A lecture by Dr Pablo Fernández Velasco of the University of Stirling, exploring ecological grief and its implications for identity transformation, will take place via Zoom. In his presentation, Dr Fernández Velasco will examine what a disruption in the process of grieving for a destroyed living environment means for the transformation of the identity of those experiencing ecological loss.
Ecological grief refers to the experience of loss arising from the destruction of one’s own living environment. This topic has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in psychology, geography, and anthropology, as part of a broader interdisciplinary effort to understand the emotional dimensions of the climate crisis.
A recent phenomenological analysis of cross-cultural subjective reports has led to the conceptualisation of ecological grief as a crisis of dwelling – a disruption of the very way in which we inhabit our living environment (Fernandez Velasco, 2025). Building on this approach, Dr Fernández Velasco will connect ecological grief with the study of grief as a transformative experience (Markovic, 2023).
Transformative experiences are those that radically change the person who undergoes them, both epistemically and personally (Paul, 2014). In the context of grief, particular attention is given to transformative experiences that are not chosen (Carel & Kidd, 2020). Drawing on the conceptual distinction between transformative discoveries and transformative activities (Callard, 2020), Jelena Markovic (2023) argues that much of the grieving process involves active engagement.
In the case of ecological grief, however, a significant part of the grieving process may become “frozen” due to the uncertainty surrounding the loss and its ongoing development (Boss, 2010; Fernandez Velasco and Gleizer, 2025). The implications of this disruption for identity transformation will be at the centre of Dr Fernández Velasco’s lecture.
Pablo Fernández Velasco is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Place and Memory at the University of Stirling, as well as an Associate Member of the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience at University College London. His research focuses on the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, with a significant part of his work grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration.