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News | 17th April 2024

LSRI announces the Festival of Integral Ecology: a series of global events to be held in 2024–2025

Key Details

Topics:
Catholic Social Teaching
Integral Human Development
Eco-thelogy
Environmental Ethics
Natural Resources
Social Justice
Transdisciplinary Research
Integral Ecology
Land
Water
Region:
Global

The LSRI is delighted to announce our forthcoming Festival of Integral Ecology, a series of events to take place during the academic year 2024–2025.  

These events will be sponsored by the LSRI in partnership with host institutions around the world, including the UK, India, the United States and Mexico. Although reflecting particular geographical, cultural, political and religious contexts, these events will converge on a single research question: 

Each event will present, analyse and debate the following sub-questions: 

  • Can a unified the concept of “integral ecology” be envisaged and deployed in global research contexts?  
  • If so, how might “integral ecology” research take place in different contexts?   
  • What implications must be considered for researchers and communities engaged in “integral ecology” research? 
  • How does the concept of “integral ecology” facilitate a transdisciplinary approach to complex global problems? 

 These events will be of interest to scholars from any disciplinary background who are seeking to develop holistic approaches to academic research on the global socio-ecological crisis. The Festival will be relevant to those in the social sciences (including geography, development, anthropology, sociology and ethnography) and the humanities (including philosophy, law, literature and ecopoetics, theology and religious studies), as well as to natural scientists seeking to adopt transdisciplinary approaches. 

Participation in many events will be available both in-person and online. More information about all events will be published on this website soon. 

  • Event 1 Language, Culture and Integral Ecology in North East India

    When: 30 September – 1 October 2024 
    Where: Guwahati, India 
    Host location:  NEILAC, a centre for research, documentation and revitalisation of endangered languages of North East India 

    This event will consider the links between indigenous languages and ecological knowledge, with special reference to the situation in India. It will examine how integral ecology might enable holistic focus on the link between languages and ecological perceptions, as mediated through different cultural and spiritual practices. The event will bring together a series of early career scholars from the region, enabling dialogue with western academics and epistemological traditions.  

  • Event 2 Integral Ecology: Sustainability and Common Good in Latin America

    When: 12 November 2024 
    Where: Mexico City 
    Host location: Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México; with the support of the Association of Jesuit Universities in Latin America (AUSJAL) 

    This one-day hybrid event is situated within the Laudato Si’ Week of the Jesuit universities in Latin America. Its overall objective is to reflect on the concept of integral ecology and its applications in the region as a framework for academic research and formation, and for practical action. It will analyse from conceptual and empirical perspectives the scope and challenges of integral ecology in Latin America. Some of the questions it will address are:

    - How is Integral Ecology understood in Latin America?

    - What are its implications as conceptual framework for research?

    - What are its implications as a guiding framework for actions in defence of territories?

    - How do different communities incorporate integral ecology into their strategies, practices, and mobilizations?

    Some of the sessions will be live-streamed with English translations.

  • Event 3 Food, Agriculture and Integral Ecology

    When: March 2025 
    Where: Baylor University, Texas 
    Host institution: Baylor University

    This event will explore the intersection of food, hunger, poverty, climate change and integral ecology / agroecology. More information will follow shortly.

  • Event 4 Theology and Integral Ecology: Retrievals, Contributions, Applications

    When: 24-25 April 2025 
    Where: Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford 
    Host institution: LSRI 

    In recent years, integral ecology has been widely adopted as a methodology in the humanities, and in the social and natural sciences. Integral ecology challenges dominant technocratic epistemologies and modes of research. It promotes consideration of voices from communities that have often been marginalised in the western academy. And it facilitates new ways of engaging with the complex and intersecting socio-ecological crises facing global society today.

    What is less well-understood is that this integral ecology paradigm has theological origins and foundations. Via the Catholic social teaching tradition, integral ecology is grounded in an understanding of creation as gift, in an analogical metaphysics, and in a moral philosophy based on ideas of interconnectedness, responsibility and care.

    This conference seeks both to retrieve those foundations and to re-integrate them into the further and applications of the integral ecology paradigm.

    Doing so will offer exciting new horizons for the field of theology and religious studies in the contemporary academic world.  
    The conference will proceed around a series of three key themes:

    • Retrievals: how can we discern the theological origins and foundations of the integral ecology paradigm?
    • Contributions: what do we gain by re-indexing integral ecology to its theological origins and foundations?
    • Applications: how might we begin to apply this to collaborations in the social and natural sciences and other disciplines of the Humanities?

    The event will be held at the Oxford Martin School, in central Oxford.