Dr Anna Pigott

My main teaching responsibilities are currently divided between co-ordinating the third year dissertation module (GEG331/2) and a second year module on the Geographies of Climate Action and Activism (GEG273). I also contribute to Masters modules on Climate Science and Policy, Qualitative Research Methods, and Climate Change: Past, Present and Future. I am a tutor to 1^st year and 2^nd year undergraduate students, and supervise one PhD student.

I was awarded fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2023 and I actively engage with issues of colonialism, racism, environmental justice, and ecological distress as part of my teaching.

I have also given guest lectures for undergraduate and masters students at the University of Wales Trinity St Davids and the College of the Atlantic in Maine, USA.

My research interests are broad but consistently seek to understand the ways in which environmental crises are framed, and how these framings influence responses and action. Themes include:

• Understanding how human environment relations are imagined and how they might be imagined otherwise.
• Reconceptualising the roles of art and creativity in responses to environmental crises
• Creating new frameworks and imaginaries for understanding social change, climate activism, and living well.
• Participating in and developing novel pedagogies for the climate crisis, by equipping staff and students with the emotional and practical capacities they need to respond to this changing world.
• Exploring the ways in which trees are enrolled in the climate crisis. I am particularly interested in mass planting projects, and the kinds of ‘tree cultures’ associated with these – for example, how trees are being narrated, imagined, and related to amidst concerted efforts to avert catastrophic climate change.

Research for my recent co-edited book, ‘Art and Creativity in an Era of Ecocide’ (Bloomsbury, 2023) was supported in part by an ESRC Early Career Research Fellowship (2018-19).

In 2021 I co-founded the Climate Lab project (https://climatelab.swansea.ac.uk/) for climate researchers, a project which aims to alleviate the mental health impacts of doing climate research in a university environment, and catalyse more effective action.

I have presented my work in the USA, Spain, The Netherlands, Norway, Estonia, and across the UK. In 2016 I was a visiting researcher at the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative, Arizona State University, USA for three months.

• October 2018 Awarded an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship (value of grant £122,000)
•  February 2016 Awarded a competitive grant from the Wales ESRC DTC (£4000) to undertake an Overseas Institional Visit at the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative, Arizona State University, USA (Three months)
• June 2015 Awarded a grant (£700) from the Waterloo Foundation to present a paper at the Nordic Geographers Meet 2015
• February 2014 Awarded first prize for poster presentation of PhD research in Swansea University's Academic Poster Competition
• October 2012 Highly Commended MSc thesis 'Visiting the National Botanic Garden of Wales: inspiration for 'greener' living?'
• July 2007 Awarded William Vaughan Lewis prize for outstanding undergraduate dissertation 'Recent Ground Deformation at Mt Etna Volcano'

I am currently co-editing a book entitled ‘Rethinking creativity in an era of ecocide’ (Emerald Publishers, due 2021) with Professor Owain Jones and Dr Ben Parry (Bath Spa University)