About the Webinar:

This presentation explores autoethnography as a powerful tool for advancing climate justice work, particularly in amplifying the voices and lived experiences of black youth. Drawing on my personal reflections from participating in a Climate Justice Summit while still navigating my own voice within climate justice discourse, I examine how systemic barriers, limited representation, and intersecting structures of race, gender, and class continue to shape exclusion in both activism and scholarship. Through an autoethnographic lens, in this presentation, I highlight how personal narrative can illuminate the marginalisation of black youth in global climate justice spaces while also challenging dominant ways of knowing and participating. I argue that autoethnography is not only a method of reflection, but also a critical and political practice that can foster visibility, disrupt silence, and create more inclusive climate justice conversations.

In sharing my experiences of being sidelined and silenced in a global dialogue on the climate crisis, I wish to expose the disempowerment that young, black people face in advocating for climate justice in spaces where the view of Africa is still biased, narrow and skewed. By highlighting these challenges, I hope to underscore the urgent need for inclusive and equitable representation in climate justice movements, ensuring that the voices of Black youth are not only heard but also valued and empowered to drive meaningful change.

Date: 21 May 2026

Time: 12:30 – 13:30

Platform: Microsoft Teams

https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/375292879817805?p=1eMoZ2kDwdoTZgSqhW

About the Presenter:

I’m a Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, trained as a Research Psychologist. My work calls for a reflective, inclusive and socially just psychology curriculum that shapes students who are responsive to societal ills. I’m passionate about social justice, gender development and mental health. My research interests draw from feminist and critical psychology theories, I am currently writing on the intersectionality of race, gender and class on identities in contemporary South Africa. I have also recently become interested in climate justice. Specifically, I am writing on black youth representation in climate justice discourse.

About the Webinar:

The stability of capitalism is dependent on the unending growth of capital. Deterring capitalist crises requires increased production, greater consumption, redoubled markets, swelling profit margins, and accelerated supply chain lead times. The environment is no exception to this expansionist logic. Under capitalism, the environment serves as either a sink for endless dumping or a tap for limitless extraction. Psychology has, for the most part, done little to oppose capitalism’s environmentally destructive operations. Much mainstream psychology reads ‘healthy’ psychological development through the logic of infinite growth. When psychologists do consider environmental destruction (most do not), they tend to locate its origins in individual human behaviour, rather than the structural mechanisms of capital accumulation. The natural world thus emerges within most psychological disciplines as a static entity that exists entirely apart from human beings. Against all of this, we will attempt in this webinar to formulate another kind of psychology, one concerned with anticapitalist struggles for ecological justice. Specifically, and by way of a practical example, we will consider what it could mean to attune psychology to the psycho-political demands of these struggles, and when these struggles might require us to step away from psychology altogether. It is by taking seriously these sorts of concerns that we can begin to articulate an anticapitalist psychological practice in and for the web of life.

Date: 22 September 2026

Time: 18:00-19:00

Platform: Microsoft Teams

https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/361294116879660?p=hgUdXjSAnVopYAcK7p

Meeting ID: 361 294 116 879 660

Passcode: gy7y2RT6

About the Presenter:

Nick Malherbe is researcher at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa, and is affiliated with the South African Medical Research Council-University of South Africa Violence, Injury and Social Asymmetries Research Unit. He works with social movement actors, cultural workers, and young people. His research interests include violence, discourse, and community praxis.