My Bass Connections Pathway
Meghan O’Neil, a PhD candidate in English, took part in the Bass Connections project team Exploring the Intersection of Energy and Peace-Building Through Film.
“As a literary scholar, one of my most basic interests is in narrative. How and why do we tell stories? What forms do these stories take? And how does storytelling help us understand ourselves and interpret the world around us? I joined this project team to explore these questions in the context of pressing concerns regarding the environment, human health, and local and international conflict and peace-building. Partnering with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), our team collected and digitized a decade’s worth of footage shot during environmental assessments of post-conflict zones from the Niger Delta to the Middle East. Using this footage as well as detailed assessment reports, our team began to track the complex web of relationships that links natural resources to conflict in order to think through the ways in which the environment and natural resources might also become part of the process of building peace within and between communities and nations.”