The Interdisciplinary Environmental Association and the Urban Environmental Studies Program at Birmingham-Southern College invite you to attend the 27th International Interdisciplinary Conference on the Environmental (IICE) from Thursday, October 6 – Friday, October 7, 2022. The 27th IICE will take place entirely online and will include individual research sessions, panel discussions, a keynote presentation, virtual exposition booths, and a virtual pre-conference reception on Wednesday, October 5th, 2022. View Conference Program and Register on Hopin.
Topics will also focus on environmental justice which holds deep roots in the American South. As the 2022 conference host city, Birmingham developed as a planned industrial city in the 1870s. Experiencing a tumultuous 1960s Civil Rights Era, Birmingham moved into the 1970s facing deindustrialization and globalization resulting in extreme unemployment and abandonment as well as a legacy of environmental pollution. Today, as a midsize metropolitan area of around one million, Birmingham redeveloped around a health-based economy while modernizing regional manufacturing and assemblage centers.
Our keynote speaker is American Environmental Activist Lois Gibbs, who as a result of her work at Love Canal, a 20,000-ton, toxic-chemical dump in Niagara Falls, New York, in December 1980 President Carter signed new federal legislation called the Superfund to address the thousands of other toxic sites across the nation. Lois is often referred to as the mother of Superfund and has been recognized extensively for her critical role in the grassroots environmental health and justice movement.
Dr. Bill Holt, Associate Professor of the Urban Environmental Studies Program at BSC will give a presentation dedicated to local and regional environmental issues in Birmingham, Alabama. To showcase local as well as American South environmental issues, UES partners every year with the Alabama Rivers Alliance (ARA) for the screening of Southern Exposures, a short documentary film series focusing on environmental and social justice issues in Alabama. The 2022 film will be screened at this year's conference. During the IICE a GIS Workshop and special guest talks from both the environmental industry and nonprofit sector will be available to all attendees as well as various networking opportunities to meet scholars, students, and motivated stakeholders that make up the expansive field of environmental science and interdisciplinary studies.
The 27th IICE will broadly focus on the theme of living in the Anthropocene and the challenges that societies face in doing so. Topics that may be addressed include global environmental issues such as climate change, conservation and management of natural resources, pollution and waste, broad-scale sustainability, public health, urban environmental studies, civil and human rights as they pertain to environmental justice, the close connection between Indigenous people and the environment, and other topics that address environmental issues in general.
Abstract submission should be sent to BirminghamIICE@gmail.com by September 5th, 2022. All abstracts can be revised until September 20, 2022. Abstracts should be 400 words or less and include a title, a list of authors with affiliations, and a summary of the presentation. Please provide results as opposed to saying results will be discussed. Please indicate: 1) whether you want to give an oral presentation or poster, 2) a potential session based on the topics listed above or suggest one if your presentation falls outside of those listed, and 3) if you consider yourself an academic, researcher/practitioner, student, or stakeholder. A full conference program will be available at the beginning of September.
The aim and scope of this conference is to bring together academia, researchers, stakeholders, and students who have an interest in approaching environmental issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, which for instance may involve ecological, economic, or societal concerns, among others. Our goal is to facilitate the exchange of information among people from different countries and disciplinary backgrounds so that participants can listen, discuss, and consider new concepts to implement in their area of study or geographic region. We believe that a cross-discipline and cross-boundary exchange is not only beneficial but essential if we are to address the complex, multifaceted environmental issues of the present and the future.
Sponsorship & Endorsement of the 27th IICE
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