Dr Carina Fearnley

Academic position: Associate Professor in Science and Technology Studies

Biography:

Carina is an interdisciplinary researcher, drawing on relevant expertise in the social sciences on scientific uncertainty, risk, and complexity to focus on how natural hazard early warning systems can be made more effective, specifically alert level systems. She also has interest in the transdisciplinary potential of art and science collaborations around environmental hazards. Carina established the World Organisation of Volcano Observatories Volcano Alert Level Working Group, and edited the first publication dedicated to Volcanic Crisis Communication (Observing the Volcano World: Volcanic Crisis Communication). Carina studied Geology and Mining at Imperial College London prior to working in London City鈥檚 financial sector. She completed her PhD at the 果冻影院 Hazard Research Centre before lecturing at Aberystwyth University. Carina is a regular consultant for Bournemouth University Disaster Management Centre, and frequently appears on national and international media following significant hazard events.

Research Projects:

Mapping the Sound: Charting Deep Time Through New Lenses (2018-current)

GeoHumanities Creative Commissions 2018 grant for collaborators听Anne Bevan (artist,听researcher &听lecturer at University of Highlands and Islands, Department of Art & Design Orkney听College)听and听Dr Carina Fearnley.

This project aims to create 鈥榗ultural maps鈥� from a section of the coastline of Orkney using existing data sets and archives, and new听materials gathered through the AHRC funded project 鈥極rkney: Beside the Ocean of Time鈥�. The cultural maps will develop as three听creative interpretations. First, working with traditional and contemporary printing techniques including using an antique Columbian听Press that was used to publish books of poetry by local authors including Robert Rendall & George Mackay Brown. Second, by听generating digital and online interactive maps; and third, the use of sonification and creative mapping techniques to represent and听integrate large geological, climatic and social datasets. By layering and building multi-disciplinary and multi-media interpretations and expressions, this project explores the aesthetic dimensions of traditional earth science fieldwork mapping听practices, drawing out how this provides opportunities for a form of sensory fieldwork that combines creative/critical methods to听produce an 鈥榚co-biography鈥� of site.

To follow progress please see: @OrkneyDeepTime

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AHRC Grant led by by听Niamh Downing (Principal Investigator), Richard听Irvine (Co-Investigator), Lourdes Lopez-Merino (Co-Investigator), and Anthony Krus (Co-Investigator). The project听aims to generate new understandings of the interrelationship

between human community, Deep Time and landscape change using an interdisciplinary approach, in which five Early Career Researchers with backgrounds in Social Anthropology, Literature, Archaeology, Palaeoecology and Geology, will work together to find innovative ways to investigate and represent time-depth in landscape, using Orkney as a model.

To follow progress please see: @OrkneyDeepTime

Publication: Irvine R, Fearnley C, Downing N, Beaven A. (in press). Time horizon: intersections of deep time and biographical time on the West Shore, Stromness, Orkney. GeoHumanities

Article: 鈥�' in The Conversation ()

Exhibition: Anne Bevan - Walking the Sound at the Pier Art Centre, Stromness, Orkney 22^nd April -10^th June 2017.

Event: Deep Time Festival, at The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness Orkney 21^st-22^ndApril 2017听

AHRC Grant听led by PI Carl Lavery (Performance, Aberystwyth) and fellow co-investigators听Deborah Dixon (Glasgow) and Mark Pendleton (Sheffield). This project combines and science and听performance animated through a pilot study of Hashima Island, Japan 鈥� once the most densely听populated site on Earth, now a wind and wave-swept 鈥榞host island鈥欌€� and emphasises how a听traumatic past, a resilient present, and an always 鈥榤onstrous鈥� future can be renarrativised via an听embodied, affective, site-based fieldwork. Research was conducted in summer 2013.

To follow progress please see: @AHRCFutureRuins.

The project final report is available听:

Publications:

Dixon, D.P., Pendleton, M., & Fearnley C.J. (2016). Engaging Hashima: Memory Work, Site-Based Affects, and the Possibilities of Interruption, GeoHumanities, 2:1, 167-187, (doi: 10.1080/2373566X.2016.1168208)
, , Hassall, L., Pendleton, M., and Fearnley, C. (2016) Return to Battleship Island. In: Shaw, D. B. and Humm, M. (eds.) Radical Space: Exploring Politics and Practice. Series: Radical cultural studies. Rowman and Littlefield: Lanham, pp. 87-108. ISBN 9781783481514

Volcanic听Warning and Response听Systems: an Evaluation of the UK Ash Alert during the Eyjafjallaj枚kull Eruption, 14-20 April 2010听(2013)

After nearly six days of complete closure following renewed explosive activity from Iceland鈥檚 Eyjafjallaj枚kull volcano, UK air space was finally reopened on 20 April 2010. As 鈥榬outine鈥� conditions returned, questions were asked about whether the ban on flying had been necessary or had lasted too long, and whether changes in the UK flying regulations were听justified? The research aims to address these questions by understanding and evaluating the early warning system used during the Eyjafjallaj枚kull ash crisis, which is globally standardised by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), and reviewing ways of improving the warning system for future volcano crises. Image from NASA E/O.听

Provided advice to听designer Nelly Ben Hayoun鈥檚 project 'The Other Volcano' with Austin Houldsworth (explosive designer) and Nick Ballon (photography). 鈥淭he Other Volcano鈥� is听鈥�a series of semi-domesticated volcanoes, housed for a couple of weeks in the living spaces of volunteers. These designed supra-natural objects are large, reaching almost to the ceiling, imposing, and extremely inconvenient, erupting dust and gloop into the living rooms of volunteers seemingly at random.鈥淚n order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life鈥� said Sartre. The Other Volcano imagines a love-hate relationship, a 鈥榮leeping giant鈥� in the听corner of your domestic environment, with the power to provoke excitement with its rumblings, and also perhaps fear (if not for one鈥檚 life in this case, then at least for the soft furnishings of one鈥檚 clean and neat 鈥榣iving鈥� room). It is a project that domesticates the most violent of natural processes, addressing and听reinterpreting different natures鈥�.

Teaching:

Undergraduate:

HPSC0036: Engaging the Public with Science (currently taught)

/module-catalogue/modules/engaging-the-public-with-science-HPSC0036

Postgraduate:

HPSC0093: Science Policy in the Era of Risk and Uncertainty (currently taught) /module-catalogue/modules/science-policy-in-an-era-of-risk-and-uncertainty-HPSC0093