Rivers, rights and masculinities - a conversation with Martin Hultman

Swedish climate academic Martin Hultman was in Cambridge on Saturday 30th September and Sunday 1st October, during which time we had an informal discussion and a walk along the river Cam. Martin was also interviewed by the Cambridge Independent in a piece: Masculinity 'weaponised' by the far right says Swedish academic ahead of Cambridge talk.

Are dominant industrial breadwinner & ecomodern forms of masculinities harming our rivers, nature and our planet? This is a question that has absorbed Martin Hultman for the past decades. He has critically analysed the climate denialism which emerges from such alpha-male thinking, and has now turned his research and creative attentions to how to encourage men to engage with relational practice in which other human beings and other nature are rights-bearing subjects, upholding life as we know it. He has recently been awarded several research grants to study nature and river rights. Martin will make a short presentation of his work and will engage in an informal conversation with participants. 

Martin Hultman is head of the global research network Center for Studies of Climate Change Denial (CEFORCED) at Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden, and is part of the management team for the international research project Empower All. He is the principle investigator on the research project ”Whose Body of Water? Rights of Nature as Environmental Guardianship for Sweden”which focuses on Lake Vättern. This asks how the situation for Lake Vättern would change if the lake had its own rights realised and how this recognition could ensure its survival as a valuable ecosystem and contribute to sustainable water management?