The University of Windsor (U of W) will host a conference titled “Interdisciplinary approaches to surviving the Zombie Apocalypse” on Oct. 28-29, as part of an effort to teach students how to respond and survive in the event of a global catastrophe.
Lydia Miljan, head of the interdisciplinary arts and sciences program at U of W and organizer of the conference, said she wanted to use the zombie apocalypse metaphor as a way to teach students how to use interdisciplinary approaches in order to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
“I really wanted to do a conference every year and find a problem that people can get engaged in through a lighthearted way, but at the same time really emphasizes the fact that to solve a problem you can’t just have one type of researcher,” Miljan said. “You can’t just have engineers, you can’t just have biologists, but in fact, you need many different disciplines working together, including humanities and social sciences.”
Miljan said the conference will host a variety of keynote speakers and panels with backgrounds in economics, English literature, and cultural studies.
In addition, various workshops that focus on topics like self-defence, biology, food security, information on infectious diseases, and the spread of diseases will be set up throughout the conference.
Students will be encouraged to explore topics such as civil society’s survival of a zombie apocalypse, and the relation of the potential global catastrophe to current events like terrorism and global warming.
Miljan said she got the idea for the zombie-themed conference after watching The Walking Dead, where she began thinking of how society would respond to the collapse of civilization.
“For me, it’s more the question of what happens if there is some catastrophic event and you have a class of civilization. What does society do to rebuild? How do you go about getting basic needs and resources met?” she said. “You have a clear enemy that you have to deal with, so how do you prioritize?”
Esme Prowse, a political science student at U of W, said she believes the conference will help bring attention to the more important questions and discussions surrounding the topic of global disaster.
“I think with this overarching discussion of humans killing each other is a big conversation that we should always be thinking about,” she said.
“I just like the idea of instilling a conversation of possibility of change. Even if nothing can ever happen—zombies aren’t going to happen, or we aren’t going to get a virus—it will get people to really think about the fall of society,” she added.
