Biography
Arcadia Davies is a graduate student at the Yale School of the Environment. She is dedicated to environmental work that integrates the arts, traditional ecological knowledge, and modern science. In both her leisure time and her work she prioritizes art, social theory, creative writing, collaboration, and being outside.
Paper Abstract
For thousands of years humans learned about the world and their relationship to it through stories, art, and songs – but, in mainstream climate change solutions these ways of observing and understanding the world have largely been excluded, while technology, efficiency, and economic growth continue to be priorities. Current climate change solutions brush past important questions like: “What does a more environmentally compassionate future look like?” and “What are the deeply ingrained cultural paradigms that influence our environmental relationships and behaviors?” My research “Folklore and Conservation: Understanding Human’s Relationships to the Environment” interrogates these questions through the exploration of folkloric traditions in Ireland. My work investigates how changing folklore traditions are shifting people’s relationships to the natural environments. Using scholarly works and original qualitative interviews, I explore traditional and contemporary examples of folklore and investigate the role that the humanities can play in approaching climate change solutions.