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Contribution short abstract:

The environmental legacies of war are not included in the sustainable development goals. My crafting practice developed from my research on such legacies, as a means of peaceful, scholarly protest and for coming to terms with the effects of research on my psyche. Examples will be presented.

Contribution long abstract:

As an environmental historian, I work with the toxic legacies of humankind, mostly those stemming from weapons' production. Some are tamed for the moment, encased in concrete, and sealed against groundwater intrusion. Some are monsters, in the sense of being frightening, large, strange and hard, if not impossible to control. Their monstrosity is as much a social and economic as a technical and scientific one. Monsters such as Hanford (USA) or Pokhran (India) stem from war preparations. My work has led me to critique the SDGs (the Sustainable Development Goals), for not including in a meaningful way toxic legacies and the corruption happening in their clean-up. Starting from "Weaving the SDGs" (2021), I have become more of a peace activist than I ever imagined to be, seeking non-violent, scholarly forms of protest.

The knowledge I acquired through working with my hands, learning to produce tablet-woven bands, and now through knitting and crocheting for peace, has transformed the way I conceive of transformative learning. It has also helped me deal with the feeling of helplessness that comes with scholarly work on toxic legacies.