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Living with Wildfire: Imagining, Narrating and Acting upon a Changing Climate
Wednesday 9th September 2026, 15:00-16:00 BST (UTC+1)
MS Teams/ KCL Melbourne House 6th Floor boardroom (for Centre/ KCL members)
Title: Living with Wildfire: Imagining, Narrating and Acting upon a Changing Climate
Speaker: Ayşem Mert, Stockholm University
Abstract
What happens when climate change is no longer experienced primarily as a future threat, but as a catastrophic event that has already transformed the places in which people live? The Living with Wildfire (LiFi) project examines how experiences of extreme wildfire events reshape the ways communities imagine, narrate and act upon their environmental relations and futures. It explores both the traumatic dimensions of wildfire, including grief, anxiety, loss and dislocation, and its potential to transform collective imaginaries, political agency and forms of community organisation.
In this seminar, Ayşem Mert presents two connected papers from the project. Firescapes: Confronting a Burning Planet and Its Many Tragic Possibilities develops the concept of the firescape across four case studies to examine what catastrophic fire makes people see, feel and think about a changing climate. It asks what is illuminated, unsettled, broken or lost through experiences of fire, and what new attachments, collective bonds and visions of livable futures emerge in their aftermath. Fragmented Solidarities: Post-wildfire Dislocation, Adaptation, and Anticipation in Muğla, Turkey focuses on the 2021 wildfires in southwestern Turkey and examines how climate-induced dislocation shapes the emotional and anticipatory trajectories through which communities negotiate recurring wildfire risk in a politically polarised context. Together, the papers approach wildfire as a socio-political disruption that can reshape environmental relations, collective attachments and understandings of possible futures.
Speaker Bio
Ayşem Mert is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University. Her research focuses on discourses of democracy and environment at transnational and global levels, public-private cooperation in environmental governance, and critical approaches to the Anthropocene. She uses psychoanalytic and interpretive approaches, particularly political discourse theory and critical fantasy studies, and collaborates with artists and stakeholders in transdisciplinary projects. Her work draws on political theory and philosophy to understand global environmental governance and changing perceptions of naturecultures.
Leverhulme Wildfires Guest Seminars
The seminar is organised by the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society Each guest seminar involves 30-40min of a guest speaker presentation, followed by opportunity for Q&A and discussion.
Some of our past webinars can be viewed on our youtube channel.
The Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society is a collaboration between Imperial College London, King’s College London, Royal Holloway, and the University of Reading.
Any queries, please contact wildfire@imperial.ac.uk
