2025 Layton Dialogue - Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

In honour of Emeritus Professor Bob Layton

The annual Robert Layton Lecture celebrates what anthropology can bring to understanding human life past, present and future by integrating or juxtaposing methods, questions and areas of enquiry across its sub-fields. Named in honour of Prof. Robert Layton FBA, Prof Layton has exemplified the integration of multiple anthropological perspectives in his wide-ranging research interests. He has played a vital role in shaping the Department to reflect that interdisciplinary ethos.

Event details

Indigenous forms of knowledge and engagement with the environment have become a hot topic in international scientific and activist circles that are increasingly grappling with the threats posed by climate change. It is argued that Indigenous philosophies foreground ancestral links to the land, a sense of belonging, responsibility for sustaining environments, rootedness, kinship and reciprocity. In contrast, Western views separate and objectify nature and have been influenced by religious traditions supposedly giving humans “dominion” over the land. Consequently, humanity’s place is often conceived as a dominant force, an idea underpinning colonial usurpation of Indigenous lands around the world under the banner of “progress”. The 2025 Layton Dialogue will examine and problematise these dichotomies focusing particularly on indigenous use of fire, acknowledging that different forms of environmental relationships are key to achieving sustainable and equitable solutions to current climate crises and sustainable land use.

Speakers:

 Prof. Middleton Manning is Designated Emphasis Chair in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California Davis. She will be an IAS Fellow in Michaelmas 2025. Her research focuses on Native environmental policy and activism, with particular interest in environmental and climate justice, fire control, Indian land rights and intergenerational trauma.

Prof. Jay Mistry is Professor of Environmental Geography and Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires at Royal Holloway. Her research explores the integration of Indigenous knowledge in environmental governance with a particular interest in fire management and land protection in South America.

Discussant

Dr. Penelope Anthias (Geography, Durham). Dr. Anthias studies the intersections between indigeneity, territory and the politics of resource extraction in Latin America. Her work engages with Indigenous and other racialized rural peoples not only as resources of empirical knowledge but as producers of ‘geographical theory’.

More information

For more information about the event, please contact Kate Payne (kate.payne@durham.ac.uk)