Col­lo­qui­um of the Inter­na­tional Doc­toral Pro­gram “Re­think­ing Envi­ron­ment”

In the first Col­lo­qui­um of the International Doctoral Program “Re­think­ing Envi­ron­ment”, 20 PhD stu­dents and pro­gram advi­sors gath­ered at LMU Mu­nich and Augsburg Uni­versi­ty to dis­cuss re­search pro­jects. The 3-day event was a great op­por­tunity to learn about the pro­jects, dis­cuss key topics in Envi­ron­men­tal Hu­mani­ties and relat­ed disci­plines, and most im­portantly to meet as a com­muni­ty.

Before the event start­ed on Wednesday, March 30, the PhD stu­dents met for a joint breakfast, in which they had the op­por­tunity to come to­gether in­for­mally and talk as an “ice-breaker” ac­tivity. Fol­low­ing up with the pro­gram, they met with advi­sors to start the aca­demic ses­sion, intro­duced by one of the Pro­gram’s speakers, Prof. Dr. Simone Mül­ler. The day was planned for a total of six presenta­tions with short intro­duc­tions by the stu­dents’ advi­sors. In the morn­ing, Dan­ielle Schmitz and Livia Cahn dis­cuss­ed topics such as dis­course, ar­chives and repre­senta­tion with­in the disci­plines of envi­ron­men­tal eco­nom­ics, phi­loso­phy, an­thropology, and land­scape stud­ies.

After a lunch break, the group joined again for the next round of presenta­tions, learn­ing about the pro­jects of PhD stu­dents Jasmijn Viss­er and Floris Winckel, who dealt with con­flict, visu­aliza­tion, and tech­nolo­gy themes in the arts and histo­ry of sci­ence. The first day of the collo­qui­um ended with pro­jects in phi­loso­phy, eth­ics, eco­nom­ics, and urban plan­ning, by Felix Treutner and Lukas Emrich, who talked about com­muni­ties, capi­tal­ism, and liber­alism.

The Inter­na­tional Doc­torate Pro­gram “Re­think­ing Envi­ron­ment” is a coop­era­tion be­tween the Uni­versi­ty of Augsburg and LMU Mu­nich. It was there­fore logi­cal that, on the sec­ond day, the collo­qui­um took place at the Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence Cen­ter in Augsburg, with a morn­ing intro­duc­tion by Prof. Dr. Kirsten Twelbeck, coor­dina­tor and advi­sor in the doc­torate pro­gram. An­ne-So­phie Balzer and Lucia Med­ici opened the ses­sion with their eco­criti­cism pro­jects, fol­lowed by Laura Fum­agal­li’s pro­ject in envi­ron­men­tal eth­ics, aes­thet­ics, and phi­loso­phy of art. Land­scapes were the un­derly­ing theme be­hind the three pro­jects, with spe­cific fo­cuses on poet­ry, narra­tive, an­thropocene, con­flict, and envi­ron­men­tal im­pacts.

On this busy day (with a total of six presenta­tions), the group con­tinued ses­sions after a lunch break at the uni­versi­ty’s din­ing hall. Fizza Ba­tool and Daler Ka­ziev talked about their re­search on soci­ology and polit­ical ecol­ogy, em­phasizing as­pects of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice and de­velopment narra­tives in Asian coun­tries. Chris­tian Schnurr closed the sec­ond day by debat­ing envi­ron­men­tal dis­courses with­in phi­loso­phy, sci­ence and tech­nolo­gy stud­ies frameworks.

Munich was again the collo­qui­um host on the final day of presenta­tions, with two ses­sions. Lak­shmi Dilipku­mar and Chris­to­pher Klap­perich brought topics in an­thropology, litera­ture, and polit­ical ecol­ogy in the Glob­al South. In the last round of ses­sions, the group was intro­duced to envi­ron­ment and tech­nolo­gy narra­tives with­in sus­taina­bility stud­ies, eth­ics, and phi­loso­phy by stu­dents Pia Wimmer and Max­imili­an Pie­per. Clos­ing the event, the stu­dents cele­brated to­gether dur­ing an in­for­mal lunch.

An en­riching and form­ative event, the collo­qui­um gave PhD stu­dents the chance to prac­tice and demonstrate their re­search and sci­ence com­muni­cation skills. Fur­ther­more, it cer­tainly ad­vanced ac­adem­ic de­bates on envi­ron­men­tal hu­mani­ties topics through en­gag­ing dis­cussions and sup­portive feed­back from advi­sors. The stu­dents of the doc­torate pro­gram re­port­ed to have felt in­spired by the dis­cussions and to have had very posi­tive im­pres­sions of the collo­qui­um.

Text: Talitta Reitz (RCC Munich) and Kirsten Twelbeck (Environmental Science Center Augsburg)