As I come to the end of my time at the IAS, I now find myself preparing to return to Sweden and the daily rhythms of life in my home institution. In doing so, I look back on what has been a hugely productive visit to Durham. While at the IAS, I have not only presented on a range of topics relating to my current work, but I have also had the opportunity to meet and discuss research with both old and new colleagues, to learn about upcoming initiatives, and to plan future collaborations.

For much of my scholarly career, I have been focused on exploring intellectual linkages and building dialogue between my area of focus – early New Persian literature – and the scholarship on adjacent areas, particularly (up till now) the classical and medieval traditions of the eastern Mediterranean and western Europe.

The term climate apartheid was initially invoked by a group of climate activists as a political slogan. They used it to convey the idea that the poorest and most marginalized sections of the world’s population bear the heaviest burden of the rich world’s carbon excess. Later, it entered academic discourse as a useful analytic for thinking about different forms of climate precarity, and especially about the centrality of race in making sense of this precarity.

I joined the IAS first as a Co-Director in January 2021, whilst COVID still locked down many countries, international travel was vastly difficult, and IAS Fellowships were held virtually. As my term as Director began, we had the lifting of those restrictions, but in their wake has come an increasingly uncertain world with challenges undreamt of only a few years ago. Yet, these uncertain times are when an IAS might shine the most.

The IAS has provided a very welcoming environment for our project Confronting Climate Apartheid: Law, Economy, Culture, which has, so far, gone to plan. Conceived as a dialogic space for thinking, and challenging, narratives of climate apartheid as they circulate through various academic and media landscapes, our project, we can safely report, is achieving what we had intended.

My recent seminar at the Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) invited a simple but uncomfortable question: what do we really mean when we say livestock have “value”? Economists, veterinarians, policymakers, and farmers often use the word confidently, yet we rarely pause to unpack it.

Our IAS project has allowed us to consider a series of interconnected questions, all of which relate to how people live with, and value, cattle in eastern and southern Africa. As a team, we bring together a range of experiences and perspectives – veterinary economics, history, geography, philosophy and anthropology.

Climate apartheid is a fruitful topic for interdisciplinary collaboration due to its multiple meanings. Coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the term generally describes a world where the rich insulate themselves from the most catastrophic effects of climate change while racialized and formerly colonized people bear its worst consequences.

The renowned South African artist, William Kentridge, once observed that Johannesburg is the product of geological circumstances rather than geographical ones. A geological perspective on the city lends itself to notions of layering and stratigraphy.

Reflecting on my IAS Fellowship, what resonates most deeply is the exceptional care I received for professional and intellectual growth—by making the most out of my time here. The Institute of Advanced Study has cultivated an environment in which thinking is not merely facilitated but actively nourished—a research-driven ecosystem that balances rigor with a rare form of intellectual well-being. This paced wellness for the mind allowed me to work, learn, and reflect in sustained depth.

Creative artistic activities have been part of human life for millennia, supporting the expression of identity and strengthening social bonds while also contributing to physical and mental wellbeing. Since the emergence of music and creative arts therapies after the First World War in the UK and Europe, the health benefits of the arts have been increasingly recognised across the world.

Durham’s Institute of Advanced Study is described as a home for growing big ideas: a vibrant space that offers time, community and intellectual freedom for exploring questions that cross disciplinary boundaries.