Integrating the arts into climate research

Dr. Katherine Richardson has been in, on, or near to the sea all her life! A Professor in Biological Oceanography with the University of Copenhagen, Katherine’s scientific career spans meticulous studies of the smallest parts of the sea and carbon cycles in the world’s oceans to studies of biodiversity and interactions between humans, plants, animals, and climate. Her research focuses on the importance of biological processes in the ocean for the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere, and how ocean biology, including diversity, contributes to ocean function in the Earth System. 

a rawlings is a mineral, plant, animal, person, place, or thing. Also known as Dr. Angela Rawlings, they are a Canadian-Icelandic interdisciplinary artist-researcher who works with languages as dominant exploratory material. Their practice seeks and interrogates relationality between bodies—be they human, more-than-human, other-than, non. Meditating on languages as inescapable lenses of human engagement, rawlings’ methods over the past twenty years have included sensorial poetries, vocal and contact improvisation, theatre of the rural, and conversations with landscapes.  

rawlings has an extensive solo and group performance and exhibition background. They have performed throughout North America, Europe, and Australia at festivals including Roskilde Festival (Denmark), Oslo International Poetry Festival (Norway), and Tectonics Music Festival (Iceland, Scotland). Their work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Dedee Shattuck Gallery (USA), Hafnarborg (Iceland), Hanstholm Fyr (Denmark), and Kunsthall Trondheim (Norway). 

rawlings’ books include Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), Gibber (online, 2012), o w n (CUE BOOKS, 2015), si tu (MaMa Multimedijalni Institut, 2017), Sound of Mull (Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 2019). Their book Wide slumber was adapted to music theatre by Valgeir Sigurðsson and VaVaVoom (2014). Their libretti include Bodiless (for Gabrielle Herbst, 2014) and Longitude (for Davíð Brynjar Franzson, 2014). rawlings’ Áfall / Trauma was shortlisted for the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Playwrights (2013).

rawlings received their PhD from the University of Glasgow where they researched how to perform geochronology in the Anthropocene. In 2021-22, they are researching becoming-with whales in the climate crisis as a postdoctoral fellow with H.M. Queen Margrethe’s and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir’s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society. rawlings also teaches at the Iceland University of the Arts in the MFA for Performing Arts and MA in Music (New Audiences and Innovative Practices). rawlings loves in Iceland.