Reimagining the Pacific is an AHRC-funded research project at the University of Bristol, which ran from February 2021 to July 2022. The project team included Dr Paul Merchant (PI) and Dr Rebecca Irons (RA).
Coastal communities around the world are facing significant challenges, both ecological (such as rising sea temperatures) and as a consequence of human activity (for instance through flows of migration). Chile and Peru have been identified as two of the countries likely to be most affected by climate change, with their fishing industries vulnerable to rising sea temperatures, and their coastal regions vulnerable to the El Niño phenomenon. This project asks how visual and audiovisual creative responses to these and other issues from Chile and Peru can help us to live well in changing coastal environments across the world.
This website contains blog posts, images and other material documenting the project’s progress. It will continue to be updated with publications and activities relating to the project.
The project aimed to answer three key questions:
- How do creative visual and audiovisual responses to the Pacific Ocean in Chile and Peru reveal neglected local histories and contemporary social and ecological challenges?
- To what extent, and how, do these works circulate and become part of a broader social conversation, locally, nationally and transnationally?
- How can scholars produce (and co-produce) critical engagements with these works that further public understanding of how we can live well in changing coastal environments?
For past events click here.
The project was funded by an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship.
