ESI Challenge of the Month
Professor Ilya Maclean (Applied Ecologist at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation), has taken up the ESI Challenge of the Month for January 2025.
Relevant research (to be updated throughout this month):
Prof Ilya Maclean will deliver the ESI Challenge of the Month talk "The art and science of prediction" on Monday 27 January 1 - 2pm in the ESI Trevithick Room.
With an urgent need to reverse the rapid destruction of the biodiversity and ecosystems upon which humans depend, it is often useful to make accurate forecasts to enable targeted and timely interventions. In this month's challenge, I delve into the question of whether - and how - researchers make predictions about the impacts of environmental change. I contend that while most predictions are wrong, some are useful and the central challenge, then, is to make them less wrong and more useful. Using species responses to climate change as a case study, I demonstrate how integrating physics, biology, socio-economics and comedy can enhance the accuracy, utility and memorability of predictions. Along the way, I question some prevailing paradigms about how predictions are typically made and will also cover our recent contribution to a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society dedicated to ‘Recovering nature’ in commemoration of the life and work of the brilliant Georgina Mace. Georgina was Editor-in-Chief of this journal from 2008 until 2010 and was the first female Editor-in-Chief of a Royal Society journal. You can read about our work here and more of papers dedicated to her legacy here.
#esiChallengeOfTheMonth
If you would like a MS Teams link to attend this hybrid event, please email esidirector@exeter.ac.uk.
Please note: We are rebranding the “ESI State of The Art” talks to “ESI Challenge of the Month.” In the former, the talks were focussed around the speaker’s career. For the Challenge of the month, we now hope to put the emphasis on the broader environmental challenge that is being tackled through their research.
Previous challenges
Dr Jamie Hampson, Associate Professor in the History department, Humanities and Social Sciences, Cornwall, took up the ESI Challenge of the Month for November 2024.
Click here to view his profile page.
Relevant research:
An internationally known scholar of Indigenous heritage, rock art, and symbolism, Dr Hampson has documented and analysed more than 1600 rock art sites in southern Africa, Australia, the Americas, India, and Europe. He has published the following books on Rock Art:
- Hampson, J., Goldhahn, J., & Challis, S. (2022). Powerful pictures: Rock art research histories around the world. Archaeopress.
- Hampson, J., & Rozwadowski, A. (2021). Visual Culture, Heritage and Identity: Using Rock Art to Reconnect Past and Present. Archaeopress.
- Hampson, J. (2016). Rock art and regional identity: a comparative perspective. Routledge. [First edition published in 2015; paperback published in 2021.]
Since 1999, Jamie has delivered more than one hundred conference papers, and organised three major conferences that span history, heritage studies, environmental humanities, archaeology, and anthropology. Some of his recent papers:
- Hampson, J., Iriarte, J., & Aceituno, F. J. (2024). 'A World of Knowledge': Rock Art, Ritual, and Indigenous Belief at Serranía De La Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon. Arts, 13(4), 135.
Read the University press release here. This was also featured in the Newsweek. - Robinson, M., Hampson, J., Osborn, J., Aceituno, F. J., Morcote-Ríos, G., Ziegler, M. J., & Iriarte, J. (2024). Animals of the Serranía de la Lindosa: Exploring representation and categorisation in the rock art and zooarchaeological remains of the Colombian Amazon. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 75, 101613.
- Hampson, J. & Challis, S. Cultures of appropriation: rock art ownership, Indigenous intellectual property, and decolonisation. In: Moro Abadia, Conkey, & McDonald (eds), Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization: Understanding Rock Art in the 21st Century, 275–288. New York: Springer.
Dr Hampson's three large interdisciplinary research grants (£1.3 million in total) were and are supported by Indigenous groups and government bodies, and they continue to have international impact. Here is a recent grant award:
- Dr Jamie Hampson has been awarded £225,000 as a Co-PI with physicist Dr Tessa Charles (University of Liverpool/ Australian Synchrotron) and archaeologist Dr Courtney Nimura (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) on a UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council interdisciplinary project.
NoMAD (Non-destructive Mobile Analysis and imaging Device) draws on technology developed for particle accelerators to bring scientific analysis techniques to Indigenous rock art and other remote heritage sites. The project focuses on rock art – a crucial part of our shared global cultural heritage – and the design and development of a portable particle accelerator. This project is a world-first, revolutionary in the fields of physics and cultural heritage management.
Dr Jamie Hampson delivered the ESI Challenge of the Month talk "Images of power: why should we care about Indigenous rock art?" on Monday 25 November 1 - 2pm in the ESI Trevithick Room.
Sacred Indigenous rock paintings and engravings are found in different landscapes in almost every country around the world. Some motifs are at least 75,000 years old; some were painted yesterday.
We do not always know exactly what the rock imagery means, but thanks to intertwining strands of evidence we do know a great deal – especially in regions where the descendants of the original artists still survive. Indeed, rock art motifs were – and often still are – ‘powerful things in themselves’, and an integral part of sacred Indigenous heritage. Tragically, however, rock art in some parts of the world is threatened by industrial development and climate change.
In this talk, I draw from 25 years of archaeological and anthropological fieldwork in southern Africa, the Americas, and Australia.
#esiChallengeOfTheMonth
