Sarah Bezan

Postdoctoral Research Associate,
Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity

Perceptions of Biodiversity Change

sarah.bezan@york.ac.uk

Biography

I completed a PhD in Literature at The University of Alberta with the support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Killam Trust in 2017. I then took up a British Academy Newton International Fellowship from 2018-2020 at The University of Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre, where I researched emerging cultural understandings of extinction as imagined by 21st century storytellers, artists, and scientific illustrators. I continued this programme of research as a Research Associate on the BIOSEC project at The University of Sheffield’s Department of Politics and International Relations before joining LCAB in November 2020.

Research

My research demonstrates how contemporary creative representations of species loss and revival are radically reshaping cultural imaginaries of the Anthropocene. In my second book project (in progress), I examine how authors and artists are playing a key role in illuminating the cultural values that fuel species revivalist fantasies aroused by the prospect of de-extinction science. This work builds on my expertise in species storytelling, as evidenced by the forthcoming publication of my first book Dead Darwin: Necro-Ecologies in Neo-Victorian Culture (Manchester UP). I am also at work on a third book project (under advance contract with Reaktion) about the “next natures” of the biotechnologically revived woolly mammoth (or “mammophant”).

I am a founding member of the UK Future Earth ECRP Network, a research associate with the Digital Animalities Project at York University (Canada), and founder of the Cultures of Species Revival Research Group. From 2020-2023, I am PI and Co-PI on two British Academy/Royal Irish Academy seed funding grants related to coastal (post)humanities and speculative Anthropocenes.

Publication Highlights

Bezan, S. (2022). A Posthumanist Critique of De-Extinction Science. In Sands, D. (ed) Bioethics and the Posthumanities. Routledge, London. pp. 87-98.

Bezan, S. (2022) The Species Revivalist Sublime: Encountering the Kaua’i ‘ō‘ō in Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s Re-Animated. In Bienvenue, V. and Chare, N. (eds) Animals, Plants, Afterimages: The Art and Science of Representing Extinction. Berghahn, New York. pp. 211-229. (Invited contribution).

Bezan, S. (2019) Dodo Birds and the Anthropogenic Wonderlands of Harri Kallio Parallax 25 (4), pp. 427-445.

Bezan, S. (2019) Regenesis Aesthetics: Visualizing the Woolly Mammoth in De-Extinction Science Antennae: Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, 45, pp. 218-237.

Bezan, S. (2019) The Endling Taxidermy of Lonesome George: Iconographies of Extinction at the End of the Line Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology 27 (2), pp. 211-238. Co-edited by Sarah Bezan and Susan McHugh.

Funder

• The Leverhulme Trust