CPCS events for Michaelmas term 2026-2027 (details, eligibility and booking information below):
- Reading Group; Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield by Ariadne Collins, 9 November
- Film; Dacia, vita mia – Dialoghi giapponesi (2025, Dir. Izumi Chiaraluce), 10 December
Open to ALL CPCS STAFF & PHD AFFILIATES
🎥 CPCS Goes to the Cinema
Note: Book your own ticket and email Jaremey/CPCS Director that you’re going, and he’ll put attendees in touch with each other to meet up before or after the film.
Dacia, vita mia – Dialoghi giapponesi (2025, Dir. Izumi Chiaraluce)
10 December 2026, 17:30
Italian Cultural Institute (Italy House, 20–22 East London St, Edinburgh)
Free entry but booking required. Email [email protected] for info and to reserve a seat.
A film recalling writer Dacia Maraini’s childhood in Kyoto during WWII, when her family was interned after refusing loyalty to the Republic of Salò. In Italian with English subtitles.
Open to CPCs STAFF & PHD AFFILIATES
📖 Next Reading Group Session:
Introduction & Chapter 1 in Yolanda Ariadne Collins (2026) Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield (University of California Press)
Monday 9 November (Week 9) 2026, 4–5:30pm
Check email for more details and to register.
Full text e-book available via the Library.
Forests of Refuge questions the effectiveness of market-based policies that govern forests in the interest of mitigating climate change. Yolanda Ariadne Collins (Core Affiliate) interrogates the most ambitious global plan to incentivize people away from deforesting activities: the United Nations-endorsed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative. Forests of Refuge explores REDD+ in Guyana and neighboring Suriname, two highly forested countries in the Amazonian Guiana Shield with low deforestation rates. Yet REDD+ implementation there has been fraught with challenges. Adopting a multisited ethnographic approach, Forests of Refuge takes readers into the halls of policymaking, into conservation development organizations, and into forest-dependent communities most affected by environmental policies and exploitative colonial histories. This book situates these challenges in the inattentiveness of global environmental policies to roughly five hundred years of colonial histories that positioned the forests as places of refuge and resistance. It advocates that the fruits of these oppressive histories be reckoned with through processes of decolonization.