Original Date: June 9, 2026
Feminist critiques of environmentalist discourses that vilify African women for having children and African families for placing “pressure” on continental biodiversity have a long history. In this conversation, political ecologist Aby Sène will probe whether the concept of “ecointersectionality” can offer new ways to forge a politics of the environment that makes a clean break with the racist and colonial pasts of conservation and mainstream environmentalism. She will do so through a discussion with Scott Burnett about his new book, Analysing Environmental Discourse: A Critical Approach (Bloomsbury 2026). Ecointersectionality builds on Black feminist and Indigenous critiques of the origins of the climate crisis, and offers promising avenues for critique and coalition-building. In the book, Burnett identifies four dominant and problematic “imaginaries” – green capitalism, colonial conservation, overpopulation, and eco-nationalism – that must be dismantled if an environmentally just future is ever to be achieved.
About Scott Burnett
Scott Burnett is an assistant professor of African Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State and a research affiliate at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies in Johannesburg. His research focuses on exclusionary discourses of race, gender, and sexuality in a range of contexts from far-right masculinist influencers online to the mainstream environmental movement. He is the author of Analysing environmental discourse: A critical approach (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026) and White belongings: Race, land, and property in post-apartheid South Africa (Lexington, 2022) as well as articles in leading journals including the Journal of Far Right Studies, Patterns of Prejudice, Men and Masculinities, Gender and Language, and Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
About Aby Sène
Aby L. Sène, Ph.D., is a faculty at Clemson University in Parks and Conservation Area Management. She is a political ecologist working in environmental conservation. Her work focuses on green imperialism, neocolonialism, resource sovereignty and agrarian land relations in West Africa and South Carolina. She published numerous academic articles and open editorial essays, including one entitled Wilderness, Wildlife and Neocolonialism in Africa published in the Agrarian South: A Journal of political Economy, as well as A Reflection on Imperialism in Nature Conservation from African Conceptions of Care published in Environmental Communication. She is a national of Senegal and has lived, studied, and worked in Senegal, Ghana, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and the U.S.