Louise Firth is a Senior Lecturer at University College Cork, Ireland.
Louise is a marine ecologist who works in both natural and artificial coastal environments. She is interested in the relationship between humans and coastal ecosystems and how this relationship has changed over time. While much of her recent research focuses on developing novel ways of making space for nature in human-dominated environments, perhaps her true passion is LIMPETS. Over the past 10 years she have made it her mission to "fly the flag for limpets”. Having attended every ITRS conference since Santa Barbara 2006 (except Adelaide 2008), she collaborates widely with the ITRS community and considers them her academic family.
Presentation:
International Temperate Reefs Symposium: Genesis, Ethos and Evolution
Louise B Firth1, Pippa Moore2
1University College Cork, Ireland - <sup>2University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
The International Temperate Reefs Symposium (ITRS) was founded in 1990 as a response to the fact that temperate reef ecology wasn’t really being represented in the global conference scene—especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Initially a small, informal gathering of researchers primarily from Australasia and North America, it aimed to create a space for those studying temperate reefs to exchange ideas, share stories, and enjoy a pint together. Over the years, though, the conference has grown, and so has the research. It’s often been said that ITRS used to be conference about limpets, but now it’s a conference about kelp. In this talk, not only will we will look back at the origins and evolution of the symposium, but we will formally test the hypothesis that the conference has undergone a catastrophic phase shift and that the focus of the conference has indeed shifted over time. We will do this by sampling abstracts from past conferences to see how the themes have evolved. Looking to the future, we will also discuss how the spirit of ITRS—its inclusivity, its support for students and early-career researchers, and its focus on camaraderie—can continue to evolve as the conference moves forward.