CLIMATE AND EARTH
SYSTEM SCIENCES
Photo: UHH/Denstorf
20 December 2024
Photo: Can Akin
We are proud to announce the successful disputation of our SICSS member Coral Iris O'Brian.
Her dissertation “Bound by Fire: The Affective Layer of Forest Futures in Flagstaff, Arizona” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Michael Schnegg (UHH, Social and Cultural Anthropology) and Prof. Dr. Simone Rödder (UHH, Sociology).
As more frequent, high-severity wildfires encroach on Flagstaff, Arizona, USA (home to the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in the world), Coral investigated how people experience the changing forest they live in and imagine forest futures. Through ethnographic study, Coral uncovered an unlikely agreement around prescribed burning as a tool to mitigate the effects of severe wildfires, revealing a fragile, joint forest future vision across socio-cultural groups. However, while this agreement in a politically polarized national context was surprising, her ethnography unveiled how people had different explanations for why they supported “returning fire to the land.” Ultimately she proposed that this agreement was possible through the affective circulation of prescribed burning as aligned with the ideology of stewarding the land. Agreement around prescribed burning as a tool of stewardship holds possibilities for spreading perceptions of futural influence in the midst of uncertain and destructive forest futures and precariously bound people together in their joint vision to return fire to the forest.
Coral was a member of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and at the University of Hamburg.
Her future plans?
She is planning to go into environmental consulting, cultural facilitation, and writing.
Coral's published papers: