Edinburgh Napier University

  Blue Humanities is an underdeveloped subfield within the Environmental Humanities. It focuses on the cultural meanings of water, and incorporates multiple disciplinary strands, including ecology, marine studies, the history of islands and coastlines, and literary scholarship. Within the Scottish context, it has primarily focused on comparative analyses of coastal cultures, but has rarely engaged with the futures of Scottish waters. This project aims to understand the role that arts and humanities perspectives play in envisioning alternative oceanic futures, asking what it means to think, write, and co-exist with water in a time of global political and environmental crises. Beginning with a Blue Humanities Masterclass’ that will conceptualise the critical approaches that the project will take, we will convene three specialist research workshops on fisheries, energy, and coastlines that will form a base for future directions in cultural engagement, policy, and research.