The research groups Place, Power and Monobility and EA:RTH invites to a seminar with Helen Eilson, progessor in cultural geography, Durham University UK. Wilson is a leading researcher on encounterable life and the geographies of difference with a particular focus on contested forms of coexistence. Her current research focuses on the social, cultural and political dimensions of more-than-human cities and the ethical questions and challenges that are posed by species on the move. These questions are explored in depth through her work on urban kittiwakes in the UK and Norway, which examines the growth of seabird colonies in urban areas, the implications for urban planning and community, and how the presence of oceanic species are changing the way that we think about cities, threatened species, and coastal geographies.
At a time when seabird populations have experienced steep declines and the movement of diverse species into cities has become a globally important issue, the talk examines the contested presence of urban kittiwakes. Taking as its starting point the assumption that encounters can bring the ‘lives and deaths linked to human social worlds’ into focus (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010, p. 545), the paper approaches human-seabird encounters through the lens of deterrence. Deployed for vastly different reasons, deterrents – hawking, spikes, nets, gels, bioacoustics, effigies – are not only socially, culturally, and politically situated, but often speak to ambiguities of care and ethical deliberation, where intersecting forms of justice are at stake. The talk makes two points: First, that the practice of deterrence should be approached as a mode of futurity and form of socio-environmental orientation. Second, that the physical entanglements of ‘deterrents’ not only tell us something about the maintenance of spatial boundaries, but the ambivalent ways in which conflict and justice materialise in more-than-human cities and kittiwake research.