Keynote Presenters

The Spring Symposium is delighted to be joined by two exciting keynote speakers. Both keynotes sessions will be held in hybrid mode and are open to the public. More information about the keynotes, the schedule, and the registration for the keynote events will open in March 2026.
Amber Huff

Amber Huff is an anthropologist and political ecologist based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in the UK, where she is part of the Resource Politics and Environmental Change research group and coordinator of the Centre for Future Natures. She is interested in conservation, the carbon spectacle, commons, autonomous education, the ‘doing’ of science, speculative and spectral fiction, storytelling, and making art, comic books and zines. Her research bridges science, technology and the politics of environmental change, exploring relationships between evolving logics and contested ecologies of crisis, enclosure and ‘repair’; the roles of narrative, knowledge and technology in mediating society-nature relationships at multiple scales, and people’s struggles for free life and just futures. She has led research in Madagascar, Kenya, South Africa, the Southern United States and the United Kingdom and is a member of the Advisory Collective for the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN). She is currently co-leading the REPAiR project, which uses interdisciplinary research, transdisciplinary collaboration and ‘research storytelling’ to understand whether and how context-sensitive and community-engaged approaches to landscape restoration framed in terms of ‘Nature-based Solutions’ can support adaptability and resilience in Southern African rangelands.

Title Title (preliminary): Fictions, Frictions, Fractures: Remaking Nature in Repair Mode

 

Taryn Fuentes Castillo

Dr. Taryn Fuentes Castillo has over 19 years of experience as a conservation scientist focusing on the link between climate change and biodiversity. She received her PhD in 2017 from the Universidad de Chile and has led several research projects and non-profit organizations focused on financing systems for carbon projects in Chile’s native forests.

Title Title (preliminary): From Measurement to Market:
What Carbon Accounting Can—and Cannot—Deliver for Native Forests in the Global South