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Papers by Alison Neilson
MARE Publication Series, 2014
The Journal of Environmental Education, 2021
The global COVID-19 public health crisis has driven policies of lockdowns and social distancing t... more The global COVID-19 public health crisis has driven policies of lockdowns and social distancing that have had negative social and economic impacts, worsening inequalities and social exclusions, and mixed environmental impacts. This study engaged children from schools with diverse environmental pedagogies in online focus groups about nature and their experiences with nature during the pandemic. Participants expressed fear of the unknown virus, sadness from isolation, longing for family and friends, and yearning for the freedom to enjoy the outside world. They revealed knowledge of both positive and negative impacts of lockdowns on the environment. Their experiences with nature demonstrate how environmental injustice affects the lives of children from public schools in urban contexts, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who reported less contact with nature during the lockdown. As a group, children are aware and very critical of intergenerational environmental injustice and argue for the need for adults to act.
Disrupting Privilege, Identity, and Meaning
Disrupting Privilige, Identity, and Meaning
Learning for sustainability in times of accelerating change, 2012
Learning for sustainability in times of accelerating change, 2012
Maritime Studies, 2019
In the Azores, the work of women in fisheries has been invisible and undervalued for decades. Thi... more In the Azores, the work of women in fisheries has been invisible and undervalued for decades. This article presents a historical review of the hidden roles of these women and how they gained a place within the fishing community through the creation of associations and participatory research collaborations. This article reviews the relationships between scientists, government and fishers, which has been variable over time. This article contributes to the growing family of concepts describing the invisibility of women in fisheries in both policy and academic circles. It contributes to understanding how participatory research and collab-orative policymaking have evolved and faced challenges in the Azores region, adding empirical work to these concepts. It explores the way that women fishers have been embraced at times through the government's support to create fishing associations , but excluded at other times, via the specific consultation practices of the decision-makers. Participatory action research helped build opportunities for the women to be seen as fishers by the public as well as acknowledged within official circles, and to gain confidence, strengthen self-esteem and gender consciousness. This work explores how economic crisis and a prioritizing of scientific expertise over community knowledge and participation have reduced women's engagement in governance, effectively muting their voices and opportunity to contribute. It is an example for keeping both a gendered and a practitioner-expert perspective on research and policy on fisheries.
MARE Publication Series, 2014
Springing from research on the knowledge regimes that affect small-scale fishers and scientists w... more Springing from research on the knowledge regimes that affect small-scale fishers and scientists who engage in fisheries governance, in the Azores Islands, Portugal, this article explores how knowledge and communication practices are related to our understandings of the ocean world. It uses diverse social sciences to reframe the marine ecological crisis and re-imagine a broad mix of world views co-existing. It discusses the limitations of the ontology and epistemology born from a hegemonic way of understanding The World, which grew out of the grand narrative of modernity and the colonial power that established Europe as the centre of World History, and condemned Nature to be merely resources whose sole purpose is to serve the dominant economic system. In contrast, Southern world views acknowledge the world's ontological multiplicity, showing us the relationality, hybridity and pluriverse of socio-ecological entanglements and imaginations. Drawing upon debates amongst contemporary critical scholars and activists from an environmental sociology and political ecology perspective, this article challenges normative Northern/Western sciences and how they influence the way researchers understand marine and maritime issues. It examines the implications of ontology on the current oceanic crisis focusing specifically in marine resource management and fisheries policy. Using a diverse source of social sciences it explores the dominant assumptions of the One-World world view and suggests a framework of empathy for diverse scientists and fishers to appreciate their commonalities to better work together across otherwise seemingly in-surmountable differences in ways of knowing in order to imagine and create as of yet, unimagined, governance that will support the continual wellbeing of ocean ecosystems and coastal fishing communities.
This multi-voice script highlights the process of five years of research with coastal fishing com... more This multi-voice script highlights the process of five years of research with coastal fishing communities in the Azores islands of Portugal. Initially, we used photo elicitation and focus groups to invite people to speak about the sea and all the deep, complex and sometimes contradictory meanings that it may have. In later years, the researchers sought environmental justice within everyday processes, using deep ethnographic and autobiographic-narrative inquiry which led to participation in learning about – as well as supporting – collaborations between fishers, scientists and policy makers. The text is constructed via arts-informed research methodology and consists of two parallel, creative narratives, intermittently interrupted by a visual narrative. This work calls for looking at the sea through new eyes, hearing with new ears, feeling differently and awakening to the possibility of knowing the sea in unfamiliar ways.
This paper discusses civic participation with reference to fishing communities in the Azores arch... more This paper discusses civic participation with reference to fishing communities in the Azores archipelago, Portugal. We explore how concepts and political processes actively exclude people, and how researchers could dig deeper to find opportunities to build from diverse cultural practices of participation. Specifically, we describe examples of efforts towards participatory sustainable development as well as introduce a centuries-old highly participatory practice of sharing food. The rituals of the Cult of the Holy Spirit, based on sharing and justice, are an example of strong civic engagement rich with possibility from which to build alternatives to current forms of participation for fisheries governance. We suggest that islands offer understandings of human social interactions in ways that larger landmasses might not. This is a call for reflection on images underlying our understandings of participation and governing the sea commons, and looking more closely at islanders and their long held practices.
A short reflection on research and fishing cultures performing knowledge together Uma breve refle... more A short reflection on research and fishing cultures performing knowledge together Uma breve reflexão sobre o modo como investigadores e pescadores podem cooperar pelo conhecimento Authors: Abstract: This reflection explores a workshop that was held in the Azores which brought together individuals from fishing communities across the nine islands,
Keynote Council of Animals: We are a collaborative council of animals. Our keynote address is th... more Keynote Council of Animals:
We are a collaborative council of animals. Our keynote address is theory in practice. Ubuntu: I am because we are.
Alison Laurie Neilson (Coimbra, Portugal)
Chamuel (Innsbruck, Austria)
Diana Visintini (Puerto Madryn, Argentina)
Eimear O’Neill (Toronto, Canada)
Garry Enns (Boissevain, Canada)
Judite Fernandes (Lisbon, Portugal)
Leesee Papatsie (Iqaluit, Canada)
Maria Paula Meneses (Coimbra, Portugal and Maputo, Mozambique)
Miye Nadya Tom (Los Angelas, USA)
Níels Einarsson (Akureyri, Iceland)
Reingard (Rana) Spannring (Innsbruck, Austria)
Rita São Marcos (Coimbra, Portugal)
We are animals, we are spirit.
We are activists, educators, and researchers:
Centre for Social Sciences Aquino de Bragança
Stefansson Arctic Institute
University of the Arctic
University of Coimbra – Centre for Social Studies
University of Innsbruck
University of Toronto – Transformative Learning Centre
International Peace Garden
One Earth Community
The World March of Women
Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication
Cultural Cooperative “Barefeet”
Feeding My Family
Mennonite Literary Society
RCE Açores
Seventh Native American Generation Magazine
The Sea of the Azores: Scientific Forum for Decision Support II, 9-10 July 2012
Arquipelago. Life and Marine Sciences, 2014
The Sea of the Azores: Scientific Forum for Decision Support I, 12-19 January 2011
MARE Publication Series, 2014
The Journal of Environmental Education, 2021
The global COVID-19 public health crisis has driven policies of lockdowns and social distancing t... more The global COVID-19 public health crisis has driven policies of lockdowns and social distancing that have had negative social and economic impacts, worsening inequalities and social exclusions, and mixed environmental impacts. This study engaged children from schools with diverse environmental pedagogies in online focus groups about nature and their experiences with nature during the pandemic. Participants expressed fear of the unknown virus, sadness from isolation, longing for family and friends, and yearning for the freedom to enjoy the outside world. They revealed knowledge of both positive and negative impacts of lockdowns on the environment. Their experiences with nature demonstrate how environmental injustice affects the lives of children from public schools in urban contexts, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who reported less contact with nature during the lockdown. As a group, children are aware and very critical of intergenerational environmental injustice and argue for the need for adults to act.
Disrupting Privilege, Identity, and Meaning
Disrupting Privilige, Identity, and Meaning
Learning for sustainability in times of accelerating change, 2012
Learning for sustainability in times of accelerating change, 2012
Maritime Studies, 2019
In the Azores, the work of women in fisheries has been invisible and undervalued for decades. Thi... more In the Azores, the work of women in fisheries has been invisible and undervalued for decades. This article presents a historical review of the hidden roles of these women and how they gained a place within the fishing community through the creation of associations and participatory research collaborations. This article reviews the relationships between scientists, government and fishers, which has been variable over time. This article contributes to the growing family of concepts describing the invisibility of women in fisheries in both policy and academic circles. It contributes to understanding how participatory research and collab-orative policymaking have evolved and faced challenges in the Azores region, adding empirical work to these concepts. It explores the way that women fishers have been embraced at times through the government's support to create fishing associations , but excluded at other times, via the specific consultation practices of the decision-makers. Participatory action research helped build opportunities for the women to be seen as fishers by the public as well as acknowledged within official circles, and to gain confidence, strengthen self-esteem and gender consciousness. This work explores how economic crisis and a prioritizing of scientific expertise over community knowledge and participation have reduced women's engagement in governance, effectively muting their voices and opportunity to contribute. It is an example for keeping both a gendered and a practitioner-expert perspective on research and policy on fisheries.
MARE Publication Series, 2014
Springing from research on the knowledge regimes that affect small-scale fishers and scientists w... more Springing from research on the knowledge regimes that affect small-scale fishers and scientists who engage in fisheries governance, in the Azores Islands, Portugal, this article explores how knowledge and communication practices are related to our understandings of the ocean world. It uses diverse social sciences to reframe the marine ecological crisis and re-imagine a broad mix of world views co-existing. It discusses the limitations of the ontology and epistemology born from a hegemonic way of understanding The World, which grew out of the grand narrative of modernity and the colonial power that established Europe as the centre of World History, and condemned Nature to be merely resources whose sole purpose is to serve the dominant economic system. In contrast, Southern world views acknowledge the world's ontological multiplicity, showing us the relationality, hybridity and pluriverse of socio-ecological entanglements and imaginations. Drawing upon debates amongst contemporary critical scholars and activists from an environmental sociology and political ecology perspective, this article challenges normative Northern/Western sciences and how they influence the way researchers understand marine and maritime issues. It examines the implications of ontology on the current oceanic crisis focusing specifically in marine resource management and fisheries policy. Using a diverse source of social sciences it explores the dominant assumptions of the One-World world view and suggests a framework of empathy for diverse scientists and fishers to appreciate their commonalities to better work together across otherwise seemingly in-surmountable differences in ways of knowing in order to imagine and create as of yet, unimagined, governance that will support the continual wellbeing of ocean ecosystems and coastal fishing communities.
This multi-voice script highlights the process of five years of research with coastal fishing com... more This multi-voice script highlights the process of five years of research with coastal fishing communities in the Azores islands of Portugal. Initially, we used photo elicitation and focus groups to invite people to speak about the sea and all the deep, complex and sometimes contradictory meanings that it may have. In later years, the researchers sought environmental justice within everyday processes, using deep ethnographic and autobiographic-narrative inquiry which led to participation in learning about – as well as supporting – collaborations between fishers, scientists and policy makers. The text is constructed via arts-informed research methodology and consists of two parallel, creative narratives, intermittently interrupted by a visual narrative. This work calls for looking at the sea through new eyes, hearing with new ears, feeling differently and awakening to the possibility of knowing the sea in unfamiliar ways.
This paper discusses civic participation with reference to fishing communities in the Azores arch... more This paper discusses civic participation with reference to fishing communities in the Azores archipelago, Portugal. We explore how concepts and political processes actively exclude people, and how researchers could dig deeper to find opportunities to build from diverse cultural practices of participation. Specifically, we describe examples of efforts towards participatory sustainable development as well as introduce a centuries-old highly participatory practice of sharing food. The rituals of the Cult of the Holy Spirit, based on sharing and justice, are an example of strong civic engagement rich with possibility from which to build alternatives to current forms of participation for fisheries governance. We suggest that islands offer understandings of human social interactions in ways that larger landmasses might not. This is a call for reflection on images underlying our understandings of participation and governing the sea commons, and looking more closely at islanders and their long held practices.
A short reflection on research and fishing cultures performing knowledge together Uma breve refle... more A short reflection on research and fishing cultures performing knowledge together Uma breve reflexão sobre o modo como investigadores e pescadores podem cooperar pelo conhecimento Authors: Abstract: This reflection explores a workshop that was held in the Azores which brought together individuals from fishing communities across the nine islands,
Keynote Council of Animals: We are a collaborative council of animals. Our keynote address is th... more Keynote Council of Animals:
We are a collaborative council of animals. Our keynote address is theory in practice. Ubuntu: I am because we are.
Alison Laurie Neilson (Coimbra, Portugal)
Chamuel (Innsbruck, Austria)
Diana Visintini (Puerto Madryn, Argentina)
Eimear O’Neill (Toronto, Canada)
Garry Enns (Boissevain, Canada)
Judite Fernandes (Lisbon, Portugal)
Leesee Papatsie (Iqaluit, Canada)
Maria Paula Meneses (Coimbra, Portugal and Maputo, Mozambique)
Miye Nadya Tom (Los Angelas, USA)
Níels Einarsson (Akureyri, Iceland)
Reingard (Rana) Spannring (Innsbruck, Austria)
Rita São Marcos (Coimbra, Portugal)
We are animals, we are spirit.
We are activists, educators, and researchers:
Centre for Social Sciences Aquino de Bragança
Stefansson Arctic Institute
University of the Arctic
University of Coimbra – Centre for Social Studies
University of Innsbruck
University of Toronto – Transformative Learning Centre
International Peace Garden
One Earth Community
The World March of Women
Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication
Cultural Cooperative “Barefeet”
Feeding My Family
Mennonite Literary Society
RCE Açores
Seventh Native American Generation Magazine
The Sea of the Azores: Scientific Forum for Decision Support II, 9-10 July 2012
Arquipelago. Life and Marine Sciences, 2014
The Sea of the Azores: Scientific Forum for Decision Support I, 12-19 January 2011
Ecological & Environmental Education Special Interest Group AERA Conference, Montreal, April 11-1... more Ecological & Environmental Education Special Interest Group
AERA Conference, Montreal, April 11-15, 2005
This presentation highlights 5 years of learning from coastal fishing communities in the Azores i... more This presentation highlights 5 years of learning from coastal fishing communities in the Azores islands Portugal. We used photo elicitation and focus groups to invite people to speak about the sea and all the deep, complex and sometimes contradictory meanings that it may have. The researchers sought environmental justice within the everyday pro-cesses using deep ethnographic and autobiographic-narrative inquiry which lead to participation in learning about as well as supporting collaborations between fishers, scientists and policy makers. This work calls for looking at the sea through new eyes, hearing with new ears, feeling differently and awakening to the possibility of knowing the sea in unfamiliar ways.
Place-based Learning for the Plate Hunting, Foraging and Fishing for Food Environmental Discourses in Science Education, 2020
Research in Higher Education Practices Series, 2022
Digging Emergency Holes near the Gate A Zine about our Practice Alison Neilson and Andrea Inocên... more Digging Emergency Holes near the Gate
A Zine about our Practice
Alison Neilson and Andrea Inocêncio
Gothic pedagogy
Glenn-Egil Torgersen, Herner Saeverot, Kristian Firing
book: Rehearsing science and art to re-connect culture and nature/ Ensaiar arte e ciência: Para religar natureza e cultura. , 2019
book: Sustainable policies and practices in energy, environment and health research: Addressing cross-cutting issues Publisher: Springer, 2022
Decades ago, concerns were raised about "sustainability" undermining critical approaches to educa... more Decades ago, concerns were raised about "sustainability" undermining critical approaches to education. It has become the green discursive umbrella in a globalized capitalist economy, which promotes capital accumulation through its commitment to a free-market. This neoliberal "development" has deepened social inequities and power differential between North and South. Within ocean governance this framing of issues has enhanced social, gender and race inequalities, excluding fishers' and social scientists' knowledge. Crises arise from the way marine resource management understands and constructs the ocean. As the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development begins, apolitical sciences conflate education as knowledge transfer, and natural sciences dominate "Ocean Literacy". This chapter explores assumptions within research and education about knowledge, human/ocean relationships, and ocean-based human activities. Alternative discourses for critical pedagogy and cross-cutting place-conscious education arise from local stakeholders and long-term ethnographies with small-scale fishing communities.
book: In book: Arts and mindfulness education for human flourishing Publisher: Routledge Series: Art, Education and Mental Health , 2021
This chapter explores the use of images, visual metaphors and models in the knowledge practices o... more This chapter explores the use of images, visual metaphors and models in the knowledge practices of natural, physical and social sciences. It traces various histories of teaching and learning, including that which is named environmental education as well as other forms of education for sustainability or sustainable development. Emerging from an ethnographical exploration of the author’s experience in natural sciences and later education and social sciences, this chapter discusses the ways that various scientists understand reality and hence how they communicate amongst themselves and the public. It discusses the power of images, including their potential for embracing diverse and conflicting meaning as well as the risks they pose for embracing these broad meanings. From this overview, the chapter describes a visual model, its relationship with the social dance that inspired its creation, and how it may enable sensory understandings of the processes of knowledge co-creation. This model draws from indigenous scholarship and worldviews that embrace knowledge as something that exists as an enactment between people, all living things and existing within relationships, ecosystems and spiritual systems rather than as cognitive individuals. The chapter offers an evocation to reflect on our sense of knowledge and invites further engagement with this type of embodied visual modeling.
n book: Sustainable policies and practices in energy, environment and health research: Addressing cross-cutting issues.Publisher: Springer, 2021
"Abstract This chapter is an invitation to join the authors on a journey to an island in the At... more "Abstract
This chapter is an invitation to join the authors on a journey to an island in the Atlantic Ocean to consider that which seems normal and abnormal within your place as well. Three teacher educators from different places invite the reader to reflect on what it would mean to take spirituality seriously within learning for sustainability. Successfully meeting complex challenges and uncertain futures requires the full breadth of human understandings: spirituality has too long been pushed aside. A workshop about biodiversity for educators in the Azores islands, Portugal led us to explore our own narratives of educational experiences and heightened our motivation to listen to and support diverse ways of knowing. The inclusion of a local spiritual leader as a speaker in the opening of the workshop sparked a strong reaction: an opportunity for important reflexive practice and transformational education that can honour the diverse spiritual understandings that learners carry with them. The conversation presented here questions the official narratives of secularism in school systems and the unintended consequences of teaching from a place of unexplored assumptions about our own spiritual beliefs and how this may affect others in the classroom. Educators are asked to consider what inspires (“spirits”) their practice and how this reflexion may bring more vitality to education for sustainability."
Experimental chapter in the book Arts-based Methods in Education Around the World. Alison Laurie... more Experimental chapter in the book Arts-based Methods in Education Around the World.
Alison Laurie Neilson, Andrea Inocêncio, Rita São Marcos, Rodrigo Lacerda, Maria Simões, Simone Longo de Andrade, Rigel Lazo Cantú, Nayla Naoufal, Maja Maksimovic and Margarida Augusto
E-book available as open access
https://www.riverpublishers.com/book_details.php?book_id=476
Sustainable development (SD) is a controversial concept informed by conflictual narratives which ... more Sustainable development (SD) is a controversial concept informed by conflictual narratives which reshape the way we envision the earth, the sea and the stars. Its integration in international policies and national strategy plans for development influences the ways we now know the past, our understanding of the present, and our paths to the future. It influences our lives through policies that regulate daily practices, such as the European Common Fisheries Policy which focuses its strategies for SD in trade and education. However, the problems faced by the ocean require understanding sustainable marine ecosystems through the complex interactions between ecological, social, economic, and political dimensions. Analysing the intersection of those dimensions, while respecting peoples' voices, allowed us to identify how policies and regulations for SD fail, and opened spaces for an emancipatory reflexive research on SD: responsible, accountable and transformative. This approach inevitably raised questions of environmental justice that challenged us to look critically at research and education norms for SD, as well as question how the deficit-model of research is built on the assumption that the failures of SD are due to lack of knowledge. In this chapter we bring together research experience on education and research practices, overlapping our reflexive and educational practices, with the Azores archipelago in Portugal as our background, in order to explore other possibilities. With the help of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, we explore the potential of multi-directional learning via aesthetic practices and action-based research to enable narrative inquiry to engage people in research, and SD policy development that are environmentally just and sustainable.
Beginning in our own narratives about eating fish, Alison and Rita discuss broad issues related t... more Beginning in our own narratives about eating fish, Alison and Rita discuss broad issues related to environmental justice for the fishers who struggle to maintain their livelihoods against policies that promote private profit over sustainability. Our stories take us from Canada and continental Portugal to the Azorean Islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where we have been doing research and community work in collaboration with artisanal and small-scale fishers for the past ten years. In discussing history of governance and politics of fisheries in Europe, we outline the struggles for fishing communities. Underneath these stories lie values and images, such as "alive and kicking", that could support the sustainability of oceans and the well-being of fishing communities. Unfortunately, myths and stereotypes about fishers and categorizing industrial scale fishing as the same as that done by people who have deep connections with fish as living neighbours, not dead "resources", are powerful and prevalent. Listening to the voices of fishers tell about living as part of ocean ecosystems while negotiating economic and political systems which champion unlimited growth is a useful way to deal with these complex issues in formal classroom teaching as well as informal and nonformal environmental education. May 2015-We wanted to go to the fish market before it closed in the morning, but we were working so late the night before… the man who sold us the fish at the supermarket in Ponta Delgada, São Miguel Island said we were destined for a great feast as it was fresh from the local waters, and the owner of our rented house was excitedly taking over the preparations following a traditional Micaelenses recipe to impress his childhood friend, "The Great Baptista", a local fisher and activist who we had invited to dinner. "Definitely not caught in the Azores" Lurdes tells us, after examining the flesh of the fish-the first time she has agreed to eat fish that her family has not caught and she herself has not cooked.
Sustainable development (SD) is a controversial concept informed by conflictual narratives which ... more Sustainable development (SD) is a controversial concept informed by conflictual narratives which reshape the way we envision the earth, the sea and the stars. Its integration in international policies and national strategy plans for development influences the ways we now know the past, our understanding of the present, and our paths to the future. It influences our lives through policies that regulate daily practices, such as the European Common Fisheries Policy which focuses its strategies for SD in trade and education. However, the problems faced by the ocean require understanding sustainable marine ecosystems through the complex interactions between ecological, social, economic, and political dimensions. Analysing the intersection of those dimensions, while respecting peoples' voices, allowed us to identify how policies and regulations for SD fail, and opened spaces for an emancipatory reflexive research on SD: responsible, accountable and transformative. This approach inevitably raised questions of environmental justice that challenged us to look critically at research and education norms for SD, as well as question how the deficitmodel of research is built on the assumption that the failures of SD are due to lack of knowledge. In this chapter we bring together research experience on education and research practices, overlapping our reflexive and educational practices, with the Azores archipelago in Portugal as our background, in order to explore other possibilities. With the help of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, we explore the potential of multidirectional learning via aesthetic practices and actionbased research to enable narrative inquiry to engage people in research, and SD policy development that are environmentally just and sustainable.
