21DISCIPLINEHOP - NERC Discipline Hopping - Narrative Approaches

The natural environment comprises interacting complex systems. These, combined with human actions, create our highly complicated world. Environmental challenges arising within that world require us to tease out stories that allow us to understand and communicate the problems, develop solutions, and chart pathways to the future.
Prof. Richard Walsh (English and Related Literature) explains that “ensuring these stories adequately capture complex reality is difficult because narrative form and systemic complexity are fundamentally at odds”. This proposal facilitates interdisciplinary working via ‘narrative theory’ (an approach originating in literary studies), which allows us to incorporate critical awareness of the limitations of stories into our communicative strategies. In addition to Prof. Walsh, the project team also includes Prof. Lindsay Stringer (Environment and Geography) and Prof. Jon Pitchford (Mathematics and Biology) and brings together key University of York interdisciplinary research centres including Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, The Interdisciplinary Centre for Narrative Studies, and York Cross-disciplinary Centre for Systems Analysis.