2021
Knowing Natures Eco-Slam
Welcome to an open drop-in exhibition with presentations and performances by students of the Environmental Humanities and Sciences Honours Certificate.
Time and place: Dec. 3, 2021 2:30 PM–7:00 PM, Sophus Bugges hus, Foyer. Click here to register.
The Oslo School of Environmental Humanities cordially invites you to the Knowing Natures Eco-Slam 2021, where students of the Environmental Humanities and Sciences Honours certificate present their research projects through performance, image, sound, and literature.
About the event
The Eco-Slam is an open exhibition hosted by the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities. EHS students will present their final projects, developed during the Knowing Natures course.
There will be performance, image, sound, and literature! All are welcome to this drop-in exhibition, with a program of presentations and performances as listed below.
You can come and go at your own leisure, even without registering.
The presenters and their projects
- Anastasia Bertheussen - A Breathing Wreckage: A Photographic Essay investigating the Creatures living in and around a Plane Wreck at Hansakollen
- Tarjei Brekke - The Riddle of the Steel Bees
- Harald W. Bøe - Ecomorphosis - Poetic Urban Encounters
- Ane Maria G. Døhl - The Nøkk in the Frogner River - Storytelling and Folk Music
- Mari H. Einang & Vilde N. Hilleren - Folk Farming
- Ingrid A. P. Ekelund, Emily P. Middendorf & Johannes H. Sletten - Heim Hage: Sowing Worlds One Seed at a Time
- Ada W. S. Eldevik, Genver Quirino & Jonatan H. Røhme - Clashing Waves
- Tiril Sofie Erdal - I rute
- Merita Fjetland & Marte N. Thomassen - Cheap Food for Whom? An Exploration of Food Chains, Inequality and Environments
- Rita Kovács - Asbjørnsen Got Lost in the Woods and So Should You: A Physical and Textual Hike Through Nordmarka
- Simon O. Roy - Green Gifts: Everyday life and industrial expansions at the Port of Rotterdam
- Thora B. Sandberg & Lisa H. Søyland - Pores Pearls Plastic: The Memory of Matter
- Konrad K. Sandvik & Iva Svalina - Environmental Justice Litigation: What can we learn from Norway's experience?
- Dina Skotnes - Approaching Responsibility: A Study of Norway´s Biggest Oil Companies
- Sjur S. Strøm - River Restored? Perspectives on Urban Nature, Extinction, and Ecological Restoration after the Chlorine Leakage in Akerselva 2011
About the Honours Certificate in Environmental Humanities and Sciences
The Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH) aims to experiment with new forms of teaching in the Anthropocene. Through collaborative lectures, experimental seminars, and field excursions, students at the Honours Certificate will learn to better understand and address the environmental challenges of our times.
WEBINAR: Writing Multispecies Worlds: Graduate Workshop with Thom van Dooren
This workshop explore the writing of multispecies worlds. What are the challenges and possibilities of researching and narrating the ways of life of other species in their entangled, co-forming relationships? This is work that frequently raise difficult questions that are at once epistemological and ethical. The workshop will be led by writer and field philosopher Thom van Dooren.
Time and place: Oct. 13, 2021 9:00 AM–10:30 AM, CET. Register for webinar on Zoom.
Students will be asked to read/view four pieces of multispecies scholarship in advance of the class. Three of these items are listed below. The fourth should be selected by the student, ideally relating to their own research in some way. Students should come to class prepared to offer a two-minute reflection on their fourth (selected) reading, and some of the particular questions or opportunities that it raises in relation to writing multispecies worlds.
The event is limited to 15 participants. The event is catered primarily towards candidates of the Environmental Humanities Honours Certificate or Ph.D. researchers.
Reading/Viewing
- Despret, Vinciane. 2021. “Phonocene: Bird-Singing in a Multispecies World.” RIBOCA2. (Video).
- van Dooren, Thom. 2019. “Provisioning Crows: Cultivating Ecologies of Hope.” In The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Reinert, Hugo. 2019. “Requiem for a Junk-Bird: Violence, Purity and the Wild.” Cultural Studies Review 25 (1): 29–40.
- A fourth item of your choice (see above).
About Thom van Dooren
Thom van Dooren is a field philosopher and writer. He's an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies and the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney, Australia, and From 2020-2022, he is also a Professor II in the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities at the University of Oslo, Norway. van Dooren has written several novels on multispecies lives and received the Society for Social Studies and Sciences' Fleck Prize of 2021 for his book The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia University Press 2019).
2020
Postponed: Workshop. Unworlding and Reworlding: Extinction, Extraction, Emergence
This workshop aims to re-story processes of extinction, extraction, and emergence in multispecies worlds.
Time: Aug. 9, 2020 9:00 AM–Aug. 12, 2020 4:00 PM
This workshop centres on ex-worlds; on unravelling, ending, and loss. How do these processes and their diverse violences take form in and through multispecies relationships? Conversely, how are diverse projects of resistance and renewal in the face of these processes themselves imagined and enabled by more-than-human entanglements? In short, what insights and resources might multispecies studies offer for better understanding the ending of worlds and for enacting alternative possibilities for life? What might attention to these contexts do to, or demand of, multispecies studies?
Multispecies Studies is an emerging area of interdisciplinary research grounded in the understanding that all of our lives are shaped and enabled by interactions with myriad, diverse beings, organic and inorganic. Multispecies work seeks to re-story processes of extinction and conservation, colonisation and climate change, resource production and extraction, to better reflect the inescapably entangled accountabilities, agencies, and vulnerabilities that shape necessarily (yet also unevenly) shared worlds. More than this, work in this area insists that to fully understand and engage these un/re- worlding processes, a serious engagement with the more-than-human is vital. At the heart of this approach is a commitment to an ontology, epistemology, and ethics of careful attention to the lives and worlds of others, grounded in field research that is in sustained conversation with the social and natural sciences, Indigenous knowledges, and a diversity of other ways of knowing.
The attendance of this workshop is by invitation only.
POSTPONED: Workshop - Teaching Across Disciplines in the Anthropocene
This workshop brings together scholars, students and administrative staff at the University of Oslo to envision ways of transforming university education in the age of the Anthropocene.
Time and place: Apr. 23, 2020 3:00 PM–6:00 PM, PAM 425, P. A. Munchs hus, Blindern campus.
Responding directly to demands of the climate-change generation, as well as to UiO's 2030 strategy, of building a more sustainable university, this workshop aims to discuss concrete ways of establishing interdisciplinary education in a time of ecological and climatic crisis. We will address questions like:
What should an Anthropocene curriculum look like?
- Can there be one or must there be several curricula lines (e.g. specializations in research, communication, action, etc.)
- What are the theories, epistemologies and methodologies needed for doing meaningful and impactful research in the Anthropocene?
- Can we teach across disciplines without losing disciplinary depth?
- Given that solutions likely rest in inter- or transdisciplinary research, what are the core skills needed for Anthropocene scholars to work well in such teams?
- What institutional changes and administrative flexibilities are needed?
- How to include interdisciplinary pedagogies as well as experimental and public-facing teaching to address the ecological and climatic crisis?
The workshop will be divided in two parts. The first part will be an open discussion on why and how education should be transformed in an era of ecological and climatic crisis. The second part will feature short impulse presentations by scholars with previous experience in interdisciplinary environmental teaching and experimental pedagogy. We will then discuss concrete examples of transformative teaching experiments at UiO and other institutions.
Please contact us if you are interested in attending the workshop: ingar.stene@ikos.uio.no
The workshop is organized by Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH), in collaboration with OSEH Professor II Felix Riede, University of Aarhus.
2019
Nordic Environments: Opening Conference of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities
How can academics, artists and activists creatively engage with the environmental challenges of current times? How to imagine more just, livable and democratic futures in the Nordic countries?
Time and place: Nov. 1, 2019 10:00 AM–8:30 PM, SALT, Langkaia Oslo
The Oslo School of Environmental Humanities celebrates its official opening on 1 November 2019 at SALT, a nomadic art space located at Oslo’s harbor. We invite you to join our conference and an evening of celebration with environmental interventions from artists, activists and environmental practitioners who live and love the environments of the North.
The event features both a daytime conference with a keynote talk and panel discussion, as well as the evening program "Interventions" with short performances and a concert. The event is open to all, but participation in the daytime program requires registration. No registration is needed to participate in the evening program.
Full program
Daytime program
10:00 – 10:30 Arrival and Coffee
10.30 – 11:00 Welcome and Introductory Words
11:00 – 12:00 Keynote Talk
Heather Swanson (Aarhus University): “Worldly Humanities: Engaging landscapes of inequality"
12:00 – 13.30 Lunch
13.30 – 15.00 Environmental Humanities of the Global North: Panel Discussion
Marco Armiero (KTH Stockholm)
Dolly Jorgenson (University of Stavanger)
Britt Kramvig (The Arctic University of Norway)
Julia Leyda (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
15:00 End of daytime event
Evening program
17:00–17:45 Interventions I
Mads Pålsrud: “Designing for Positive Urban Change”
Elin T. Sørensen and Elisabeth Sjødahl: “The Inner Oslofjord: Underwater Urbanity”
Zane Cerpina: “The Anthropocene Cookbook”
17:45 – 18:15 Break
18:15 – 19:00 Interventions II
Janike Kampevold Larsen: “Mineral Time in the Arctic”
Andreas Randøy: “The Climate Lawsuit”
Kirsty Kross: “Green Fish Show”
19:00 – 19:30 Break
19:30 – 20:30 Concert
Vassvik: "Sápmi Joik & Modern String"
20:30 – Open ended celebration
Venue
The conference will take place at Langhuset, SALT. SALT is a nomadic art project with pyramidal constructions called “hesjer”, which are based on traditional coastal construction methods. SALT was first erected on Sandhornøya in Nordland in 2014 and the project has since visited Bergen and is now in Oslo until 2020 when the journey continues to the north. The pyramidal structures have been developed in collaboration with architect Sami Rintala.
Funding
The event is partly funded by the Oslo European Green Capital 2019.
Workshop: Curating climate - Museums as ‘contact zones’ of climate research, education and activism
How do we narrate climatic change in a museum environment and initiate dialogue across its stakeholders? How can museums become ‘contact zones’ where science and education, activism and entertainment, debate and tourism interact productively?
Time and place: Oct. 28, 2019 9:00 AM–Oct. 29, 2019 4:00 PM, Oslo, Norway
The workshop took place at The Natural History Museum, the site of the new Climate House (Klimahuset).The event is organized by the Curating Climate Collaboratory funded by Oslo School of Environmental Humanities as a long-term collaboratory research project. The international workshop has received additional support from UiO Energy and Heritage Experience Initiative.
The workshop explored the emerging, dynamic and transgressive field of the ‘climate museum’, tracing a unique and highly interdisciplinary space of encounter that connects the sciences and the humanities, academic and public spheres, research and action. The international workshop hosted four keynote speakers and six different sessions with total of over 20 presenters.
For enquiries please contact Bergsveinn Thorsson.
Description
Description
How do we narrate climatic change in a museum environment and initiate dialogue across its stakeholders? How can museums become ‘contact zones’ where science and education, activism and entertainment, debate and tourism interact productively? Various cultural institutions have recently taken up the challenges of communicating climate change and engaging with their communities. They range from established museums to new, emerging and experimental spaces. All attempt to promote debate and tell the stories we desperately need to connect scientific results to human lifeworlds.
Climate change is a complex phenomenon that crosses the register of nature and culture. Its ecological, cultural and technological impacts connect the global and the local. The importance of addressing climate breakdown in a global perspective reflecting the different challenges facing different regions makes museums revisit their collections, exhibition designs and expert networks as well as develop their cross-societal appeal. Under these challenging terms, they could provide a readymade infrastructure for climate change communication and co-creation as spaces for the intersection of climate research, dissemination and activism.
What are the competences museums need to develop in order to engage with the multiscalar and complex phenomenon? Do we need new institutions or are established museums capable of rethinking their approaches and use their resources to foster understanding and action to engage with the global environmental crisis? Should the focus be on the sustainable development goals, the Agenda 2030, climate change or even the Anthropocene?
Organizer
Prof Brita Brenna (University of Oslo), Prof Dominik Collet (Oslo School of Environmental Humanities), Torkjell Leira (Klimahuset Oslo), Morien Rees (ICOM’s working group on sustainability), Bergsveinn Thorsson (University of Oslo).
Workshop: Arts of Coexistence
Arts of Coexistence: Care and Survival in the Sixth Extinction
Time and place: May 2, 2019 9:00 AM–May 3, 2019 4:00 PM, Tøyen Hovedgård
Workshop of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (OSEH), University of Oslo (UiO), coorganised by the Working Group HOLB (Humans and Other Living Beings) of the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA).
Purpose
Recognising that our planet has entered a time of immense ecological devastation, this workshop invites papers that work creatively with the concept of care. The workshop explores diverse forms of care across differences that people develop (or fail to develop) in the context of species disappearance. How are ways of coexistence threatened, erased but also still maintained in time of the sixth extinction? Specifically, we are interested in work that conceptualises and explores skills, practices and ideas of care in multispecies, interspecies and more-than-human contexts. In addition, we invite research that reaches beyond ideas such as species and organic life, to encompass also practices of care for land and landscapes, for ecosystems, for machines, infrastructure, the dead, spirits, concepts, history and the past, the future, for the world itself.
Topics
Papers may address topics such as intervention, sustainment, maintenance, repair, collaboration, remediation, restoration or survival. What forms of care are the chaos and violence of the present moment calling forth? What are their limits? What are their risks and dangers, their potential for destruction? How does care travel, how may it be transposed to novel objects, settings and domains? How is care undone, destroyed, eradicated – and how can it be restored? How can we as researchers root our practice, and our commitments, in forms of care that do justice to the future? What are the possibilities of more-than-human care?
The complexities of hope and care
The workshop especially calls for stories of hope, of people finding ways to care for other beings, to help them survive and to survive with them, forming new connections and relations. Hope is complicated, however, and “care” can mean many things. We therefore also invite papers that refract and problematise the idea of care, perhaps finding it in unexpected, problematic or hard-to-think contexts: from the care invoked in technoscientific practices like de-extinction and geoengineering, to the rituals of remembrance that emerge for extinguished species, to the “care” of the coloniser for the colonised.
The disciplinary scope of the workshop is open, encompassing anthropology as well as cognate disciplines such as human geography, cultural studies, history of science, science and technology studies, sociology, media studies, archaeology and so on. We also welcome artists and other practitioners whose work engages with the topics of the workshop, and who are interested in contributing through performance, installations, photography etc.
Program
See the full program from the workshop here.
Participation and deadlines
If you are interested in participating, please send a title and abstract (500 words) to coexistence.care@gmail.com by 28 February 2019.
Draft papers must be pre-circulated to participants by 15 April. There may be some limited funding available for EASA members for travel and accommodation costs, please let us know if you require this.