Fellowship Forum: Dr. Bayo Akomolafe on Wrestling with Postactivism and Planetary Health
On May 16, we continued the Garrison Institute Fellowship Forum with a conversation between Dr. Bayo Akomolafe and Dr. Angel Acosta, the Director of the Garrison Institute Fellowship. Dr. Akomolafe is a Western-trained psychologist from Nigeria, with roots in the West African Yoruba tradition, and a leader of The Emergence Network.
Their dialogue on re-framing our notions of social or environmental activism and of humans’ place in our altered world engaged with the pillars of the Garrison Institute Fellowship as well as our Pathways to Planetary Health initiative. They discussed Dr. Akomolafe’s work, which transcends our anthropocentric conception of social and environmental engagement, and proposes a new understanding humans’ place in our altered world, in which it’s no longer unthinkable our form of civilization may end, or that it has in fact already ended. We invite you to revisit this conversation, which has provided much wisdom for our work as we face the urgent challenges of these times.
The Garrison Institute Fellowship Forum is a series of conversations with extraordinary leaders with expertise and experience in awareness-based contemplative wisdom, the science of interconnection, generative action, and collective healing. Each conversation will be co-facilitated by the Garrison Institute Fellows and Fellowship Director Dr. Angel Acosta.
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is an author, speaker, lecturer, renegade academic, ethnopsychotherapeutic researcher and proud diaper-changer, Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), is globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional and counter-intuitive take on global crisis, civic action and social change. He is Executive Director and Initiating / Co-ordinating Curator for the Emergence Network. Bayo has authored two books: ‘We Will Tell Our Own Story’ and ‘These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters To My Daughter on Humanity’s Search For Home’ and has penned forewords for many others. Bayo is visiting professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, and has taught in universities around the world (including Sonoma State University California, Simon Frasier University Vancouver, Schumacher College Devon, Harvard University, and Covenant University Nigeria – among others). He is a consultant with UNESCO, leading efforts for the Imagining Africa’s Future (IAF) project. He speaks and teaches about his experiences around the world, and then returns to his adopted home in Chennai, India – “where the occasional whiff of cow dung dancing in the air is another invitation to explore the vitality of a world that is never still and always surprising.” He considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son – Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden – and their mother, his wife and “life-nectar”, Ijeoma.