Lunchtime Discussions

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 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

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. They showcase the role of the small and the local in the inevitable transformation ahead, and how green-washing is flooding marketing and policy strategies.

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 both a symbol of the exuberance of life and has spiritual meaning for indigenous peoples and forest dwellers. 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.

A large portion of consumers emissions stems from the use of products and services which environmental impact is often determined in the early design stages. Design thus has a massive impact on emissions, how can release the transformative potential that lies in design? Jannicke Hølen and Knut Bang 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.

What does the recovery of large carnivores in Norway tell us about the nature of conflict and coexistence? John Linnell, senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, offers his perspectives.

Why does the recent turn to matter in critical theory so often invoke fiction to explain its ideas? In this lunch talk, Tobias Skiveren, assistant professor at Aarhus University (DK), will discuss this question based his recent publication in Theory, Culture & Society.

How to think about territorial rights and duties in a world where the relative stability and predictability of Holocene conditions are gone? In this talk, associate professor in philosophy Alejandra Mancilla claims that political theorists require a new model for thinking about land, natural resources and our relationship to them, and suggest how this may be done.

How do different universities engage with the question of what "environmental humanities" should entail? Five fellows in environmental humanities at Ca' Foscari University in Venice offer their perspectives on their methods and topics.

Can monstrous plants help human beings imagine and transform themselves into more sustainable creatures? In this talk, Dr. Astrid Møller-Olsen analyses fictional plant-human hybrids that question the nature-culture dichotomy and explore alternative paths to understanding the planet as a cross-species environment.

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”.

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?

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 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.