The contributors to Reactivating Elements examine chemicals as they mix with soil, air, water, and fire to shape Earth’s troubled ecologies today. They invoke the elements with all their ambivalences as chemical categories, material substances, social forms, forces and energies, cosmological entities, and epistemic objects. Engaging with the nonlinear historical significance of elemental thought across fields—chemistry, the biosciences, engineering, physics, science and technology studies, the environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and cultural studies—the contributors examine the relationship between chemistry and ecology, probe the logics that render wind as energy, excavate affective histories of ubiquitous substances such as plastics and radioactive elements, and chart the damage wrought by petrochemical industrialization.

Warwick University is sending a delegation which includes WESIC co-directors Alice Mah and Jessica Savage to the COP26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow during November. The group will act as observers to the negotiations and interact with policy makers and business leaders. Attendance will support research and teaching related to climate change within the University. WESIC will host an event in early 2022 to discuss the implications of COP26 for environmental researchers at Warwick.

Press release (20 October 2021)