From Sea to Sky: Island Systems from Taiwan to Hawai’i to the Desert Southwest - at the Learning Planet Festival

This panel seeks to build a collective atmosphere for island and desert studies, a space where desert(/)islands can share the same critical air, drawing on the framework of “archipelagic thinking,” a concept first discussed by French poet and writer Édouard Glissant (Poétique de la Relation 1990),which foregrounds the relationality of sites and ideas that may appear discrete. Archipelagic thinking suggests that islands or deserts may be discrete, or may be bound by shared currents of history, ecology, and imagination. This panel will examine how seemingly separate terrains or ideas might be understood in concert. Archipelagos, from Taiwan to Hawai’i, and in parallel, the desert “islands” of the American Southwest, have historically carried the allure of paradisiacal spaces, and this aspect of their “islandness” has led to their often complicated and complex ecological, colonial, and contemporary histories. Meanwhile, global desert environments have frequently been represented as vast, unpeopled wastelands that perpetuate Indigenous erasure and environmental harm. The goal of this discussion is to build theoretical and critical relationships between island and desert studies with inputs from humanists and scientists so that we can broaden and strengthen our environmental justice work.

Panellists:  

Hsinya Huang, Distinguished Professor @ National Sun Yat-sen University; Joni Adamson, President's Professor of Environmental Humanities @ Global Futures Laboratory, Arizona State University; Chris J. Barton, Assistant Director of the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, Assistant Research Professor within the School of Life Sciences, and Program manager for Hawaiʻi and the Pacific for ASU’s Executive Education team @ Arizona State University; Jada Ach, Associate Teaching Professor @ Arizona State University; Sreya Ann Oommen, Post Doctoral Research Scholar @ UNESCO BRIDGES Flagship Hub.

Co-organised by Humanities for the Environment; the BRIDGES Flagship Hub; &  Arizona State University. 

For further information on joining this session at the Learning Planet Festival 2026 visit the event link and the Learning Planet Festival website.