balayannis.bsky.social

Reminder of our abstract deadline of 18 February for our session on Queering Environmental Justice at the RGS-IBG 2026!

Check it out:

We would love for @jaytoddgla.bsky.social’s and my critical response to be read widely, given the Sullivan Review’s potential for far-reaching implications across the social and health sciences — and indeed well beyond the academy

Graphic reading 'the UK Government-commissioned 'Sullivan Review' of sex and gender in data and research collection threatens British research and trans inclusion. Here's why.'

📣 Today @felicitycallard.bsky.social and I have published the first peer-reviewed response to the 'Sullivan Review' of research and data on sex and gender.

doi.org/10.1111/tran...

The Review could threaten trans rights and inclusion, erode academic freedom, and undermine research quality.

‘We regularly call the cops on our students. Now we’ve sold them to Microsoft’.

Cover image of Corporate Europe Observatory's report: Chemical reaction: Inside the corporate fight against the EU’s PFAS restriction

It has been exactly one year since launch of #ForeverLobbying Project & our own Chemical Reaction report.

Together we exposed access, strategies, & misleading messaging of prominent parts of #PFAS industry against proposed ban.

➡️ corporateeurope.org/en/chemical-...
➡️ foreverpollution.eu/lobbying/

This session aims to bring environmental justice praxis into conversations around queer and trans liberation and subjugation. Anti-gender politics and the transnational eliminationist movements against trans and gender diverse people (Holvikivi et al. 2024) are increasingly affecting environmental policy and advocacy, and gender has become hotly contested in global environmental governance processes (Balayannis 2026). In response, this session asks: how do queer and trans liberation matter for environmental justice? The exclusion and regulation of trans and queer bodies from and within public spaces is now routinely making headlines in the UK and well beyond (Butler 2025; Faye 2022). Meanwhile, the environmental sciences also have a long history of eco-normativity and structurally pathologising queer lives; often characterising transness, intersex bodies, and same-sex sexual behaviours, as the adverse effects of pollution exposure (Di Chiro 2010; Zabalegui 2024). Despite its focus on power and difference (Schlosberg et al. 2025), environmental justice praxis has yet to address these enduring epistemic harms and (up until recently) has lacked engagement with queer and trans politics. Recent calls to queer environmental justice are configured as an “inclusion” issue (e.g. Goldsmith and Bell 2022), and overlook the more fundamental structural harms of dominant science (Liboiron 2021). Geographical research has tended to reinforce the boundaries between environmental politics, and queer and trans politics, suggesting that existing work in queer and trans geographies holds limited relevance for expanding on environmental justice. This session confronts this assumption and considers the potentialities of queer and trans studies, beyond making sense of gender, sexuality, and heteronormativity. [continued on next image]

Organisers Angeliki Balayannis (Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands), Jay Todd (University of Glasgow, UK) Abstracts are limited to 300 words. If you would like to discuss your submission please email Angeliki Balayannis (angeliki.balayannis@wur.nl) and Jay Todd (jay.todd@glasgow.ac.uk) Butler, Judith. 2025. Who’s Afraid of Gender? Penguin Books. Chen, Mel Y. 2012. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Duke University Press Books. Di Chiro, Giovanna. 2010. “Polluted Politics Confronting Toxic Dis-Course, Sex Panic, and Eco-Normativity.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Carolina Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Ericson. Indiana University Press. Faye, Shon. 2022. The Transgender Issue. Penguin Books. Goldsmith, Leo, and Michelle L. Bell. 2022. “Queering Environmental Justice: Unequal Environmental Health Burden on the LGBTQ+ Community.” American Journal of Public Health 112 (1): 79–87. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306406. Holvikivi, Aiko, Billy Holzberg, and Tomas Ojeda, eds. 2024. Transnational Anti-Gender Politics: Feminist Solidarity in Times of Global Attacks. Palgrave MacMillan. Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution Is Colonialism. Duke University Press. Schlosberg, David, Lauren Rickards, Rebecca Pearse, Hannah Della Bosca, and Oli Moraes. 2025. “Critical Environmental Justice in Contemporary Scholarship and Movements: Consensus and Plurality of the Discourse.” Environmental Politics 34 (3): 399–420. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2362573. Shadaan, Reena, and Michelle Murphy. 2020. “EDC’s as Industrial Chemicals and Settler Colonial Structures: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Approach.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 6 (1): 1. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v6i1.32089. Zabalegui, Maite Arraiza. 2024. “The Tale of EDCs and Trans Identities.” Diogenes 65 (1): 110–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0392192123000287.

🔉Call for Papers! This September Jay Todd @jaytoddgla.bsky.social & I will be organising a session on "Queering Environmental Justice" at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference @rgsibg.bsky.social

⏰ Abstract deadline: 18 February 2026
🔗 Conference website: www.rgs.org/research/ann...

DOGE Is Bringing Back a Deadly Disease Cuts to agencies that protect workers’ lungs are going to result in the resurgence of a preventable illness.

"In the few months since the second Trump administration began, the federal government’s efforts to control silicosis have been destroyed," David Michaels and Gregory Wagner write:

The EPA IRIS database specifies the cancer + noncancer risk of > 500 chemicals. It's the rosetta stone to calculating the relationship between exposure and risk. It powered our tox map and formaldehyde map. Killing it would destroy the ability to regulate or even show how harmful toxic chems are.

Event | ‘How do we carry on?’ Political Activism in an Era of Uncertainty – with prof. Pickerill We are excited to invite you to the PhD defence activities of Tom Rowe, exploring hope, privilege, and prefiguration in climate activism, art, and academia. The two-day programme includes an intera…

📣 Upcoming event with Prof. @jennypickerill.bsky.social "'How do we carry on?’ Political activism in an era of uncertainty" | Thursday 20 March 2025 | 12:30 - 17:30 | Location: Thuis Wageningen (Stationsstraat 32, Wageningen, the Netherlands. Info ⬇️
centreforspaceplacesociety.com/2025/03/03/e...

Industry-Backed Legislation Would Bar the Use of Science Behind Hundreds of Environmental Protections Two bills in Congress would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from using hundreds of chemical assessments completed by its IRIS program in environmental regulations or enforcement.

NEW: While all eyes are on Trump and DOGE, a bill recently introduced in both the House and Senate would cripple the EPA's ability to regulate. It's a very serious threat and experts told me it could pass

www.propublica.org/article/legi...

One week left to submit your abstracts!

Effects of Early-life PFAS Exposure on Child Neurodevelopment: A Review of the Evidence and Research gaps - PubMed Sixty-one studies in total were published from 2008 to March 2024, with 35 in the last five years. Findings primarily link early life PFAS exposure to reduced cognitive, motor, and language developmen...

A new analysis confirms links between early life #PFAS exposure and stunted “cognitive, motor, and language development” as well as “behavioral issues like hyperactivity.”

#foreverchemicals appear to be damaging children’s brains, and not only highly exposed kids.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39888511/

Excited to see this is out - and with an expanded online edition alongside! Congratulations and thank you @erindurban.bsky.social and team for all the work that went into it

Decolonising Climate Coloniality and Re-Centering Marginalised Voices and Knowledges YouTube video by Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage

📼 For those who missed todays Ways of Repair : Loss and Damage online symposium session with @farhanasultana.com, Gabriela de Matos and Amali Tower on “Decolonising #ClimateColoniality and Re-Centering Marginalised Voices and Knowledges” the video is now online! 🥳

🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrqZ...

Donald Trump’s No. 2 Pick for the EPA Represented Companies Accused of Pollution Harm David Fotouhi, a lawyer who recently challenged a ban on asbestos, worked to roll back climate regulations and water protections while serving in the Environmental Protection Agency during Trump’s fir...

Making Asbestos Great Again www.propublica.org/article/davi...

@4sweb.bsky.social and fellow STSers invested in projects of liberation! We invite folks to submit to our open panel, Reverberations of Power and Justice in Critical Science and Technology Studies. #207 findable here: www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...

Cost to clean up toxic PFAS pollution could top £1.6tn in UK and Europe Exclusive: Costs of UK cleanup will reach £9.9bn a year in UK if emissions of ‘forever chemicals’ remain uncontrolled

⚠️#PFAS are ubiquitous to our environment and a new #ForeverLobbying Project has estimated they will cost billions to clean up!
 
🚫CHEM Trust calls on the UK Government to act now to #BanPFAS.
 
Read more here: https://buff.ly/40imRLz
Find the project here: https://buff.ly/3Z6DNCq 

Screenshot of Call for Papers: "Towards just pollution interventions: public experiments beyond the lab". 7th Nordic STS Conference: STS in and out of the Laboratory, June 11-13, 2025, Stockholm. See link in post for abstract and organisational details.

CFP! At the Nordic STS conference this June in Stockholm @emmapdc.bsky.social & I are organising "Towards just pollution interventions: public experiments beyond the lab"

We welcome abstracts from any discipline or practice. Deadline March 1. Reach out for questions www.nordicsts.se/call-for-abs...

‘High-risk sites’: where are the UK’s ‘forever chemical’ hotspots? An Environment Agency report has identified more than 10,000 ‘high-risk sites’ contaminated with PFAS

‘High-risk sites’: where are the UK’s ‘forever chemical’ hotspots?

What you need to know.

#ForeverLobbying

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The #ForeverLobbying Project exposes the real cost of #PFAS pollution on the environment, science, and politics.
46 journalists teamed up with 18 experts to investigate the worst pollution crisis humanity has ever faced, caused by the “poison of the century”.
foreverpollution.eu/lobbying/

Public Inspection: Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment: Perfluorooctanoic Acid and Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid Draft Sewage Sludge Risk Assessment: Perfluorooctanoic Acid and Perfluorooctane Sulfonic Acid

Big news: A new EPA study finds that millions of acres of farmland are likely polluted w/ #PFAS from sewage sludge spread over the fields as fertilizer—a practice EPA has long promoted. The implications for our food system are hard to overstate. h/t @ewg

www.federalregister.gov/public-inspe...

Another pioneering plastic recycler faces bankruptcy amid challenges While chemical plastics recycling shows promise, the practical implementation faces significant hurdles. Blue Cycle's experience mirrors these challenges.

Chemical recycling doesnt work at scale; it’s neither environmentally or economically viable ioplus.nl/en/posts/ano...

Scientists Scramble to Save Climate Data from Trump—Again Federal climate databases remained largely intact during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term. Scientists say the threats are bigger this time

“The first Trump admin altered or deleted numerous federal web pages containing public-facing climate information, according to monitoring efforts by the nonprofit Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which tracks changes on federal websites.”

www.scientificamerican.com/article/scie...

thank you!! ☕

Excellent! Staying in a few different spots inner-northside

Heading home to Melbourne next week - if you're around and keen to chat about pollution, chemicals, or waste, I'll be there throughout December. (Also would appreciate hot takes on good cafes as my coffee map is 6 years out of date...)

Today 20.000+ people came together in The Hague to protest the proposed cuts in education funding. To protest against layoffs. Against a penalty for study delays. Against the closure of degree programmes. And to fight for academic freedom, equal opportunities, and the right to study. #WOinActie

More than 20,000 people protesting the budget cuts in higher education in the Netherlands #WOinActie

Summer Institute - Center for the Arts and Humanities Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities The Colby Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities (SIEH) gathers scholars from around the globe to

This summer Hiilei Hobart and I, among others, will "contribute to the theorization, imagination, and practice of socially just and ecologically hopeful futures" includding workshops on works-in-progress with participants. Apply!

Solidarity with colleagues at the University of Wollongong in geography, history, language, maths, environmental science, physics and public health. Entire units being cut, short sighted and devastating. Petition here: betteruniversities.work/uow-petition...