Chris Sandbrook

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@rspb.bsky.social @bou.org.uk

The front page of the article “The gendered forest: Digital surveillance technologies for conservation and gender-environment relationships," from the Special Issue on “The Forest Multiple,” by Trishant Simlai and Chris Sandbrook, published in the Environment and Planning F.

“The gendered forest,” a paper by @trishantsimlai.bsky.social and @csandbrook.bsky.social, critically examines the gendered implications of surveillance technologies, such as camera traps and drones, in forest environments: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

The speeches were amazing - particularly from Dariusz Wójcik and Susan Smith, who both reminded me of why I love geography.

A particular thank you to my parents - Bud and Martin Sandbrook - who were there on the day. It was very special to share the moment with them.

I had a great afternoon at the @rgsibg.bsky.social collecting the Cuthbert Peek award. The whole event was fantastic - a really inspiring group of prize winners who are advancing geography in so many ways, including student projects, teachers, researchers, civil servants and those doing outreach.

9 months waiting for UK gov action on the HE funding crisis and what we get is a tax on international student fees, which are currently keeping the entire sector afloat. Labour are bending the knee to the far right at the expense of all the benefits we get from thriving universities. So frustrating!

I just realised Paul Simon's song The Boy in the Bubble (1986) has a verse about the Nature FinTech sector in 2025:

"And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires"

Advancing animal behaviour research using drone technology Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones have revolutionized wildlife monitoring, and they are increasingly being used to study animal behaviour. In this re…

Lucia Pedrazzi is using drones to study animal behaviour in her PhD. Here's her introduction to the topic. With me, @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social, Miguel Lurgi (cosupervisors), and Hemal Naik and @csandbrook.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Transactions by Valerio Donfrancesco & Chris Sandbrook (2025) entitled 'From biopower to affirmative biopolitics: A (bio)political ecology of becoming with wolves' with a red banner at the top.

#OpenAccess paper in TIBG:

'From biopower to affirmative biopolitics: A (bio)political ecology of becoming with wolves' by @vdonfrancesco.bsky.social & @csandbrook.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1111/tran... #geo #geosky

Does your gpt account know your name Nix? If so it may have found your article and joined some dots

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library Exercises of biopower to promote human–wolf coexistence can have limited success. In contrast, affirmative biopolitics grounded in place-based ethics, which recognise wolves as subjects rather than l...

New paper from my PhD, in Transactions (@tibg.bsky.social) coauthored by @csandbrook.bsky.social. On wolves, farmers and interspecies violence.
"From biopower to affirmative biopolitics: A (bio)political ecology of becoming with wolves"
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
A thread below

Impeccable timing George! But an important and interesting post nonetheless

Beyond the Hype: Navigating the Conservation Implications of Artificial Intelligence Conservation AI—the deliberate application of artificial intelligence technology to achieve conservation goals—has great potential to boost productivity, make existing conservation actions more effic...

This paper by @csandbrook.bsky.social also provides a thoughtful review of the uses and abuses of #AI in #conservation: "arguing that to date there has been too much techno-optimism and a lack of attention to risks and broader implications".

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Student Conference on Conservation Science - Welcome SCCS helps young conservation scientists gain experience, learn new ideas and make contacts that will be valuable for their future careers.

📢 SCCS 2025 will be re-opening for applications (attend only) on 20th December 2024. 📢

➡️ Please go to our website www.sccs-cam.org to find out more. SCCS is for early career researchers/conservationists.

✨ ⏰ The window will close on 10th January 2025 at 17:00hrs UK time

I'm not sure what you mean? I've never worked at Kahuzi-Biega, or had anything to do with Paul Kagame.

I'm delighted to have a co-authored chapter (with Bill Adams & Emma Tait) in this fantastic new book. Congrats to the whole @digicologies.bsky.social team for taking the lead on theorising digitally-mediated human–nonhuman entanglements. This field is going to be a wild ride over the coming years...

I could say the same to you - congrats on the SCB papers!

Lastly, I want to congratulate Trishant for his outstanding research. Supervising his PhD was an absolute pleasure, and I am so delighted that his work is now getting the wider recognition it deserves. 🥳

This paper has attracted a lot of media attention in India, with some sensationalist headlines. I hope that it will trigger sensible debate about when and how to use conservation monitoring technology. It is intended to be critical yet constructive, and I hope the coverage will reflect that.

I hope that the conservation sector will take this seriously and adopt our principles for the socially responsible use of conservation monitoring technology and data. This is becoming ever more urgent as AI drives a massive increase in monitoring. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

This work demonstrates that surveillance technologies like camera traps really can create various forms of harm for particular groups of people – in this case women – even where in theory they were only supposed to be monitoring wildlife.

The cameras extended the male gaze into the forest, stopping women singing and changing the way they dressed and spoke. In one case there was sexual harassment when an image of a woman was circulated by men on their phones. An example is shown in the illustration above, by Adwait Pawar.

It is therefore a big moment that the first paper from @trishantsimlai.bsky.social's PhD is now published, in Environment and Planning F. It shows how camera traps used for wildlife monitoring in a forest changed the way women used the space. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

For more than a decade various authors, including me, have been raising this problem. It has been explored extensively in theory, but there have been hardly any published studies that look at these issues using real world empirical case studies.

Digital technologies such as camera traps, drones and acoustic monitors have incredible conservation value as tools to collect data for improved decision making. However, they come with risks for people - particularly if human data are collected, either accidentally (human bycatch) or deliberately.