Derry Playhouse to present award winning writer Amitav Ghosh's lecture on colonialism and climate change
Award winning writer Amitav Ghosh is to delve into the themes of Colonialism at the Playhouse.
The Seamus Deane lecture returns to Derry this Saturday, November 30 and Ghosh will be addressing topics from his book, 'The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.'
Amitav Ghosh holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and six honorary doctorates. He was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honours, by the President of India. In 2010 he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize. In 2018 the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honour, was conferred on Amitav Ghosh.
In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. In 2024, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize and was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2021 Ghosh released ‘The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.’ It’s a work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic tracing our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment.
Speaking on the upcoming Seamus Deane/Field Day Lecture by Amitav Ghosh, Field Day’s Stephen Rea said: “The issues we began to explore in Brian Friel’s Translations – territory, belonging, language and dispossession through re-naming, are still current around the world, for indigenous peoples. Amitav has made a singular contribution to our understanding of the ways in which issues such as climate justice are closely bound up with our histories of colonialism.”
Rea is hopeful that Ghosh’s lecture will be a suitable declaration of intent about Field Day’s decision to engage with the plight of the planet as a pressing matter of justice, and one that confronts makers of art with an unprecedented task.
As well as the lecture, the evening will also include special performances and an exclusive panel discussion facilitated by Dr Peter Doran (Queens University Belfast, School of Law) and featuring Amitav Ghosh, Sinead Mercier, (UCD), Stephen Rea (Field Day) and Michael Cronin (TCD).
The event is set to take place on November 30, at 6:30pm in The Playhouse.
Tickets can be found here: https://bit.ly/4eINNJC