With collaborators within the OCC! Goes Global we are welcoming to an online three-weekend interdisciplinary winter school inviting early career researchers (master’s students in their advanced thesis phase, Ph.D. students, and postdocs) to explore climate change and its consequences of loss and damage,  for those interested in environmental justice, climate justice, environmental humanities, environmental history, media studies, political ecology, literature/ storytelling. The school is for those interested in interdisciplinary research and direct action,  urban climate justice movements, the role of mainstream/counter-hegemonic imaginaries within climate change policies, and  would like to contribute to the Atlas of the Other Worlds with their original research and creative works. The school is free of tuition. New deadline to apply is 22 March 2023.

Organized by

Environmental Humanities Laboratory Centre, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Sweden & the Institute for the History of Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.

in collaboration with scholars from

Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo (CNR-ISMed), Italy

The University of Cincinnati, USA 

Institute of History, The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

NTNU Env Hum, Narratinging Sustainability, ​​Norwegian University of Science and Technology 

(NTNU), Norway

University of Namibia (UNAM)

Department of Architecture, University “Federico II” Napoli, Italy

Research Group STAND (South Training Action Network of Decoloniality), Peace & Conflict Research Institute, University of Granada, Spain

Department of Philosophy Communication and Performing Arts, Roma Tre University

Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento

Environmental Humanities and Sustainability Competence Centre. Graduate Communications Institute (INPT), Rabat, Morocco

Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal

University of Santa Barbara, USA

Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, FLACSO Sede Ecuador

Call for Applications

If you prefer to read the Call for Applications as PDF, you can click here.

We live in an age of loss. Breaking off ice shelves, vanishing landscapes, destroyed cultural heritage, and abandoned homes due to social, cultural, economic, political, and ecological conflicts of all sorts. The problem with loss is its intricacy with emotions, feelings, and personal attachments. Rightly so, ecological economists have spoken of the incommensurability of values in their analysis of environmental conflicts, stressing the clash between different regimes of knowledge. 

Thereby, it is not surprising that loss remains poorly theorized and even more scarcely addressed in contemporary climate politics, particularly when it comes to the local scale. One way to move forward in tackling loss and damage is knowledge co-production and situated participatory research with communities most likely to experience loss. In fact, the focus on loss and damage unfolds the mainstream rhetoric on win-win strategies and moral efforts towards a superior common good; the reality of climate change is that of unequal distribution not only of harms but also of benefits.

OCC! project (Formas-funded) explores the grassroots social innovations in the urban environment and their relationships with municipal initiatives. Science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin argued that we live in a crisis of imagination; many have said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than imagining another world. OCC! wishes to ignite an imaginative exploration into the future through a creative writing exercise, imagining how would the place where you live look like in year 2200?

In order to build capacity and provide spaces for mutual learning on these themes, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the Institute for the History of Science (UAB, Spain), in partnership with scholars from the Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean, University of Cincinnati, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Namibia University, University “Federico II” Napoli, and University of Santa Barbara, The Ohio State University, University of Granada, Roma Tre University, Graduate Communications Institute (Morocco), University of Coimbra, Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, FLACSO Sede Ecuador, University of Catania and University of Trento, are inviting early career researchers (master’s students in their advanced thesis phase, Ph.D. students, and postdocs) for an online interdisciplinary school which will include perspectives from the broadly defined fields of environmental justice, climate justice, environmental humanities, environmental history, media studies, political ecology, storytelling and cli-fi among others. The training school will include both lecture format and group-work sessions (a more detailed description of the school is below). The objectives of the course include: 

• Acquiring knowledge on urban climate justice movements; 
• being able to analyze how different social/ethnic groups are unequally affected by climate change;
• reflecting on the role of mainstream/counter-hegemonic imaginaries for enhancing climate change policies. 

A key aspect of the school is also to contribute to the online open-access database The Atlas of the Other Worlds which is part of the OCC! project. In this database three types of materials are gathered; entries on municipal/regional/local initiatives to tackle climate change; entries on grassroots initiatives to tackle climate change and short creative stories imagining a city/town 200 years from now. Each student is requested to contribute with at least one entry (ideally two) to the Atlas of the Other Worlds, as their final assignment. Before working on the final assignment, each student must discuss the selected entry with the coordinators of the school. The entries will be revised and if accepted published in The Atlas. To know more about the project, its Atlas, and the kind of entries we are looking for, contact armiero@icrea.cat. 

Students admitted to the school will:

• sign a pledge committing themselves to attend the entire course and deliver the final assignment 
• receive a certificate signed by the coordinators of the school stating the amount of work done during the course (equivalent to 5 ECTS);
• publish their final assignments as part of the OCC! Atlas, pending approval by the coordinators of the school.

PLEASE NOTE that for this second edition of the school, we will not be able to provide official ECTS to the students. Each student will need to ask their university for validation of the CFU, if needed.

The online school has no tuition fee.

 

For more information about OCC; https://occupyclimatechange.net/

For more information about the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, please visit: https://www.kth.se/en/abe/inst/philist/historia/ehl

For the Institute for the History of Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, please visit:

https://www.uab.cat/web/institut-d-historia-de-la-ciencia-1345831710380.html

Application

To apply for the school, please send the following by 22 March 2023 (new deadline) to armiero@icrea.cat

1. Max. 2-page CV
2. Max. 1-page motivation letter 
3. 250-word abstract on the final assignment. For the final assignment, you are supposed to write one or two entries for the OCC! Atlas. The entries can be:

• Entries on municipal/regional/local initiatives to tackle climate change (for instance: the city of xxx promoting cycling as an alternative to private car mobility)
• Entries on a grassroots initiative to tackle climate change (for instance: an urban gardening project in a working-class neighbourhood in xxx) 
• Short creative stories imagining a city/town 200 years from now (this is a creative writing exercise, imagine your city in the year 2200)

Please do not hesitate to contact us in case you wish more information about the kind of entries we wish to gather. 

The selected participants will be notified by 27 March 2023. For further information, please contact: armiero@icrea.cat

Confirmed Lecturers with respective fields of expertise

• Marco Armiero (Icrea and Institute for the History of Science,  Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain) environmental humanities and political ecology
• Hicham Barakat (Morocco Graduate Communications Institute, Environmental Humanities and Sustainability Competence Centre “EHSCC”), environmental migration and development
• Gilda Berruti, (Department of Architecture, University “Federico II” Napoli, Italy) urban studies and governance 
• Nicolas Cuvi (Department of Anthropology, History and Humanities, Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, FLACSO Sede Ecuador), climate change in the Tropical Andes, posthumanities, history of science
• Tommy Davis (Department of English, The Ohio State University), environmental humanities, energy humanities, aesthetics, and literature
• Robert Gioielli (University of Cincinnati, USA) race and sustainability, environmental institutions, and urban environmental history
• Alice Dal Gobbo (Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento) political ecology and everyday life
• Hanna Musiol (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU Environmental Humanities, Norway) print and transmedia storytelling, environmental justice and human rights, migration, civic engagement
• Maria Federica Palestino (Department of Architecture, University “Federico II” Napoli, Italy) urban studies and governance 
• Federica Giardini (Department of Philosophy, Communication, Performing Arts, University Roma Tre – postgraduate course in Environmental Humanities), political philosophy, transfeminist studies
• Lise Sedrez (Instituto de História, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) ​​Latin American history, history of disasters, and urban environmental history
• Nuno Marques (Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH and Centre for Social Studies, Coimbra), ecopoetics, ecopoetry in the environmental humanities, atmospheres, breathing 
• Antonio Ortega Santos (Research Group STAND (South Training Action Network of Decoloniality, Peace & Conflict Research Institute, University of Granada, Spain), decolonial studies and socioenvironmental vulnerability
• David Pellow (University of California, Santa Barbara), environmental justice, climate justice, racial justice politics, multispecies justice
• Carlos Tabernero ( Institute for the History of Science,  Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain), media and the environment, history of science
• Salvo Torre (University of Catania), political ecology and socio-ecological crisis
• Bruno Venditto (Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo (CNR-ISMed) & University of Namibia), migration, development, and economics

Description and schedule of the school

OCC! training school will all be online and will include online lecture sessions, seminars, and workshop activities.

For more information about the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, please visit: 

https://www.kth.se/philhist/historia/ehl

For the Institute for the History of Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, please visit: https://www.uab.cat/web/institut-d-historia-de-la-ciencia-1345831710380.html