In this talk, Dr. Charlotte Weatherill will discuss the politics of climate vulnerability, its roots in colonial and imperial violence, and its relationship with resistance. Her argument is that the politics of climate vulnerability is paternalistic and developmental, building on a conceptualisation of vulnerability that is both racialised and gendered, and built on historical, colonial imaginative geographies and imperial politics.

Drawing on a new book, to be published with Liverpool University Press in 2026/27, this talk will first outline her critique of vulnerability, drawing on feminist arguments around paternalism and victimisation. It will then offer an alternative: a breaking down of vulnerability into the concepts of precarity, which builds on the work of political economists; grievability, which builds on the work of Judith Butler, and ‘islanding’ a resistance concept that builds on Pacific Studies. Taken together, this turns vulnerability discourse on its head and tries to relocate vulnerability within a radical politics of climate action.

The lecture will be held in collaboration with the Institute of Social Sciences.