Faculty of Arts Events Calendar

‘Falling Skies:conversations on ways of being in an era of eco-social catastrophe’
Please join us in this cross-faculty working group which connects a range of disciplines including Literature, History, Philosophy, and Life Sciences.

With the word MOUNTAINS, the third session on Monday 1 December 2025, 5-6pm, FAB4.78 will be led by Dr Thomas Simpson, Reader in Environmental History, who will introduce a short pre-circulated text to open the conversation. Here’s a brief description of the text chosen by Dr Simpson for the session:

Nan Shepherd (1893-1981) was a Scottish writer and lecturer at the Aberdeen College of Education. The Living Mountain was published in 1977, some three decades after its composition. Championed by a recent generation of nature writers including Robert Macfarlane and reissued in multiple editions, it has in the past fifteen years reached a far wider readership than before. Shepherd takes seriously the aspiration of the Falling Skies research group to attend to 'the animatedness of words', and her book offers what I hope will be productive provocations on knowing and being among the rocks, flora, fauna, and airs of the Cairngorm mountains.

Please sign up here to attend as seats are limited. We hope to see many of you there!

Best,

Paola Sanges Ghetti (SMLC)

Dr Michela Coletta (SMLC)