IAS Seminar: Outdoor Recreation and Climate Challenges: Human-Environment Relations in Trail Sports

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Eilis Lanclus delivers a seminar on their research.

Trail sports – hiking, running, off-road cycling – are gaining increasingly in popularity in Western contemporary societies. These sports are often celebrated as ways to immerse oneself in “wild(er)” landscapes and to measure personal endurance against nature. But the climate crisis has begun to unsettle this relationship.

On trails, climate change is felt not as data but as sensory disruptions: the crackle of dead undergrowth, flood-strewn trails, or snowless winters where snow once marked the season. How can these sensory and lived experiences on trails invite a shift from trail sports as acts of personal conquest or consumption of landscapes to practices grounded in care, attention, and ecological responsibility?

This seminar presents my postdoctoral research project which examines the duality between the growing desire of trail sport participants to engage with “wild(er)” landscapes and the ecological pressures these activities put on those landscapes.

Arrivals from 11.45am for a 12pm start. For those joining in-person, lunch will be served after the seminar from 1pm.