Lunchtime Discussions

In this talk, curator and editor Jennifer Teets presents Electric Brine, a volume of poetry and critical essays by women voices from diverse fields such as literature, geography, media studies, history of life sciences, sociology, and poetics of science and fiction.

What roles can museums and collections play, in the growing need to convey polyphonic narrations on climate change? In this presentation, Lotten Gustafsson Reinius discusses the multi-disciplinary dialogues and other co-curations as a tentacular weaving across differing knowledge regimes, scales and temporalities. 

What can we learn from geographically marginalized regions such as the Arctic in a transition to more circular building strategies? Tine Hegli talks about the design and execution of a community Greenhouse in Vardø spring 2021, how material scarcity has encouraged resource efficiency, and the Arctic as a green leader.

In this talk, Green Schools Education Consultant Wayles Wilson discusses the sustainability and operational priorities for schools in the United States to provide clean air, water, and food, and why it is challenging in the current context. She considers sustainability in urban schools in the US a critical opportunity for environmental equity across the country.

In this talk anthropologist Florence Durney will present about her ongoing research on the intersection of indigenous and state marine tenure systems and marine environmental change. In particular she will discuss how climate-induced marine environmental change is complicating processes of living with, claiming, and negotiating marine boundaries for humans and non-humans alike. 

In this talk, writer and diver, Ting. J. Yiu discusses her ecocritical creative practice through an aquatic lens. Centering diasporic displacement, she discusses how aquatic narratives and interspecies encounters are radical sites to subvert notions of citizenship, (re)negotiating identities, and contesting hegemonic environmental narratives.

Agential Matter is an artistic research project which examines performativity of algae, objects and bodies in instances of observation in scientific research, industrial production and artistic encounter. This talk by artist Sabine Popp is seen as an opportunity to (re)turn to a small shed at a landing station for harvested kelp as one of several places of hybrid coexistence.

In this talk, sustainability and tourism researcher Per Strömberg discusses the practices of ‘adaptive reuse’ of buildings as part of a cultural economy. He considers ‘reuse value’ is a cultural capital which is used as a rhetorical device in the discourse of sustainability and circular economy, but also, something that can be converted into economic capital in urban redevelopment.

This talk by contemporary historian Tirza Meyer will be a presentation of the project ‘Humanoid Oceans’ that seeks to explore the history of what happens to the oceanic environment when humans venture into the ocean with the help of technology.

In this talk, philosopher and veterinarian Kerstin Weich introduces how veterinary humanities contribute to current discussions on environmentality in biomedicine. Starring: Japanese fungus, veterinarians, tapeworms, horses and dung-feeding beetles in ecological turf wars.

In this talk, poet and translator Kathleen Maris Paltrineri will discuss ecopoetic works published in Norway that push boundaries in form, language, and thought as they explicitly or implicitly address the ramifications of climate change. She will also draw on her translation experience to discuss how ecotranslation may invite innovative translation and creative writing practices and may be its own form of activism.

In this talk, environmental anthropologist Dr. Nikiwe Solomon explores how particular assumptions built into the design of infrastructure, as well as the bureaucratic and techno-managerial approaches used to build said infrastructure, often take for granted the social consequences of infrastructure’s day-to-day (mal)functioning.

New OSEH Associate Professor II, Michelle Bastian, will discuss her current fellowship project which will build connections with phenology, the study of lifecycle timing in plants and animals, and humanities research.  

In this talk, anthropologist Anselmo Matusse introduces how the Mozambican state establishes extractivism in the country and its pernicious effects on people and landscapes on the ground.

Drawing on two years of fieldwork with minority youth who participated in an outdoor education program located in a low-income area of Oslo, anthropologist Tuva Beyer Broch focus how youth balance their own family background, peers, authority figures, Norwegian society and natural surroundings.

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. 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.