research group

Environmental Humanities

The research group brings together an interdisciplinary group of research faculty and PhD students with an interest in environmental issues.

Stone cairn above Bergen.

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UiB

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Our research encompasses a vast range of human interactions with the physical world, from ancient migration to contemporary climate resilience.

The Environmental Humanities research group is an interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars in the fields of history, archaeology, cultural studies, linguistics, literature, media studies, political science, social anthropology, science and technology studies, and beyond. Its composition reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the field of environmental humanities, which bridges the divide between the natural sciences and the humanities, as well as that between the academy and society, by applying humanistic methods and modes of thought to environmental subjects.

Our research encompasses a vast range of human interactions with the physical world, from ancient migration to contemporary climate resilience. Please see individual members’ profiles and biographies for further details on our research interests, affiliations, and areas of expertise.

Course package in Environmental Humanities

The Environmental Humanities group is currently developing a package of courses, united by a common theme, to help guide students interested in pursuing further studies in the field. This package will include core training in Environmental Humanities as well as topical courses on Blue Humanities, environmental ethics, climate history, and more. To register your course as part of the package, or to submit a suggestion for a new course, please complete this form. Further information for students will be provided once the package is finalized

Programme 2024/2025

November 28 14:15-16:00	Grant Application Workshop, Marit Ruge Bjærke: crisis as environing technology Room: 208/209, Sydnesplassen 12:13 Paper will be circulated in advance.
December 5-6.	Writing retreat, Winter 2024 Thursday, Dec. 5 8:08 AM Depart Bergen via train 9:17 AM arrive Voss; coffee and snacks 9:30 Introductions and goal-setting for the day 10:15-12:15 Work Session 1 12:15-1:00 Lunch 13:00-14:30 Work Session 2 14:30-15:00 Optional coffee break 15:00-17:00 Work Session 3 17:00-19:00 Free time (possible excursion) 19:00 apertif and shared reflection on writing progress 19:30 Dinner Friday, Dec.6 8:00-8:30 Breakfast 8:30-10:30 Work Session 4 10:30-10:45 Optional coffee break 10:45-12:00 Work Session 5 12:00-13:00 Check out and lunch 13:00-14:00 Reflections on writing and future collaborations 14:06 Depart Voss via train 15:24 Arrive Bergen
December 17 9:15-12:00	Hedda Susanne Molland, Sluttseminar (Master Class): “Catching the Present: From CO₂ handling to the low emission society”. Room: Seminarroom 1, Øysteinsgate 3 In her PhD project, Hedda Susanne Molland investigates the temporal relationships of climate change politics. Approaching this topic from the perspective of environmental humanities, in general, and cultural studies in particular, she argues that a supposed failure of the imagination in the face of climate change should not lead us to neglect the important role that imagination plays in political plans for achieving imaginaries such as a low emission society. The way such political plans are temporally signified and configurated – from experiences, to present circumstances, on to expected effective measures and onwards to hopes for successful solutions, or perhaps the other way around – is highly imaginative. In recognizing that both the low emission society and CO₂ handling are temporally configured product of imagination, Molland asks in her dissertation what role imaginaries play in political plans and vice versa, and specifically what this chiefly temporal relationship looks like in political documents. The primary analytical objective in the dissertation is therefore to investigate how temporal configurations connect political plans and policies with cultural and technological imaginaries.
January 23 12:15	Brown bag lunch talk by Elizabeth Fairhead, Department of Foreign Languages: “The Rare Franklinia and the story that made it a symbol of the extinction crisis.”
March 5 14:15-16:00	Talk by local researcher Liubomira Romanov “Integrating Archaeological, Historical, and Biological Data to Uncover the Past of the Yakuts (Eastern Siberia, Russia)” Yakutia is the coldest region in the Northern Hemisphere, with record winter temperatures below -70°C. The Yakut people’s ability to adapt to such extreme cold has been key to their survival. They are thought to descend from an ancient population that migrated from their original homeland in the Lake Baikal region following the Mongol expansion between the 13th and 15th centuries AD. Originally, they led a semi-nomadic lifestyle centered on horse and cattle breeding, which provided transportation, clothing materials, meat, and milk. Early Russian colonization in the first half of the 17th century AD, followed by further expansion, profoundly impacted the indigenous population. Among other effects, Russian conquest led to significant socio-economic and cultural changes. For 15 years, the French Archaeological Mission in Eastern Siberia (MAFSO) has excavated and studied over 150 bodies preserved in Yakutia’s permafrost. The exceptional preservation of tombs and biological remains, along with historical and ethnographic documents from the post-colonial period, enables interdisciplinary research combining social science and biological methods to explore the transformation of Yakut society and culture.

Selected Projects

Group members engage with scholars from around the world with support from the European Research Council, the Norwegian Research Council, and other major funding entities. The following is a partial list of ongoing projects.

HABITABLE AIR

VOICES OF NATURE

SEATIMES: How Climate Change Transforms Human-Marine Temporalities

THE LAST WORKSHOP: Latin America and the End of the World

CALENDARS

CLIMLIFE

GARDENING THE GLOBE

RESEARCH SCHOOL IN ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES

SEACHANGE

Past events

4.sept 13:00-16:00	PhD workshop: Anthropology of Sound With Professor Andrew Whitehouse (University of Aberdeen) Room: 9th floor, Social Sciences faculty (or outside, weather permitting) SV-bygget, Lauritz Meltzers hus, Fosswinckels gate 6, 5007 Bergen, Norway Organisers: Sadie Hale & Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme How does paying attention to sound affect one’s orientation to their environment? What noises are being made and lost at a time of climate change, mass extinctions, and urbanisation? How can anthropologists and other scholars become more sonically sensitive in our own work? Interest in aural approaches in anthropology is growing, from well-established concepts such as Steven Feld’s (1992) ‘acoustemology’, or sonic way of knowing and being, to more recent scholarship such as ‘listening to the zoo’ (Rice et al. 2021), connecting a region through radio (Western 2023), and the ongoing use of methodologies like soundwalks. This workshop aims to stimulate discussion around such approaches, in order to help to expand our sensory apparatus and unsettle the visual mode so dominant in the ‘participant observation’ method. The workshop will be led by Andrew Whitehouse from the University of Aberdeen. Andrew is an environmental anthropologist researching nature conservation, landscape, and human-bird relations. He conducted the AHRC-funded Listening to Birds project with Tim Ingold, which considered the ways that people relate to birds through sound
5.sept 10:15	Romain Grancher, From shores to abyss: an environmental history of the seabed Room Seminarrom 1, Øysteins gate 3. Romain Grancher is an environmental historian. His research interests lie at the crossroads of environmental history, the history of knowledge and the history of law. He is currently working on a book on the environmental history of the seabed.
8. Oct	Gardens: A Workshop Room 904, Lauritz Meltzers hus, Fosswinckels gate 6. Participants: Nils Haukeland Vedal, Birger Solheim, Knut Mikjel Rio, Vigdis Broch-Due, Olaf Haraldsøn Smedal, Scott Bremer This workshop explores the garden as a phenomenon that spans geographical regions and time. For some people the garden is the condition of life and death – thus, horticulture is framed by sophisticated ritual sacrifice securing vegetal regrowth and the reproduction of society. For others, the garden is a prism for different historisities: a colonial past through which our modern ideals have found structure and content. And for our technological imaginaries, the garden is a companion to be taken with us when we expand the site of our dwellings as we take "nature" with us to new places.
21. oct 09:15 - 12:30	Half-day workshop: Multi-Sensory Workshop Room: Seminarroom 1, Øystensgate 3 This will be organized as a half-day workshop of 3-4 hours where we will explore how we (can) use and emphasize different senses - hearing, touching, seeing, walking, smelling etc - both methodologically and analytically in our research. Those who want can bring some material for discussion, either on something they have written concerning senses in their research, empirical material, or other ideas they want to explore. It is organized as a transdisciplinary workshop as part of the research groups Methodological and Empirical Questions and Environmental Humanities at AHKR. Researchers from cultural studies, history, religious studies and social anthropology will attend, and it is open to researchers from other relevant fields as well.
24. Oct 14:15 - 15:00	Marjo Juola: The intersection of nature, culture, and the environment - highlighting the uncanny and ‘weird’ aspects of post-industrial and Anthropocene heritage Room: Seminarroom 1, Øysteinsgate 3
28-31. Oct	Four-day PhD Course, More-Than-Human Humanities Room: Semonarrom 1, Øysteins gate 3
31. Oct 14:15 - 16:00	Karin Lillevold, Unruly Fluffy Cows and Shy Reindeer. The Spectacle of Wilderness and Multispecies Relationalities in Dovrefjell.
1. nov 09:30 - 12:00	Oceanic encounters symposium Room: 9th floor, Social Sciences faculty Organisers/presenters: Edvard Hviding, Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme, Sadie Hale (Oceans Research Group at UiB Department of Social Anthropology) Format: 3 x 20-minute talks (incl. visual media/films) + panel discussion Tea and coffee will be served! Why can large sea creatures inspire such awe, inspiration, and even fear? How might these emotional responses differ across contexts and cultures? Are multispecies oceanic encounters different to terrestrial ones? What defines ‘megafauna’ anyway - and why does it matter? Oceanic Encounters is a half-day symposium dedicated to exploring these questions, through ethnographic storytelling about physical encounters with large oceanic lifeforms.

23-24 May	Final workshop, The Last Workshop: Latin America and the End of the World
15-16. Feb	Presentation of short film "The Bonding", by artist Michelle Letelier, and conversation with Letelier and Martin Lee Mueller (University of Oslo, author of Being Human Being Salmon). Presented by The Last Workshop: Latin America and the End of the World
29-30 jan	Research Group Retreat, Norheimsund