Jennifer Atkinson speaks to international audiences on climate change and mental health

IAS faculty member Jennifer Atkinson spoke to audiences in the U.S., Germany, and Canada as part of a 2020 speaking series on climate change and mental health. Her talks were featured at the Festival of Live Digital Art in Toronto, the Aspen Institute's Future Leaders Climate Summit, the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, the City of Bellevue's virtual Earth Day event, and Edmonds Community College's 2020 Triton Talk series. Atkinson's presentations highlighted the psychological toll of climate change and explored why scholarly engagement with the affective consequences of ecological loss will be key to addressing this existential threat.

Atkinson's speaking series is part of a larger project on climate anxiety she launched in 2020, including an international conference and workshop for climate justice educators sponsored by the Rachel Carson Center, and a podcast on climate grief hosted by Atkinson, which explores ways to harness climate despair to activate meaningful solutions to our crisis.