Serial Griever: Resilience in Ecosystems

In conversation with Dr Roxani Krystalli

If you had told me last year that I would become utterly obsessed with peat bogs to the point of adopting their colour palette into my wardrobe, I would have laughed and asked what a peat bog even was. Nonetheless, after taking part in a research internship exploring peatland restoration through the creative mode of soundscaping, I’ve discovered a whole new world of interdisciplinary academia that has me hooked. Whilst digging deeper into the roots of my sudden passion, I discovered the work of Dr Roxani Krystalli, a researcher from our own School of International Relations. Dr Krystalli studies love and care practices in the wake of loss and violence, topics that echo my experience of fragile peatland ecosystems and journeying through grief. 

With support from the Scotland’s Future Series, Dr Krystalli launched Growing Roots: Creating a Sense of Place, a series of public conversations on how place shapes our sense of self, relationships, and creative work. “I really love public conversations and cherish that they get us out of our own heads and into a room together to ask questions, reflect, and share a bit of our stories,” she said. Loving a place, she also points out, means “being attuned to loss, from loss of habitats, species, and relationships.” These questions are now central to her research with colleague Philipp Schulz as they explore how practices of love and care, including for nature and place, help people imagine lives in a world of loss. “When it comes to nature and place, that question means that we reflect on what it means to love and care for a vanishing world.” 

When I asked about the connection between caring for places and self-care, Dr Krystalli reflected: “Both my research and my life experience suggest that paying close attention to forms of life, from birds to moss and trees to the sea, can create intimacy with a place. It can make us feel part of “the family of things,” as the poet Mary Oliver put it. At the same time, I think it is worth looking past the frame of self-care to think about other forms of relation, such as stewardship, accompaniment, and curiosity. All of these open up a conversation, rather than primarily focusing on the human experience.” 

For me, studying peatlands does exactly this, drawing my focus outward to an ecosystem that has existed long before me and will, I hope, outlast me. Caring for landscapes is about building relationships that ask us to listen, tend, and stay curious. Maybe it is these very lessons that will help us navigate both personal and climate grief as we move towards an uncertain future.

Image from Wikimedia Commons