The Transdisciplinary Sustainability Seminar Series, hosted by Brock’s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre (ESRC), resumes this week with a public talk on event planning and sustainability from celebrated industry professional Natalie Lowe.

Associate Professor Jessica Blythe has organized this year’s series, which is offered in conjunction with the graduate Transdisciplinary Tutorial and Seminar course for master’s students and the Centre’s first cohort of PhD students.

Blythe says the series is meant to “inspire ideas, hope, solutions and optimism in the context of sustainability” among Brock faculty, staff and students as well as the wider community.

“Sustainability is a transdisciplinary field that draws on knowledge from both the academy and from professionals in the field, so we’ve lined up speakers who can help us integrate knowledge from both the research side and the action practitioner, real-world side to advance sustainability,” she says.

Lowe’s session is the first of four this winter covering a wide range of topics:

• Jan. 13— “The road to environmental crisis is paved with good intentions” presented by Natalie Lowe
• Jan. 27— “Geospatial Niagara — A Ten Year Retrospective” presented by Darren Platakis
• Feb. 10 — “Highly sensitive people connect more strongly to nature: what does that mean for sustainability?” presented by Post-doctoral Fellow Jen Holzer
• March 3 — “COVID-19 and community resilience” presented by Associate Professor Livianna Tossutti

Falling on alternating Fridays, the seminars begin at 11 a.m. and run for about one hour. All sessions will be held in a hybrid format, so visitors are welcome to attend in person in RFP 214/215 of the Rankin Family Pavilion or to join online.

“One really unique feature of sustainability science, which I think is embodied in the seminar series, is that it’s solution-oriented,” says Blythe. “All of the presenters will speak to real-world challenges and practical solutions to those challenges.”

She adds that the ultimate goal of the Sustainability Seminar Series, which has been offered by the ESRC since 2014, is to “build capacity for linking knowledge with action” in order to promote sustainability.

“We want to inspire positive change, because the sustainability challenges we face are massive and we need solutions,” says Blythe. “This is an opportunity to hear about solutions, which can inspire other action.”

Previous seminars are also available to view on the ESRC website and on YouTube.