Ursula Münster is Associate Professor at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages and the director of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH). She leads the project «Anthropogenic Soils: Recuperating Human-Soil Relationships on a Troubled Planet».
The project studies the ways people in different parts of the world have invented, practiced, and imagined ways of recuperating soil health. We conceptualize soils not as natural resources to be exploited, but as “anthropogenic”, as lively and dynamic natural-cultural composition responsive to human recuperation and healing.
The project’s five work packages include studies of repairing contaminated, toxic, and depleted soils in different parts of the globe – from South Asia to Norway and the Arctic – as well as artistic and multimedia research into the ways in which Indigenous writers and artists offer alternative modes of relating to soils, and for building possible future of earthly survival.