Webpages tagged with «Environmental Humanities»

The Oslo School of Environmental Humanities sends its most sincere congratulations to Thom van Dooren for being awarded the 2021 Fleck Prize for his book The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia University Press 2019).

On the 5th of June, 2021, the students at the Honour's Certificate met up with the Oslo Fjord School. The learning focus of the excursion was on the underwater multispecies lives of the Oslo fjord and "Underwater Urbanity".

The Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH) is currently hosting ten Collaboratories – interdisciplinary research groups led by humanities scholars to ask new questions and develop innovative approaches for studying the Anthropocene.

Artist and activist Jordan Seiler talks us through his text ´Reaffirming Engagement´, which considers the artistic and activist strategies of ´subvertising´ as a means of breathing life back into our streets post-covid-19. In particular, he´ll shed light on how this form of civil disobedience challenges the dominant narratives presented to us in our shared public spaces, and how a civic-media alternative is beneficial to the health and well-being of a city and its inhabitants.

Sarah Prosser and Amy Franceschini (Futurefarmers) discuss their interdisciplinary collaboration for Action Stories, which brings the two together to reflect on the seemingly unrelated fields of geology and social innovation.

The Bionic Natures collaboratory is hosting a public talk by Mick Geerits and Arthur Gouillart, who will present their collaborative project Augmented Nature—a set of robotic tools designed to help animals survive the ongoing planetary mass extinction.

Impatient to act, we are wary of anything that looks like time-wasting, and an action demanding as much time and patience as attention inevitably slows things down. Yet slowness is not opposed to change; changing human behaviour is slow work, and change in human behaviour is now what is at stake. Simone Kotva, research fellow at the Faculty of Theology at UiO, shares her perspectives. 

What kind of careful attention to the meaningful lives of other species does film making engender? What sort of perspectives may it open up and/or foreclose? In this talk, filmmaker Asgeir Helgestad and historian of science Ageliki Lefkaditou, draw on three of their documentary projects on climate change and biodiversity loss to discuss how filming may convey the complex relationships that such processes provoke and threaten.

How may we grasp meaning beyond the boundaries of biological species? In this talk Dominique Lestel, will explore ‘zoo-futurism’ as setting up the basis of an ego-ecology – to incarnate and to feel biodiversity not from the point of view of the first person, but from the point of view of a first person; to feel its richness and importance from a personal point of view.

How can we feminist new materialist theory help us understand our entanglement with nature, climate and its changes?

The tropical rainforest is the most diverse terrestrial ecosystem on Earth, it is a symbol of the exuberance of life and Creation, it has spiritual meaning for indigenous peoples and forest dwellers, it is home to hundreds of millions of people, and it makes up an immense carbon sink without which the world will not reach its climate goals. In this Environmental Lunchtime Discussion, Simon Rye, shares his perspectives on religions' and indigenous people's efforts to end the destruction of tropical rainforests.

What if we looked at the deep future as a collaborative multi-species project? This collaboratory brings together people interested in the exploration of deep time using playful storytelling practices like Nordic LARP and other forms of role-play.

How might attention to worlds of meaning extend beyond the human, and how may this matter for conservation?  In this lecture, Marianne Lien, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, explores how worlds, such as specific landscapes, are sustained through reciprocal and ongoing practices and affordances.

The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) estimates that 75% of UK consumers' carbon emissions come from the use of products and services. We also know that 80% of the environmental impacts of those products and services are determined in the early stages of design (EU). These two figures tell us that sustainability is chiefly about stuff and that the impacts of products or services are pretty much designed-in (or out for that matter) from the very outset; “Design is the problem as well as the solution”. Jannicke Hølen, programme leader Innovation for All, and Knut Bang, Senior Advisor of Design at DOGA (Design og arkitektur Norge), propose the following: If environmentalism's success was in spotlighting sustainability problems to the world, the success of design will be in helping deliver solutions.

We are excited to announce the new lecture series: "New Environmental Archaeologies - Anthropocene Agendas for Environmental Archaeology”.

Morris' project Communing with Others: Multispecies Entanglements in Mexican Ecovillages focuses on the emergent ecovillage movement in Mexico, exploring how people imagine, construct, and inhabit intentional, ecologically-oriented communities.

How has the notion of the Anthropocene changed our disciplines, research practice and theories? 

The green roadmap for the Norwegian Arts and Culture Sector aims to provide an overall status, set specific goals and propose measures to reduce the climate footprint in the sector. Project manager of the road map, Linnéa E. Svensson, will present the outline and discuss with you - are we there yet?

In this webinar, Barbara Bramanti, associate professor of Physical Anthropology at the University of Ferrara, Italy, will present some of the major outcomes of a multidisciplinary ERC-research project (“MedPlag: The medieval plagues: ecology, transmission modalities and routes of the infections”), and reconsider dynamics behind pandemics.

Surveillance is increasingly used to sate the public’s curiosity for a window into the ‘secret lives of wild animals’. Citizens can now track their local wildlife through trail cameras connected to their smartphone, and they can follow live data streams offering minute-by-minute close-ups of wildlife nests 24/7. In this talk, Erica von Essen, Ph. D. and researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, asks: what does this digitalization of wildlife mean for human-wildlife relations? 

In 2020, OSEH continued its work to strengthen interdisciplinary research, teaching and discussions on climate change and the environment. Due to Covid-19, OSEH had to adapt to a "new normal" and postponed some of its planned activity while moving other activities to the virtual space.

There has been proposed to establish a national park in Østmarka south of Oslo. It will eventually be the first one in a lowland coniferous forest in Norway. In this talk, professor Leif Ryvarden, professor in mycology at the University of Oslo, will give us his perspectives on the many national parks around Norway.

In this talk, professor Kyrre Kverndokk will present some of the main results from the research project: “The Future is now: Temporality and exemplarity in climate change discourses”.