About the event

People have lived alongside Norfolk's coast for centuries - fishing, farming, building communities on ground that was never quite solid. Now, with sea levels rising and storms intensifying, this relationship is changing faster than ever.

Join author and NWT Ambassador Nick Acheson in conversation with Professor Johanna Forster, Professor Ben Garrod and author and naturalist David North to ask what the next hundred years actually look like for the people and wildlife that call our coast home.

Please join us at 7pm - the talk starts at 7.05pm. A link to the event will be sent out on the morning.

About our speakers:

Johanna Forster is Professor of Environment and Global Development at the University of East Anglia, and the university's Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Civic Engagement. An environmental social scientist, she has spent over two decades researching how communities manage and govern marine and coastal resources in the face of climate change, working across the Caribbean, the Pacific and closer to home in East Anglia. Her work brings together ecological, social and economic perspectives, from fisheries resilience to the loss of coastal heritage as seas rise. At UEA, she also leads efforts to build genuine, grassroots connections between the university, Norwich and the wider region.

Ben Garrod is Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Science Engagement at the University of East Anglia, and Vice President of Norfolk Wildlife Trust. An evolutionary biologist and conservationist, his fieldwork across Africa, Asia and the Arctic has given him a front-row seat to ecosystem collapse, and his Extinct book series explores what's lost when a species runs out of time. An award-winning broadcaster, he has presented BBC series including Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard and Secrets of Bones. Norwich is home ground for Ben, and he brings a scientist's eye to what the next hundred years hold for Norfolk's coast.

David North has spent 40 years living and working on the North Norfolk coast, and few people know its shifting marshes, shingle and shoreline better. After a career with the National Trust, the RSPB and Norfolk Wildlife Trust, he retired seven years ago but never really left. He still volunteers at Cley and Salthouse Marshes.

David is the author of several books on the coast, including Elements of the North Norfolk Coast, Wilderness Walks and Life Changing - Cley and Salthouse Marshes. His latest, Bernard Bishop. My Life at Cley, tells the story of Cley's much-loved warden and the mark he left on this stretch of coast. Trained in Geography at Durham and Ecology at Bangor, David brings a rare mix of science, local history and first-hand experience to the question of how we live alongside a coastline that won't stay still.