Latest News: Introducing the IPO Webinar Series...
Coastal TALES asks: How can stories of past practices help people (re)discover more sustainable ways of living in their rapidly changing coastal environments? Our goal is to show how heritage stories can generate tangible local action that diverse communities can draw on to adapt to a changing climate. We use a transdisciplinary approach, building on the knowledge and agency of local communities in dialogue with academic expertise across the spectrum of humanities and sciences.
Facing a world undergoing significant social and ecological transformation, many people ask, “what can I do?”. Individual actions often feel insufficient, with little perceptible effect. Coastal TALES attends to this growing social need by examining how stories can generate tangible action and offer creative inspiration to local communities and regional environmental stakeholders seeking to adapt sustainably.
Coastal TALES is working with societal partners in three coastal areas: Kodiak Island, Alaska, Dublin Bay in Ireland and southwest Wales. These draw together different experiences of how environmental change is affecting distinct communities. Our aim is to understand how diverse heritage stories can help drive action in education, policy and nature-based innovations. Coastal TALES demonstrates the value of reviving heritage stories in three distinct social contexts, each of which uniquely illustrates how listening to voices from the past and empowering voices of the present can create a legacy for future generations and offer a source of resilience in the face of climate stress.
In 2015 the UN member states agreed to 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This project contributes towards the following SDGs.
Suumacirpet “Our Way of Life” (Sugpiaq Values)
The Kodiak study examines commercialised fishing in an Indigenous context, encouraging youth to draw on ancestral knowledge as a means to forge environmentally sustainable communities and lifeways. We are working with Native community members, exploring how stories are used to educate Sugpiaq youth in culturally appropriate responses to subsistence challenges. Stories told by the elders at the Nuniaq Youth Culture Camp are used to teach younger generations to preserve and enact heritage knowledge to sustain good relations in marine ecosystems. These stories, together with knowledge drawn from the Alutiiq Museum’s oral history archives, are being used in curriculum development, to co-create teaching materials relating past, present, and future relationships with the lands and waters.
PI: Steven Beschloss Arizona State University
Research Team: Prof. Ben Fitzhugh and Dr Hollis Miller (University of Washington)
Societal Partners: Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository, Altuiq Tribe of Old Harbor, Old Harbor Native Corporation/ Old Harbor Alliance, University of Alaska
Funded by National Science Foundation
Applying local and traditional knowledge for the coastal restoration of Dublin In Dublin Bay oral histories are being used alongside historical maps used to help identify practices of managing rising waters with hard and soft coastal defence structures. Here coastal erosion is increasingly rectified by laying concrete. Our research advocates an alternative approach, grounded in local and traditional knowledges within the wider Dublin Bay. Oral histories, cartography, folklore archives and inter-generational dialogue are being explored to provide mechanisms by which local knowledges can enable local action. The aim is to reintroduce a natural coastal defence system of oyster beds, eelgrass, or stone reefs so that the rapidly degrading coastal zones can be protected whilst boosting biodiversity.
PI: Prof. Poul Holm
Research Team: Dr Cordula Scherer
Societal Partners: ECO-UNESCO
Funded by Irish Environmental Protection Agency
The revival of local coastal heritage foods is foregrounded in coastal southwest Wales, with an emphasis on learning how heritage stories can drive sustainable adaptation. Warming seas and increased pollution in waterways are driving adaptation and communities are looking to heritage production methods for inspiration. Traditional food practices are being revived in a modern context to secure livelihoods, food security and encourage biodiversity. The stories told by local businesses will be examined to better understand how cultural heritage may provide fresh insights, inspiring locals to innovate and adapt to meet sustainability challenges.
PI: Prof. Louise Steel
Research Team: Dr Luci Attala, Gareth Thomas, Prof. Steven Hartman
Societal Partners: Câr y Môr, Cardigan Bay Fish, Teifi Coracles
Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council
Authors: Sadhbh Horan and Cordula Scherer, Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, Sept 2025. In June 2025, our first in-person workshop with the international team of Coastal TALES took place. Having spent the first few days of the meeting in my local Dublin, blessed with good weather and unusually high temperatures, the team were eager to begin the Welsh leg of the agenda.
A paper published as Written Evidence for the UK Parliament to consider: The environmental and economic legacy of Wales' industrial past. Coastal Tales: Kilvey Hill (Swansea) and the Teifi as Projects of Contentious Urban Woodland and River Restoration.
The Coastal TALES project, led by the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES (UK) hub at UWTSD, has successfully secured €770,000 of funding in Belmont Forum’s Climate and Cultural Heritage joint call (CCH 2023).
Author: Cordula Scherer. Until the early 1800s, Dublin Bay was home to abundant oyster reefs, particularly around Clontarf and the area that has become Bull Island. These reefs were so plentiful that oysters were sold as the first “fast food” on Dublin’s streets from the 1850s. However, overexploitation, pollution, and the disease Bonamia ostreae led to their decline, and the native oyster vanished from the bay despite efforts to replenish them from wild oyster banks in the Arklow region.
Author: Sophie Spooner. Enjoyable, enlightening, and interesting day at the Wales Real Food & Farming Conference on 20 November 2024, held on the beautiful Lampeter campus, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The theme of the conference this year was ‘More Food – More Farmers – More Nature – More Resilience.’
Author: Sophie Spooner. The UK Hub of UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Coalition held a panel at the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference, on the afternoon of 20 November, 2024, highlighting the Welsh component of the Coastal TALES project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through the Belmont Forum.
Exciting update from Luci Attala, Director of the UK Hub Bridges Sustainability Science Coalition and Gareth Thomas, Executive Research Development Officer at UWTSD
The transdisciplinary Coastal TALES project, led by the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES (UK) hub at UWTSD, secured €770,000 of funding in Belmont Forum’s Climate and Cultural Heritage joint call (CCH 2023).
Coastal TALES asks: How can stories of past practices help people (re)discover more sustainable ways of living in their rapidly changing coastal environments? Our goal is to show how heritage stories can generate tangible local action that diverse communities can draw on to adapt to a changing climate. We use a transdisciplinary approach, building on the knowledge and agency of local communities in dialogue with academic expertise across the spectrum of humanities and sciences.
The project investigates the question of how stories of past practices can help people discover more sustainable ways of living in their rapidly changing coastal environments. Three case studies one in Dublin (Ireland), one on Kodiak Island (Alaska, USA) and one in southwest Wales follow a transdisciplinary approach to answer this question and build on the knowledge and agency of local communities in dialogue with academic expertise across the spectrum of humanities and sciences.