Venue: Media Screening Room, Media Building, Keele University, ST5 5BG, UK
‘Storytelling for Environmental Change’ (pollutionstories.org) and Keele Institute for Sustainable Futures invite you to a screening and roundtable examining environmental storytelling. The event will involve screening of three exciting new short documentaries presenting marginalised voices and overlooked perspectives on the urgent issue of air pollution in New Delhi. This will be followed by a roundtable examining the theme of ‘Environmental Storytelling for Just Transitions’ from the perspective of different disciplines and stakeholders. The roundtable will include contributions from Dr Ksenija Kuzmina (Loughborough University), Dr Ben Anderson (Keele University) and other expert practitioners.
The ‘Storytelling for Environmental Change’ project is led by Dr Pawas Bisht (Keele University, UK) and includes Dr Eva Giraud (University of Sheffield, UK), Dr Sabina Kidwai and Dr Sudeshna Devi (Jamia Millia Islamia, India).
The project is funded by the British Academy’s Humanities and Social Sciences’ Tackling Global Challenges Programme, supported under the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund.
Dr Pawas Bisht is a Senior Lecturer in Media, Communications and Culture, Deputy Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures, and Programme Director for the MA Global Media programmes at Keele University. He is an experienced media researcher and documentary filmmaker and has previously worked for leading institutions in the UK (Loughborough and Leicester) and India (AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia). His research focuses on media and cultural politics in relation to environmental activism, cultural memory, and public mobilisations of documentary storytelling. Pawas is currently leading ‘Storytelling for Environmental Change’, a two-year research project (2021-2023) that mobilises environmental storytelling to tackle the catastrophic challenge of urban air pollution confronting India (funded by the British Academy's Humanities and Social Sciences’ Tackling Global Challenges Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund). His earlier ethnographic research on social movements and memory-work in relation to the Bhopal Gas Disaster has been published in leading journals including Media, Culture & Society and Contemporary South Asia.
His films have been shown on Channel 4 (UK), CNBC, and Doordarshan (India’s national public service broadcaster) as well as in art venues in UK, India, US, and Europe. They include work commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme and the Global Environment Facility. Recently produced films include 'Back to the Drawing Board' (2017), a portrait of the British designers Pat Albeck and Peter Rice, ‘Memory Archipelago’ (2018), an examination of the politics of Gulag memory on the Solovetsky Islands in Russia’s Far North, and ‘(Not) Acting Our Age’ (2019), examining ageing, theatre and creativity.
Pawas is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.
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