Events archive 2016 - THE POSTHUMANITIES HUB

In retrospect, the academic year 2015-2016 has been an intense and eventful year for us! Here are some of our highlights:

We are pleased to announce that the Call for Papers for a themed issue on “Toxic Embodiment” was launched. Please find the CFP here. The publication is intended for Environmental Humanities special issue with guest editors Olga Cielemecka and Cecilia Åsberg. We received a lot of deserving, high-quality and innovative submissions. In the next step we’ll invite selected authors to submit full manuscripts.
We were very happy to welcome back Astrida Neimanis (University of Sydney) who was visiting TEMA Genus. Astrida gave a talk “Water as a Queer Archive of Feeling: Queer Ecologies and Reparative Readings for the Anthropocene” on Nov 15, 10:00-12:00, Delfi, Tema Building.
TEMA Genus at Linköping University hosted the Posthumanities International Network (PIN) symposium from 6-7 June on campus here in Linköping, Sweden. The theme of this year’s event, organized by Seed Box postdoctoral scholar Olga Cielemecka, was “The Diseased Posthuman: Choreographies of Toxic Embodiment.” We were pleased to welcome Stacy Alaimo, Rosi Braidotti, and a host of other scholars to this exciting event.
The Posthumanities Hub, together with Green Critical Forum, both at TEMA, Linköping University, kick-start the largest interdisciplinary humanities program in Sweden in the fall of 2015! The Seed Box: An Environmental Humanities Collaboratory got SEK 40 million from the Swedish funding bodies MISTRA and Formas.
Seed Box Guest Professor Myra J. Hird of Queen’s University, Canada gave a series of exciting talks and presentations, doctoral workshops and individual hands-on inspiration during two intensive weeks. She also rocked the gym. We cannot wait to have her back again!
Astrida Neimanis, environmental and blue humanities trail-blazer, now working at Gender Studies, University of Sydney, Australia, started up the Gotland Deep project on chemical weapons dumpings in the Baltic Sea (with stints at the Natural History Museum and the Gotland shores) and gave an inspirational workshop on Writing in the Environmental Humanities.
5 PhD-positions in environmental humanities were appointed (we had more than 270 applicants in total at Gender Studies, Technology and Social Change, and Environmental Change at TEMA, Linköping University, and at Sociology, Uppsala University and at Urban Studies, Royal Institute of Technology/KTH). We are so happy to work with new PhD candidates Justin Makii, Alexjandra Ruales Falconi, Daniel Andersson, Åsa Calmer, and Maria Langa!
New Doctors! Amazing doctoral dissertation work by Pat Treusch (defended both at Linköping University in June and at Technische Universität Berlin in April), Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Ane Møller Gabrielsen, Ingvil Hellstrand, and Olga Cielemecka who all successfully defended their doctoral dissertations in 2015!
Breathing Matters Network was established by Magdalena Górska!
Visiting scholars who gave workshops that propelled our work this year in new directions or with newfound intensity included Laura Watts, Eben Kirksey, Iris van der Tuin, and Bettina Papenburgh! Thank you warmly–and come back soon again!
We saw a series of new publications, for instance “Speculative Before the Turn” by Cecilia Åsberg, Kathrin Thiele and Iris van der Tuin in the New materialist special issue of Cultural Studies Review (eds Milla Tianen, Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, Illona Hongisto); the book Debates in Nordic Gender Studies: Differences Within (C. Åsberg and Malin Rönnblom), Taylor & Francis; the article Four Problems, Four Directions For Environmental Humanities: Toward A Critical Posthumanities For the Anthropocene in Ethics and the Environment, and Astrida Neimanis, Suzi Hayes and Cecilia Åsberg sported also a chapter on “Feminist Posthumanist Imaginaries of Climate Change” in the Edward Elgar Research Handbook of Climate Change (eds Eva Lövbrand and Karin Bäckstrand).
TEMA Genus at Linköping University hosted the Posthumanities International Network (PIN) symposium from 6-7 June, 2016. The theme of this year’s event, organized by Seed Box postdoctoral scholar Olga Cielemecka, was “The Diseased Posthuman: Choreographies of Toxic Embodiment.” We were pleased to welcome Stacy Alaimo, Rosi Braidotti, and a host of other scholars to this exciting event.
Congratulations to our new doctors: Marietta Radomska, Line Henriksen, and Magda Górska who defended their theses in flying colours!