David Farrier

David Farrier is professor of Literature and the Environment at the University of Edinburgh and is responsible for convening the work sessions of the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network, a multidisciplinary group consisting of several researchers who, from the humanities, aim to offer responses to the current environmental crises. Before moving to Scotland, he was a lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at Leicester University.

His research interests are focused on how literature, and especially poetry, responds to the challenges posed by the Anthropocene, as shown in his most recent publications, Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction (Minnesota Press, 2019), a study of contemporary environmental poetry, and Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils (Straus & Giroux, 2020), which combines literature, science, history, ecology, and philosophy to reflect on the future of the planet and the transformation of its ecosystems. Published in Spanish as Huellas. El mundo que dejaremos atrás (Crítica, 2021), the book explores the question of which traces left by today’s societies will endure in the distant future. Huellas, which has been translated into nine languages, received the Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award. At present he is working on a book on human evolution titled At Evolution’s Edge: What Nature Can Teach Us About Life on a Human Planet (Canongate, 2027).