Looking wider: changing seasonality in other communities, worldwide
There are a growing number of accounts of communities worldwide facing seasonal change.
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Just recently, in June 2022, for example, an article described how Indigenous Australians are seeing disruption to their traditional calendars and are working with scientists to redefine their seasonal boundaries, cues and symbols.
It is important then that, while CALENDARS conducts a deep study into seasonality in two particular communities, it links up to ongoing research and initiatives in other places in the world. CALENDARS has broadened its perspective and impact in three main ways. First, the projects research concepts and methods are being emulated in sister projects that share a strong ‘family resemblance’ to CALENDARS. Notably two associated Marie Curie projects (HAAA and CANALS – see "Project team") in Austria and Germany, an investigation of seasonal forecasts in East Africa under the H2020-funded CONFER project, and a master's course at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, USA.
Second, we are publishing material targeted to a broad spectrum of audiences worldwide. On one hand, this includes publishing research articles that push international research on climate adaptation and culture in bold new directions. On the other hand, we are assembling a transdisciplinary popular science volume comprising almost 40 chapters, which gives rich cultural accounts of changing seasonality in different places and walks of life worldwide; from computer programmers to insurance companies, modern-day witches to rugby teams, indigenous communities to climate scientists.
A third line of enquiry looks at how seasons are being transformed into universal cultural categories at a global scale. It follows two case studies where countries have sought to register seasons as UNESCO cultural heritage – in Norway and India – together with an account for how climate and meteorological science is standardizing seasonal periods around the Gregorian calendar in ways that ignore the specificity of seasons in different places. This is the focus of a masters' research project in 2022-2023.