Devi Lockwood has traveled the world by bike and boat to collect — and share — stories about water and climate. One of her next stops is University of Lynchburg.
Lockwood will present a Gender Studies Lecture at 7 p.m. March 22 in the Memorial Ballroom, Hall Campus Center.
Beginning with the People’s Climate March in New York City in September 2014, Devi set out to travel the world and collect 1,001 stories about water and climate change. To date, she has collected over 500 audio recordings throughout the United States, Fiji, Tuvalu, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Qatar.
In November 2016, Devi attended the COP22, the UN climate talks in Morocco, as a youth delegate with SustainUS. “The personal is political is ecological,” she has said. “Feminism made me ride my bike around the world.”
Dr. Beth Savage invited Lockwood to Lynchburg because she is a recent college graduate who has done bold, daring, independent work. “Devi shows by example that young people do not have to harness their passions based on the traditional choices available to them after graduation,” Dr. Savage said. “Instead they can use their passions and education to forge new, exciting paths for themselves that also meet important needs for our society.
“Devi is an example of what can happen when you break out of the limitations of traditional thematic and academic boundaries to discover what’s possible; when we consider different ways of thinking about the world as complementary, instead of competing,” Dr. Savage added.
Devi’s written work defies boundaries as it incorporates science, travel and poetry, Dr. Savage said. Devi has published articles in Buzzfeed, The Guardian and The New York Times.
