Munro Lecture - 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice' Since anthropogenic climate change started making the news, Bangladesh has been an iconic case of a country facing its worst impacts. The call upon its people to show their capacity for resilience has been met by studies showing instead the entanglement of adaptation efforts with state imperatives that run counter to climate objectives, a development industry that seeks to perpetuate itself, and other vested interests. The language of climate justice has emerged to address this gap between stated goals and material realities, even veering into the language of climate coloniality to decry its impossibility. In this talk, Professor Khan ponders the tension between the work of making climate change visible within lives and that of unveiling the workings of power, to explore if we have lost our ability to describe crises-filled lives and catastrophic change. Professor Khan speculates whether to regain our voice, that is, to re-attend to precarious lives in these dark times, we need to accept the impossibility of climate justice. Professor Naveeda Khan Naveeda Khan is Professor of Anthropology, and affiliate faculty in Women, Gender, Sexuality; Islamic Studies; Comparative Thought and Literature; and Environmental Science and Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She has worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Dhaka and Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Travelers and Immigrants Aid (TIA) and The Field Museum of Natural History. Her research spans religious lives and urban form in Pakistan, riverine lives, national climate policy and youth politics in Bangladesh, UN led global climate governance processes, German romanticism and Bengali and Urdu literature. She is the author of Muslim Becoming: Aspiration and Skepticism in Pakistan (2012) River Life and the Upspring of Nature (2022) and In Quest of a Shared Planet: Negotiating Climate from the Global South (2023) and editor of Beyond Crisis: Reevaluating Pakistan (2010) and Dream's Navel: Reading Akhtaruzzaman Elias' Khwabnama (forthcoming). She is currently working on a book tentatively titled “Householding on a Warming Planet.” Photo credits: Syeda FarhanaMunro LecturesThe Munro Lectures are a series of public lectures from international scholars in the fields of archaeology and anthropology. Munro Lectures May 07 2026 17.15 - 18.30 Munro Lecture - 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice' Professor Naveeda Khan will present the next Munro Lecture 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice' Teviot Lecture Theatre, Old Medical School - Doorway 5, Teviot Place, EH8 9AG Old Medical School Tickets (free)
Munro Lecture - 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice' Since anthropogenic climate change started making the news, Bangladesh has been an iconic case of a country facing its worst impacts. The call upon its people to show their capacity for resilience has been met by studies showing instead the entanglement of adaptation efforts with state imperatives that run counter to climate objectives, a development industry that seeks to perpetuate itself, and other vested interests. The language of climate justice has emerged to address this gap between stated goals and material realities, even veering into the language of climate coloniality to decry its impossibility. In this talk, Professor Khan ponders the tension between the work of making climate change visible within lives and that of unveiling the workings of power, to explore if we have lost our ability to describe crises-filled lives and catastrophic change. Professor Khan speculates whether to regain our voice, that is, to re-attend to precarious lives in these dark times, we need to accept the impossibility of climate justice. Professor Naveeda Khan Naveeda Khan is Professor of Anthropology, and affiliate faculty in Women, Gender, Sexuality; Islamic Studies; Comparative Thought and Literature; and Environmental Science and Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She has worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Dhaka and Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Travelers and Immigrants Aid (TIA) and The Field Museum of Natural History. Her research spans religious lives and urban form in Pakistan, riverine lives, national climate policy and youth politics in Bangladesh, UN led global climate governance processes, German romanticism and Bengali and Urdu literature. She is the author of Muslim Becoming: Aspiration and Skepticism in Pakistan (2012) River Life and the Upspring of Nature (2022) and In Quest of a Shared Planet: Negotiating Climate from the Global South (2023) and editor of Beyond Crisis: Reevaluating Pakistan (2010) and Dream's Navel: Reading Akhtaruzzaman Elias' Khwabnama (forthcoming). She is currently working on a book tentatively titled “Householding on a Warming Planet.” Photo credits: Syeda FarhanaMunro LecturesThe Munro Lectures are a series of public lectures from international scholars in the fields of archaeology and anthropology. Munro Lectures May 07 2026 17.15 - 18.30 Munro Lecture - 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice' Professor Naveeda Khan will present the next Munro Lecture 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice' Teviot Lecture Theatre, Old Medical School - Doorway 5, Teviot Place, EH8 9AG Old Medical School Tickets (free)
May 07 2026 17.15 - 18.30 Munro Lecture - 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice' Professor Naveeda Khan will present the next Munro Lecture 'Bangladesh and the (Im)Possibility of Climate Justice'
