Kas reads philosophy and english literature at the University of St Andrews. Her particular interest is in ecological thinking - reflections, both philosophical and poetic, on the interconnection of life, the roots of the anthropocentric worldview, and the origins of our obligations to the rest of the natural world. She has just completed a research project, through the Laidlaw Scholarship, on the metaphysical basis for environmentalism, in which she analysed the origins of anthropocentrism in Enlightenment theories of mind and world, compared the traditions of Ecological Holism and those which advocate restoring the ‘Otherness’ of nature, and tentatively sketched a new approach grounded in process metaphysics and Spinozist panpsychism. Her poetic world is centred on R.S. Thomas, Yeats, Rilke, Dylan Thomas, Olga Orozco, Eugenio Montale, Ted Hughes, Alice Oswald and John Burnside - all of whom she likes to memorise when she’s walking by the sea. She is also a staff writer at The Gay Saint, where she has published both poetry and experimental prose, including a recent piece where she seeks to understand the experience of gender transition through the ideas of Simone Weil. Kas is an organiser of the popular Violetwise series of poetry events, which combines hosting award-winning poets including Jason Allen-Paissant and Sophie Collins with the creation of an egalitarian arena of poetic expression and performance. She is also Vice President of Refugee Action St Andrews, through which she has organised volunteering trips to work with refugee solidarity and aid organisations in Calais.