Professor of Theatre
Themes: Greener futures, Reducing health inequalities
Expertise: Environmental arts, Indigenous climate activism, postcolonial ecocriticism, environmental justice
Helen Gilbert researches environmental activism in the creative arts in Australia, Canada and the Pacific, particularly in Indigenous and other marginalised communities. She has curated a major London exhibition on the theme of Indigenous arts and sustainability and recently contributed to a group exhibition on humanities research and climate change, organised the Rachel Carson Center in Munich in conjunction with COP26.
She is now developing a new international project that will study water-related eco-activism over the last three decades, particularly in marginalised communities. The project aims to advance knowledge of the crucial, global role live arts have already played, and could play in the future, in spurring civic and political action to protect marine and freshwater ecosystems across the world. Helen is on the advisory board of FOGGS (Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability) a UN-related ‘think-and-do’ tank, based on Brussels, and is also involved in environmentally focused research projects at Yale (USA) and the University of Victoria in Canada.