Robert Macfarlane has shaped today’s environmental humanities through his research, his creative and artistic work, and his role as a mentor. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College and Professor of Literature and Environmental Humanities at the University of Cambridge. His research brings together geography, literature, philosophy, and activism, and his influence has helped shape contemporary discussions of environmental justice, “deep time”, and our responsibilities toward future generations.
Over the past two decades, Macfarlane has written a series of prize-winning and bestselling books. Among these are Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places, The Old Ways, Landmarks, Underland and Is a River Alive?, as well as the book-length prose poem Ness.
His writings have been translated into thirty languages and have to a large extent been adapted into film, music, television, and theatre, often in collaboration with artists, musicians, and filmmakers. This testifies to his role as a central cultural and creative voice in the environmental field. He has also written film scripts, operas, albums, and choral works. Throughout his authorship, Macfarlane has highlighted pressing ecological issues such as the loss of biodiversity, childhood and ecological literacy, cultural memory, and the stories societies tell about more-than-human worlds, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the present day.
While Macfarlane’s appointment honors the entirety of his scholarly and artistic work, his most recent book, Is a River Alive?, resonates in a particularly strong way with the legacy of Arne Næss. The book traces the origins and currents of the modern Rights of Nature movement through a focus on four endangered rivers on four different continents, and argues that rivers should be recognized as living beings – both in law and in our imaginations.
This speaks directly to Næss’s engagement during the Alta protests in 1979, where he took part in non-violent blockades to prevent the damming of the Alta River. The slogan “Let the river live” captured a belief in the river’s intrinsic value, which stands at the heart of Næss’s deep ecological philosophy. Is a River Alive? carries this fundamental perspective forward on a global scale and urges readers to see rivers not as resources, but as life-forces and fellow subjects whose future is inextricably bound up with our own.
Read more about the Arne Næss Programme
Meet Macfarlane in Oslo
September 9: Panel discussion with Erling Kagge, Benedicte Sivertsen, and Karen V. Lykke