forskergruppe

Miljøhumaniora

Forskergruppen samler forskere og doktorgradsstudenter fra ulike fagfelt som deler interessen for miljøspørsmål.

Steinvarde på toppen av et fjell over Bergen.

Foto/ill.:

UiB

Hovedinnhold

Medlemmenes spesifikke forskningsinteresser spenner fra klimaendringer og vannpolitikk til miljølitteratur og kunst.

Forsker gruppen for miljøhumaniora er et tverrfaglig samarbeid mellom forskere innen fagområdene historie, arkeologi, kulturvitenskap, lingvistikk, litteratur, medievitenskap, statsvitenskap, sosialantropologi, naturvitenskap og teknologistudier og videre. Sammensetningen gjenspeiler den tverrfaglige karakteren til feltet miljøhumaniora, som bygger bro mellom naturvitenskap og humaniora, så vel som mellom akademia og samfunnet, ved å anvende humanistiske metoder og tankemåter på miljøfag. Forskningen vår omfatter et stort spekter av menneskelig interaksjon med den fysiske verden, fra antikkens migrasjon til moderne klimaresistens.

Gruppemedlemmer samarbeider med forskere fra hele verden med støtte fra Det europeiske forskningsrådet, Norges forskningsråd og andre store finansieringsenheter, samt fra Det humanistisk fakultet ved Universitetet i Bergen. En utvalgt liste over store prosjekter utført av medlemmer av gruppen kan ses på den engelske versjonen av nettsiden, men vennligst se individuelle medlemmers profiler og biografier for ytterligere detaljer om våre forskningsinteresser, tilknytninger og ekspertiseområder.

Program 2025

23. jan
12:15

Brown bag lunch talk by Elisabeth Fairhead, Department of Foreign Languages:
"The rare Franklinia and the story that made it a symbol of the extinction crisis"

5.mars
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.

>>> Les mer om forskergruppen på de engelske sidene

Tidligere arrangement

Program 2024

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. Okt	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. okt 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. okt 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: seminarrom 1, Øystensgate 3
28-31. Okt	Four-day PhD Course, More-Than-Human Humanities Rom: Seminarrom 1, Øystensgate 3
31. okt 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.

28. Nov14:15-16:00

Grant Application Workshop, Marit Ruge Bjærke: Crisis as environing technologyRom 208/209 på Sydnesplassen 12/13

Paper will be circulated in advance.

5-6. Des

Writing retreat

Torsdag 5.desember

8:08 AM: Depart Bergen via train9:17 AM: Arrive Voss, coffee and snacks9:30 AM: Introductions and goal-setting for the day10:15 - 12:15: Work session 112:15-13:00: Lunch13:00-14:30: Work session 214:30-15:00: Optional Coffee break15:00-17:00: Work Session 317:00-19:00: Free time (possible excursion)19:00 Apertif and shared reflection on writing progress19:30: Dinner

Fredag 6.desember

08:00-08:30: Breakfast08:30-10:30: Work Session 410:30-10:45: Optional coffee break10:45-12:00: Work Session 512:00-13:00: Check out and lunch13:00-14:00 Reflections on writing and future collaborations14:06: Depart Voss via train15:24: Arrive Bergen

17. des9:15-12:00

Hedda Susanne Molland, Sluttseminar: "Catching the Present: From CO₂ handling to the low emission society”.Øysteinsgate 3, seminarrom 1

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.

23-24. mai

2024

Two-day workshop, The Last Workshop: Latin America and the End of the World

15-16. feb 2024

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. januar

2024

Research Group Retreat, Norheimsund