Office hours
During term time students can book a slot on this Sharepoint worksheet to meet with me during my scheduled office hours.
Professor Caitlin DeSilvey
Professor
Centre for Geography and Environmental Sciences
University of Exeter
Environment and Sustainability Institute
Penryn Campus
Penryn TR10 9FE
- Curated Decay, New Books Network Podcast, May 2018
- BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed, Curated Decay Podcast, June 2017
- Podcast interview on Circular with Katie Tregidden, July 2021
- Podcast on The Living Room collaboration, Copenhagen Medical Museion, November 2021
- RadioCIAMS Podcast, Unsettled Monuments, Unsettling Heritage, March 2020
- BBC Radio 3 Green Thinking, Climate Change and Heritage Podcast, June 2021
- Podcast series, Landscape Histories for Landscape Futures, November 2024
I am a geographer whose research explores the cultural significance of change and transformation, with a particular focus on heritage ecologies and climate futures. I work with artists, archaeologists, environmental scientists and heritage practitioners on a range of interdisciplinary projects, developing collaborative methodologies that bridge art and science, theory and practice. Although much of my research is about how things (and places) fall apart, I am also interested in practices of repair and maintenance that hold things together.
My monograph, Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving (UMP 2017), received the 2018 Historic Preservation Book Prize. Recent publications include After Discourse: Things, Affects, Ethics (Routledge 2020), an edited collection stemming from a 2016-17 fellowship at the Centre for Advanced Study in Olso, and Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices (UCL 2020), a co-authored volume arising from work on the Heritage Futures research project. My academic writing often incorporates elements of creative practice, including autoethnography, photography and place-based inquiry.
Current collaborations with natural and cultural heritage practitioners translate conceptual innovation into strategies for creative adaptation, carried out through advisory roles and active research projects with organisations such as the World Monuments Fund, the National Trust, English Heritage Trust, Natural England and Historic England. Some of these developments will be shared through a course for the OUDCE in December 2024, Managing Loss in the Historic Environment: Ecocultural Approaches.
At the University of Exeter, I am a member of the Environment and Sustainability Institute, where I founded the transdisciplinary Creative Exchange programme and served as director from 2013-2023. I'm currently Co-Director of Global Engagement for the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, an academic lead on the National Trust/University of Exeter research partnership and an affiliate of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health.
You can find my Google Scholar account here and my LinkedIn account here.