Lena Dobrowolska (she/her)
School of Architecture
Research Associate: Culture and Climate Change
Full contact details
School of Architecture
Arts Tower
Western Bank
Sheffield
S10 2TN
- Profile
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Lena Dobrowolska is an artist, practice-based researcher, filmmaker and educator. Exploring the role of practice-based enquiry in the context of the climate crisis, she works to surface alternative narratives and representations of intangible loss and damage to inform more inclusive, reparatory and justice-led approaches to addressing the irreversible impacts of climate change.
She presented her work at COP25 in collaboration with the Platform on Disaster Displacement, was the recipient of the Coalition of Arts and Sustainable Development Prize in 2019 and The Culture and Climate Change: Future Scenarios Networked Residency in 2016. She is a research associate within the Culture and Climate Change initiative, exploring cultural framings of environmental change and interdisciplinary climate futures.
- Qualifications
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- 2021 PgCert Art and Design Education, Royal College of Art, London
- 2019 MA Digital Direction, Royal College of Art, London
- 2014 MA Fine Art Intermedia, Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow
- 2010 BA (Hons) Photography, Falmouth Art Collage, Falmouth
- Research interests
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Her current research explores co-creative approaches to documenting and addressing non economic loss and damage (mainly loss of culture, social cohesion and impacts on mental and spiritual wellbeing) with immersive technologies in the context of planned relocation.
Her past research explored the political ecologies of glacial recession in the Third Pole, climate-induced mobility, the psycho-social impacts of disasters, and climate-changed future scenarios. Her work, which intends to drive change in the political and cultural narratives surrounding combined climate, environmental and human rights crisis, is often made in collaboration with fellow artist Teo Ormond-Skeaping and partnerships with frontline communities, civil society organisations, climate researchers, and humanitarian actors. Her practice is often policy-oriented and intends to bear witness and create space for debate inside policymaking forums and processes.
She is interested in transdisciplinary, decolonial and participatory approaches to climate knowledge production, ecofeminist perspectives on climate, anticolonial research methodologies, speculative practice, documentary moving image practice, digital technologies, climate mobility, loss and damage, climate justice, and the governmentality of climate crisis under the UNFCCC process.
- Professional activities and memberships
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Lena is currently a PhD Researcher at the Digital Cultures Research Centre, UWE Bristol, and a lecturer in MA Digital Direction at the Royal College of Art. She also works to co-facilitate the artistic research program Acts of Repair: Loss and Damage, which is part of the Loss and Damage Collaborations Art and Culture Program.