Activities

• 2 November 2023: “Atmospheric Politics in the Indian Ocean” with Debjani Bhattacharyya (Chair for the History of the Anthropocene, Zurich University)
• 14 September 2023: “Chemopower and Chemosociality” by Eben Kirksey (Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford)
• 11 May 2023: “Drawing a Line in the Sand: Bioengineering as Conservation in the Face of Extinction Debt” with Joshua Wodak (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University)
• 8 June 2023: “Writing as Activism: Dutch Literature in the Climate Crisis” with Geert Buelens and Maarten van der Graaff (Utrecht University)

• The Nutmeg’s Curse By Amitav Ghosh (2021)
• Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet Edited by Anna Tsing et al. (2017)
• Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour (2018)
• “Water” from Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven (2014)
• Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon (2011)
• Na Viro by Gina Cole (2022)
• Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell (2011)
• Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman (2021)

On 8 September 2023, we hosted the Water Cultures Symposium. This symposium explored diverse aspects of water cultures around the theme of ‘living with risk in coastal, estuarine and oceanic environments’, and was organised in collaboration with the Pathways to Sustainability community at Utrecht University and with the Centre for Water Cultures at the University of Hull. In three interdisciplinary panels and a creative workshop, revolving around ‘literary and historical water cultures,’ ‘legal and political water cultures,’ and ‘water cultures in practice’ speakers approached the subject from a broad range of perspectives.

For instance, various talks discussed the importance of historical knowledge in generating perspective and community engagement with climate change in the present and future. In addition, panelists discussed legal and indigenous perspectives on water cultures.

The creative workshop invited attendees to experiment with water as a disappearing and invisible but essential material in artistic practice, weaving together material characteristics and afterlives of locally sourced water samples through a collaborative translating exercise of a Dutch poem (“Eb” by M. Vasalis).

On 1 and 2 February, 2024, the Utrecht Network for Environmental Humanities hosted an international Networking Event where representatives from Environmental Humanities initiatives and centres from all over Europe came together. The event, held in the historic Anatomy Building in Utrecht, was aimed at making connections across universities and borders, and focused on (interdisciplinary) research, teaching, and collaboration with societal partners in the Environmental Humanities. The event was attended by representatives from the following thirteen EH initiatives: 
 

• The Greenhouse, University of Stavanger 
• Center for Environmental Humanities, Aarhus University 
• Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm 
• The Energy and Environment Institute, University of Hull 
• Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities, University of Exeter 
• Research Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University 
• ScienceHumanities, Cardiff University 
• Centre for Environmental Humanities, University of Bristol 
• Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich 
• Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities, University of Cologne 
• THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice 
• Environmental Humanities Center, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 
• Environmental Humanities Initiative, Charles University Prague 

The event revolved around three core sessions on projects, education, and outreach, and it included a keynote lecture by Sverker Sörlin on ‘integrative humanities,’ a brainstorming session on future plans, and a roundtable event about collaboration with societal partners hosted in collaboration with the Critical Pathways research community. Throughout the event’s numerous presentations and discussion rounds, best practices in teaching and the challenges and affordances of interdisciplinary collaboration emerged as crucial themes. The brainstorming session on future plans proved especially fruitful, with a resulting consensus that the Networking Event should become a recurring event to promote communication and collaboration between all European Environmental Humanities initiatives.  

• The Loud Spring, Collective Paths out of the Climate Crisis