Lunchtime Discussions

In this talk, artist Marte Johnslien and art historian Ingrid Halland will introduce their new research project The Materiality of White that explores how the Norwegian innovation Titanium Dioxide has changed surfaces in art, architecture and design—making the world whiter, brighter and cleaner looking.

In this talk, Old Norse philologist Stefka G. Eriksen will introduce the new research initiative 'Sustainability Narratives' (SUSTAIN) which discusses the role of literature and narratives of all mediums in environmental and societal transformations in the medieval North.

Towards the end of the 19th century, there was a modest but regular export of block ice from Norwegian lakes to Algeria. Why is it worth talking about a commodity that was rapidly melting away in the Mediterranean heat? In this Environmental Lunchtime Discussion, historian Solfrid Klakegg Surland will explain how studying the marketing and consumption of Nordic ice in a hot colonial market can teach us something about the relationship between humans and things.

In this talk, reporters Simen Sætre and Kjetil Østli discuss the profitability and severe ecological impacts of salmon fishing in history, and the dangers of speaking out against the industry.

Oslo Science City aims to position Oslo and Norge on the global stage as a leading science nation. Here we have 7 500 researchers and 30 000 students contributing to finding sustainable solutions to large-scale societal issues.

This talk by Dr. Rahul Ranjan, political anthropologist at the Oslo Metropolitan University, presents a case study of 'climatic event' in Uttarakhand, India, to demonstrate how aggressive development projects such as dams are increasing the frequency of disaster.

In his talk, poet, writer and language teacher Kenneth Nsah will discuss the role of literature in climate mitigation, environmental protection, and nature conservation in the Congo Basin. He will address how literature can promote and challenge environmental policies and practices.

Antarctica is a famously a continent with no people – or at least, no people who call the continent home – and people are usually regarded as central to any definition of colonialism. In this talk, Peder Roberts, associate professor at the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Stavanger, asks whether the way humans engage with the living environment of Antarctica nevertheless can be analyzed in terms of colonialism.

In this talk, environmental anthropologist Sara Asu Schroer will introduce us to her ongoing ethnographic research project that investigates the challenges and possibilities of European vulture conservation within landscapes that have become at once increasingly toxic and sanitized.

Troels Troels-Lunden (1840-1921) wrote in his thesis on everyday life in Denmark and Norway in the 1500s that porridge and gruel were the oldest known warm dishes in Scandinavia. Both before and since, porridge has remained key in the lives of many Scandinavians up until very recently. In this talk, Tarjei Brekke, master student at the program Chinese Culture and Society, offers some reflections on this ancient food and his experiences with finding some of its first ingredients in the contemporary world.

This talk by assistant professor Anne Pasek at Trent University asks what might happen if the environmental humanities were to extend its intellectual project to the domain of research methods. What would more ecologically-just modes of inquiry and exchange look like, and how might they work to reconfigure the global academy for the better?

This presentation explores the historical transformations of technoscientific understandings of space and their relation to nature and agriculture

The lecture by professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp and journalist Tone Skårdal Tobiasson invites the audience into the world of textiles, where currently an important environmental battle about how "sustainability" should be defined and understood is being fought. The presenters guide the audience through the sad fate of wool in Europe, both quite concretely (about 80% is thrown away) and in the comparison tools where wool is designated as an even bigger environmental loser. They will showcase the role of the small and local in the inevitable transformation ahead and how green-washing is flooding not only marketing, but also in policy strategies with circular focus.

This talk by environmental anthropologist Pierre du Plessis explores the skilled practice of tracking as a method for noticing and theorizing landscape change. Beginning with an overview of my work in the Kalahari Desert, Botswana, he shows how tracking involves an attunement to broader landscape relations in ways that exceed the exclusive relationship to animals usually associated with tracking. 

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.

Sami scholar Liisa-Rávná Finbog discusses The Story of Terra Nullius, a deeply-moving and personal account of her Indigenous upbringing and Sami perspectives on land, nature, sovereignty, ownership and resource extraction.

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 messages are coded through the nonhuman voice? How do animals witness, record, and replay the sounds of anthropogenic incursion? How might their calls pluralize human narratives of extinction and biodiversity loss? This talk will consider bird mimicry as an agential and unsettling sonic facsimile, sent live and direct from The Field. Mark Peter Wright, postdoctoral researcher at CRiSAP, University of the Arts, London, shares his research. 

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.

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.

Frits Thaulow (1847-1906) was in his own time often referred to as the painter of "the Stream, the Snow and the Night." To this one can add "Smoke". In many of his most captivating landscapes, Thaulow captured signs of modern industry such as smoke from factory chimneys, and steam from trains. Øystein Sjåstad, associate professor in art history at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas offers his perspectives on the beautification of pollution.

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.