2015
04/15 ‘Policy and critical framings of the “payment for ecosystem services” concept’, opening presentation, for Session 1 PES advocacy and PES talk: who is championing and who is critiquing PES?, PES Workshop, Imperial College 30 April 2015.
03/15 Paper entitled ‘Wild game or soul mates? On humanist naturalism and animist socialism in composing socionatural abundance’, for the conference Landscape, Wilderness and the Wild, Newcastle University, 26-29 March 2015.
2014
12/14 ‘What’s ontology got to do with it? Nature, knowledge and ‘the green economy’, invited keynote paper for the Network for Political Ecology workshop, Oslo.
30th Sept-1st Oct 2014 Invited expert speaker, public dialogue on the National Ecosystem Assessment, Royal Society, London. Talk entitled ‘Ecosystem services and the role of the market: a concerned view’.
08/14‘“Mathematics maybe, but not money”: on nature, numbers and “natural capital”’, Plenary address with Mike Hannis, workshop on Ecological accounts: Making non-human worlds (in)visible during moments of socio-ecological transformation, University of St Andrews.
07/14 ‘(Fragments of) text, sound and corporeality in recording KhoeSan contexts: a preliminary sharing of past and present ethnographic research in Namibia’, invited paper given at a workshop on The Histories and Politics of Audio Archives: trans-disciplinary trajectories of audio recording, audio archives and hearing cultures in South(ern) Africa, held at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Basel.
06/14 What’s ontology got to do with it? Anthropological perspectives on the valuing of nature as a cultural service provider’, invited paper, AHRC-funded environmental philosophy workshop on Natural Environments and Cultural Services, Durham University.
06/14 ‘No Net Loss? Problematising the offsetting of nature’, guest lecture delivered for a session on Biodiversity Offsetting for the third Thor Heyerdahl Summer School on Environmental Governance (held at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Oslo), which had the theme of The Green Economy. Followed by an afternoon’s Roundtable Discussion on ‘The green economy and use of markets’ with key actors in the field of market-based instruments for environmental conservation, namely Guy Duke of the UK’s Environment Bank Ltd, Dr Heidi Wittmer – head of the scientific coordination team and local and regional policy element of the UN and EU programme The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), and Prof. Clive Spash, Vienna University of Economics and Business and editor of the journal Environmental Values.
06/14 Invited Facilitator for panel on ‘New directions in conservation: a closer look at ‘value’ and offsetting’ at the 2nd Forum on Natural Commons, on Challenging Biodiversity Offsetting and the Financialisation of Nature.
03/14 ‘Offsetting nature? Notes on the development of biodiversity offsetting policy in the UK and beyond…’, talk given with Dr Mike Hannis at Gobabeb Research and Training Centre, Namibia.
01/14 ‘The natural capital myth: turning nature into money via forest bonds’, seminar given as part of the Marketising Nature series, Dept. Geography, University of Durham.
2013
12/13 ‘Value struggles in the construction of biodiversity offsetting in England’ given at the third Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value research workshop, University of Manchester.
11/13 ‘The Natural Capital Myth’, invited paper given as part of the seminar series on ‘Economizing Nature’, Dept. for Human Geography, Goethe University, Frankfurt.
06/13 Invited paper given at University of London ‘Southern Africa: History, Culture and Society Seminar Series’ for workshop on Environmental Politics and Change in Southern Africa. Paper entitled ‘Preliminary thoughts on the valorisation of “green uranium” in Africa’.
05/13 Invited speaker for Plenary Panel on ‘Trade-offs in national policies’ at the 7th Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity on ‘Ecology and Economy for a Sustainable Society’, Trondheim, Norway.
05/13 Key participant in second Leverhulme research project workshop on theorising value and case-study connections at University of Manchester.
12/12 Key participant as Co-Investigator for inaugural workshop for Leverhulme Trust funded research project on Human, non-human and environmental value systems: an impossible frontier? (RP2012-V-041). Presentations given on ‘Biodiversity offsets and the making of biodiversity value’ and ‘Towards a typology of (biodiversity) value(s)’.
11/12 Discussant for panel on ‘Resistance to Environmental Interventions’, for the Norwegian Association for Development Research conference Development for a Finite Planet: Grassroots Perspectives and Responses to Climate Change, Resource Extraction and Economic Development. (see blog post https://siansullivan.net/2012/11/28/chess-or-go/#comments)
08/12 Keynote paper entitled ‘Financialisation, biodiversity conservation and equity: some currents and concerns’ given at the 4th Critical Finance Conference, Essex University.
03/12 Invited participant to high-level policy ‘Dialogue Seminar’ on ‘Biodiversity and Finance’, organised by the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and donors, Quito, Ecuador.
02/12 ‘After the green rush? Some distributive implications of new value grabbing in conservation banking markets’, presented at panel on ‘Grabbing ‘Green’: Markets, Environmental Governance and the Materialization of Natural Capital., American Association of Geographers international conference, New York.
2011
11/11 Invited participant and presenter to high-level policy workshop on Markets for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Challenges and Opportunities, Chatham House, London.
11/11 ‘After the green rush? Some distributive implications of new value grabbing in conservation banking markets’, seminar, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester
11/11 My work formed the basis for a Society and Environment Research Group roundtable discussion.
11/11 Trance Namibia? Juxtapositions of music, dance and desire in a desert landscape, presented at Listening for a Change: Environment, Music, Action One-day ethnomusicology conference organised by Angela Impey at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. Programme here.
08/11 Natures was an innovative talk and debate space at the new festivalWilderness in Oxfordshire, held in August 2011 at Cornbury Park (more aristocratic manor than ‘wild’ nature, but aesthetically striking nonetheless). Panel on ‘alternative scientific perspectives’.with environmental philosophers Warwick Fox and Isis Brooks.
06/11 Nature™ Inc? Questioning the Market Panacea in EnvironmentalPolicy and Conservation. Paper entitled ‘Nature on the Move III: (re)countenancing an animate nature’ for panel entitled ‘Nature on the Move’. The film that accompanied my presentation can be viewed here . More on the conference at Bram’s blog, plus Call for papers and the Nature Inc poster.
2010
Cashing in on conservation? Discussant for panel at the American Anthropological Association annual conference, New Orleans, 17-21 November 2010. Papers available here.
09/10 AHRC research network meeting for Spectacular Environmentalisms: Media, Celebrity and the Environment, King’s College London. Presentation given on ‘Spectacular frontiers in environmental conservation’.
05/10 ‘The environmentality of ‘Earth Incorporated’: on contemporary primitive accumulation and the financialisation of environmental conservation’, presented as part of the panel ‘Appropriation for appreciation: exploring the changing nature of neoliberal conservation for Nature-Society interactions’ at the international conference A Brief Environmental History of Neoliberalism, Lund University, Sweden.
02/10 Paper entitled ‘Ecosystem service commodities ~ a new imperial ecology? From ‘carbon earth’ to ‘earth incorporated’’, presented at a workshop on environmental politics organised by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Environment and Society and the Business School at Essex University.
01/10 Key Participant in policy roundtable discussion on Climate Change, Conflict and Vulnerability, organised by the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
11/09 Invited session chair at the conference Deleuze & Activism, Centre for Critical & Cultural Theory, University or Cardiff, and paper presented entitled ‘(Re)activating animism in environmental politics: Deleuze, Guattari, and human/non-human potencies’.
06/09 Paper presented at the Conference Living Landscapes, Aberystwyth University (with Low, C.), entitled ‘Shades of the rainbow serpent: a KhoeSān animal between myth and landscape in Southern Africa’. Accompanying slide/film montage is here: .
02/09 ‘Becoming global (un)civil society: struggles in the global Indymedia network’, presented with A. Spicer at the conference Beyond NGOS: Civil and Uncivil Society in the 21st Century,organised by the Centre for Civil Society, LSE and Civil Society & New Forms of Governance in Europe (CINEFOGO), London.
10/08 Invited to speak on ‘Markets for biodiversity and ecosystems: reframing nature for capitalist expansion?’ in workshop on Rethinking conservation through the lens of food sovereignty: implications for policy and practice’, organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) at the 4th World Park’s Congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Barcelona, 7-12 October.
09/08 Invited session Chair at ESRC-funded Conservation and Capitalism Symposium, School of Public Policy University of Manchester, 9-10 September.
04/08 Invited panelist for session entitled ‘The role of social scientists in critical civic issues’, at the American Museum of Natural History’s Symposium on Sustaining Cultural and Biological Diversity in a Rapidly Changing World: Lessons for Global Policy, New York, April 2-5. Paper presented entitled ‘On bioculturalism and unlearning the creed of growth’.
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