Clara de Massol de rebetz (KCL) - 2017-18 Students
clara.de_massol_de_rebetz@kcl.ac.uk

Remembering Climate Change: Memorial Practices in the Anthropocene

My research investigates how memorial practices are formulated in the Anthropocene, the epoch in which human activity on earth is increasingly recognised as the main geological force. In less than 100 years climates and ecosystems around the globe will be effectively altered, with profound implications for human survival and collective identity. My project examines cultural responses to climate change and their attention to memory to understand how climate change transforms our perception of the past, the present and the future.

The methodological approach is comparative and interdisciplinary, focusing on selected examples of differently scaled memorial projects: from individual artistic or activist practices to international and monumental memorial projects. I explore what happens when environmental literary criticism is applied to non literary forms to demonstrate the value of the humanities in increasing our collective ecological consciousness and to show how anthropogenic memorial practices look to the past to care for the future.