Amber Sahara Donovan
| Biography | Amber is an AHRC funded PhD candidate in Environmental Philosophy. Her PhD explores Mary Midgley's claim that the concept of Gaia can help us adapt to the climate crisis. She argues that storytelling, myth-making or metaphorising play a central role in this process by speaking to the part of us that feels and thus being more effective at creating moral change. She was introduced to the work of Mary Midgely as an undergraduate through her participation in the in Parenthesis Reading Group. Since then, she has continued to be involved with the In Parenthesis Network and has been both deeply supported and inspired by its work. Like Mary Midgley, she feels strongly that Philosophy is for everyone and is keen to work on projects which bring philosophy 'into the wild'. To this end, in 2020 she designed a session on Gaia for woodcraft folk, in 2021 she was awarded funding by the Being Human Festival to create an Autumn Activity Trail inspired by themes in Environmental Philosophy, in 2023 she developed a workshop for primary age children on Midgley's Philosophical Plumbing for the Alnwick book festival and spent six months running events for children, inspired by environmental philosophy, in a local community garden. She is currently working on a new project (Mary Midgley's Meta-Philosophy in the Wild) developing workshops for primary school aged children on Gaia & Philosophical Plumbing. |
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| Research Interests | Environmental Philosophy Meta-Philosophy Feminist Philosophy Moral Philosophy Philosophy of Action Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Emotion History of Philosophy Philosophy of Science Wittgenstein |
| Teaching and Learning | The Philosophical Traditions Feminist Philosophy Reading Philosophy 20th Century European Philosophy Ethics & Bias in Data Science |