The Nature Within

Keynote Speaker: Polly Atkin

Nearly twenty years ago, Granta published a special edition titled ‘The New Nature Writing’, marking the recognition of a new era of writing about the natural world. Included in the publication was an essay by Kathleen Jamie called ‘Pathologies: A startling tour of our bodies’. Jamie visits a hospital pathology laboratory where she explores fragments of the human body through the lens of a microscope. She examines biopsies for cancer cells and studies bacteria in samples from patients waiting for their results in the wards above. In the same publication, Lydia Peelle wrote a fictional account of a diabetic man who, following a leg amputation, continues to experience phantom limb pain.

As Jamie wrote in ‘Pathologies’: ‘this is the nature we’d rather do without’ (2008 p.36). But what gets lost when this denial excludes sick and disabled perspectives of the natural world? What can be gained when the views of and through illness and disability are embraced? With a wealth of interest in the natural world as a source of ‘wellbeing’ what does nature look like from a perspective of ‘illbeing’? What would an anti-ableist view of nature look, sound and feel like through a creative lens? Inviting a curiosity about the body and its place in the natural world, what new knowledge is brought when attention is turned inwards, embedding the human in developing the representation of nature, both as the subject and in expanding the lens through which it is viewed?

The Nature Within will be an online symposium bringing together disabled narratives through art, writing and interdisciplinary research. With a framework of social and disability justice at its heart, we encourage submissions from voices that have often been marginalised (through social, political and economic discrimination/ exclusion e.g. gender identity, sexuality, religion, race, ethnicity, age and class).

We are inviting submissions from deaf, disabled, neurodivergent (including dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, autism, ADHD etc) and chronically ill researchers, writers, artists, academics and creative practitioners, to submit abstracts on the title ‘the nature within’ – either as authors of work examining the natural world outside of the human, and the influence of disability on this, or to focus directly on aspects of the sick/disabled body as a site of nature. We are keen to include papers addressing critical and/or creative responses to the title.

We are interested in topics such as: Disabled methods of accessing landscapes and waterscapes – the micro to the macro. Sites of nature in urban environments and engagement through the sick/disabled body. Domestic engagement with the natural world – from the back door or the bed. Blurring the human and more-than-human through the experience of chronic illness –e.g. the microbiome, viral infections, genetic variations and neurotypes. Polluted, extracted, flooded and contaminated places as sites of disability.

Please include a 300-word summary and short bio (100 words) in your submission. Proposals for poster presentations and papers (20 minutes) are all welcome. There will be opportunity to include posters on an online platform, potential to record a presentation ahead of the symposium, and an online presence as resource and archive. Please indicate which category your submission is for (poster or presentation), and any access needs you have for participating in the symposium.

Running online at the end of June 2027 the symposium will be free to all.

Deadline for abstract submissions: Midnight (GMT) 31 st December 2026. Please send abstracts, bios & any questions to: Louise.Kenward [at] stu.mmu.ac.uk

Submission form.