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Sarah Bezan

 

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Deparment of English and Related Literature

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Sarah joined The University of York's Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity and Department of English and Related Literature at University of York in 2020 as Postdoctoral Research Associate in Perceptions of Biodiversity Change, where she examines the global impact of species extinction. From 2018-2020, she held a British Academy Newton International Fellowship at The University of Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre. Here, she researched shifting cultural understandings of extinction as imagined by 21st century storytellers, artists, and scientific illustrators. This project was inspired by a paleodig expedition she undertook in 2016 that was operated by the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre, located on Treaty 1 territory, the home of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. During this paleodig, Sarah unearthed the bones of an 80 million year old mosasaur (known as the ‘T-Rex of the Sea’), and became fascinated with the cross-pollination of the arts and sciences in the creative representation of extinct species.

Continuing her work in the emerging field of extinction studies, Sarah’s current research focuses on the entangled social and ecological dimensions of species loss and revival in contemporary British and settler colonial literature and visual culture. She serves as founder and co-convenor of the Cultures of Species Revivalism Research Group, an interdisciplinary research network dedicated to examining approaches to de-extinction science: the prospect of resurrecting extinct species through gene editing, selective breeding, and reproductive cloning technologies. In addition, Sarah is a founding member of the UK Future Earth Early Career and Research Practitioner Network at Kings College London, a research associate with the Digital Animalities Project at York University (Canada), and a former visiting fellow of the Rachel Carson Centre for the Environment. From 2020-2022, she is PI and Co-PI on two British Academy/Royal Irish Academy seed funding grants related to coastal (post)humanities and speculative Anthropocenes.

Contact us

Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre

igdc@york.ac.uk
01904 323716
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK
Twitter

Sarah Bezan
sarah.bezan@york.ac.uk

Sarah Bezan

sarah.bezan@york.ac.uk

Contact us

Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre

igdc@york.ac.uk
01904 323716
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD, UK
Twitter

Sarah Bezan
sarah.bezan@york.ac.uk