachan

Email: shane.strachan@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Creative approaches to energy research; Voicing communities impacted by energy transition and industrial change; Impacts of climate change and the North Sea and fisheries.

Projects: DREEPIN – spoken-word installation and performance piece, originating as part of Fertile Ground’s CRUDE curatorial project, also published in Shane’s poetry collection DWAMS (Tapsalteerie). A Play for Torry – collaborative verbatim theatre project exploring the impacts of energy transitions on Torry in Aberdeen, including the 1970s oil boom and the recent Energy Transition Zone development on the last remaining green space in the area. Co-editor of Refashioning Bill Gibb for the 21st Century (Bloomsbury, 2026), which includes essays on vintage fashion, sustainability and the environment, as well as sustainability in fashion education.

Ivo Van Puyvelde, PhD Student, Law School, University of Strathclyde

Email: ivo.van-puyvelde@strath.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Multispecies ethnography, Correspondence thinking, New materialism, Deep legal pluralism, Earth law

Projects: PhD research project seeks to study the environments - as performed ontologies - within which regenerative farmers and foresters work, with the ambition of informing dominant environmental and human rights law and their logics of operation. Rooted in cartographic approaches to philosophy and law, attending to non-naturalistic cartographies that are incarnated in these communities, on which human behaviour is drawn alongside many other living beings' worldmaking projects.

Karina Vilca Emslie, Community Development Officer - Photographer, We Are Nature Collective

Webpage: We Are Nature Collective

Email: photostoriesbyk@hotmail.com

Areas of Interest: Social justice, climate justice, indigenous environmental justice

Projects: We Are Nature Collective is a women-led creative group rooted in North-East Scotland. Together we walk, listen, and create — exploring the threads between people, place, and planet. Through art, storytelling, and shared imagination, we open ways to listen, reflect, and tell stories that are often unheard. Our work centres climate and land justice, recognising that the ecological crisis is inseparable from questions of social and economic justice. Through collective walks, creative prompts, and exhibitions, we create spaces where diverse women—including those who are racialised, migrant, or living with limited resources—can bring their lived experience into dialogue with wider community and policy conversations.

Teaching: Community facilitation training, participatory photography

Andrew Whitehouse, Lecturer, Dept. of Anthropology, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Andrew Whitehouse

Email: a.whitehouse@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Environmental anthropology, environmental perception - particularly listening/sound, human-animal relations - particularly with birds and cetaceans, landscape, nature conservation, rewilding

Projects: Patch birding research, Just Reverberations project, SCARF project on cetaceans in Shetland (funded by the Ecological Citizens programme)

Teaching: AT4560 More than Human; SX1001 Humans and Other Animals; AT5068 Climate Policies, Realities and Justice; forthcoming environmental anthropology programme including a dedicated course in environmental anthropology.

Frances Wilkins, Senior Lecturer, Elphinstone Institute, School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen

Webpage: Frances Wilkins

Email: frances.wilkins@abdn.ac.uk

Areas of Interest: Scottish and Canadian musical traditions - fiddle, dance, song. Gaelic song traditions. Cree musical traditions in James Bay.

Projects: Seinn Spioradail: Sacred Soundscapes of the Highlands and Islands and SEINN; Cree Fiddlers of James Bay; North-East Scottish gospel singing; Funeralscapes