More-than-human humanities research group!

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CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Gender and Sustainability – Introducing Feminist Environmental Humanities PhD course (FAD3115)

This electable course in the doctoral program, Art, Technology and Design (7,5 credits) is an educational effort, supported by the KTH Equality Office for the integration of knowledge on gender equity in sustainable development research, provided by the KTH School of Architecture and the Built Environment and the multi-university platform The Posthumanities Hub, with Tema Genus, Linköping University.

Gender and Sustainability: Introducing Feminist Environmental Humanities and Posthumanities

The PhD course will be held online, and combines critical and creative perspectives on gender and sustainability from the emerging field of environmental humanities as it overlaps with science, technology, humanities, art and feminist theory-practices. It explores postdisciplinary directions in sustainability from a set of positions in environmental humanities and feminist posthumanities.

The course provides an introduction into the conceptual landscape of feminist environmental humanities, and an orientation into its methodological trajectories across the fields of science, technology, art and design. Notions of different scientific traditions in the past and present, and of inter- and transdisciplinary research are presented and framed in ways that are particularly useful for PhD researchers pursuing environmental humanities/postdisciplinary studies and practice-oriented research in art and arts (humanities), technology and design. PhD researchers are provided with an understanding of key concepts – and the relationship between research questions, methods, objectives and outcomes – through lectures, literature seminars, workshops and collaborative project work. The course introduces participants to thinking on situated knowledge practices and ethics amidst a plethora of critical methodologies, qualitative and innovative methods, and performative research practices. This course is an invaluable introduction to the ecologies of multispecies, techno-, citizen- and other forms of posthumanities. On completion of the course, PhD researchers will be provided with tools to critically reflect over the epistemological and ethical challenges inherent to their own research practices and doctoral work, but also in relationship to gender, sustainability and to other actors involved in the very social business of scholarship.


Participants

To be eligible for the course, PhD researchers must have completed a masters’ degree or have an equivalent level of education in STS, history of science, technology and environment studies, gender studies, technology, art or design (such as architecture, planning, civil engineering, arts, crafts, and design) or affiliated subjects within the humanities and social sciences.

Preliminary dates (ONLINE)

Module 1 – Re-inventing nature, re-inventing methodology: 5-6 December 2022
Module 2 – Doing gender and sustainability: Practice-oriented research: 16-17 January 2023
Module 3 – Ethics in thinking practice: 20-21 February 2023
Module 4 – Gender and sustainability in new registersKnowledge communication: 27-28 March 2023.

Coordinators and Guest Lecturers

The course will be coordinated and taught by a unique team of teachers, combining gender, sustainability, environmental humanities, feminist posthumanities and practice-oriented research:  

  • Meike Schalk, Associate Professor, KTH School of Architecture, architectural environmental humanities
  • Cecilia Åsberg, Professor, Gender, nature, culture, The Posthumanities Hub, Linköping University (guest/professor at KTH and Oslo MET)
  • Marietta Radomska, Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities, Gender Studies, Linköping University, biophilosophy, eco/bio-art
  • Janna Holmstedt, PhD, Swedish Historical Museums, Artistic Researcher
  • Jesse Peterson, Postdoc, The Posthumanities Hub, Gender Studies, Linköping University

And guest lecturers (TBA).

The course is an open collaboration with the KTH gender network, The Posthumanities Hub, a multi-university research group and platform for feminist posthumanities www.posthumanitieshub.net and Gender Studies, Linköping University.

Application for this Doctoral Course

Deadline for application is 7th November 2022. (If accepted you receive a notice of acceptance and the course readings by 11th November.)

Please apply FORMALLY to the PhD course Gender & Sustainability by submitting an APPLICATION to meike.schalk@arch.kth.se

Include the following documents:

  • CV (short bio), one page
  • Letter of motivation, half a page (why you would benefit from this course in your PhD-work)
  • SHORT description of PhD project, one page maximum, with aim and research question, material and practice-oriented/methodological approaches and challenges

WARMLY WELCOME!

Isabella Pinto

Dr. Isabella Pinto is Lerici Foundation Fellow and Guest Researcher at
The Posthumanities Hub and Tema Genus, Linköping University,
Sweden, from September 2022 to November 2022. During this time,
she will develop a research on the literary works of Elena Ferrante and
the toxic landscapes of Naples (Italy), through the lens of the
environmental humanities.


She is independent researcher and activist based in Italy, between
Rome and Naples. She works as Adjunct Professor of Writing and
Communication Lab (Roma Tre University), Scientific and Didactic
Coordinator of Narrazioni Summer School, within Gender Studies and
Politics Master’s Program (Roma Tre University). Her research interest
areas include comparative literature, gender/feminist/queer studies, and
environmental humanities.


In 2019, she holds a European Label PhD on Comparative Studies and
Literary Theory (Roma Tor Vergata University). In 2020, her revisiting PhD thesis, Elena Ferrante. Poetiche e politichedella soggettività, was published by Mimesis PH. In 2021, Raccontare un virus selvaggio. Covid-19, New Wild e Realismo Multispecie, and Storytelling multispecie. Una pratica ecopolitica per la giustizia ambientale multispecie, were published by «B@bel – Rivista online di Filosofia» and «Etnografie del contemporaneo». From two different angles, both these scientific articles focus on the topic of the
storytelling power understood as naturcultural and ecopolitical practice
for multispecies justice.

Since 2020, she has created several diffractive reading & writing
workshops (online and face-to-face) on the thought of Donna Haraway,
Anna L. Tsing, and about the practices of Trans/Feminist Speculative
Fabulation, in collaborations with various Italian artists, independent
associations, and institutions – among which the MAXXI National
Museum of the XXI Century Arts

Sculpture on a Burning Planet

Online Lecture series: Sculpture on a Burning Planet
Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki


Our planet is literally burning, and our present-day Neros are certainly fiddling. Distracted by war and egotistical power struggles, our leaders do nothing to effectively slow climate change. Energy shortages caused by the war in Ukraine lead to renewed exploitation of fossil fuel reserves. Weather systems have become more extreme and destructive – and not just in the usual “hurricane belt” – Europe, China, and Northern America have all seen extreme drought and flooding again this last year. These “once in a hundred years” phenomena are now the new normal. Exploration and mining for rare-earth elements for so-called “clean energy” puts increasing pressure on pristine wilderness and indigenous people’s lands. How do artists and the art world react to these developments? The international art world itself is driven by carbon-hungry practices, in the production, presentation, and marketing of artists and artworks. In this lecture series, four renowned experts (philosophers, artists, and researchers) present hopeful possibilities for future artistic practise in this age of environmental crisis.

Photo: Mirko Nikolić


Wednesday 21 September Elisa Aaltola: Philosophy of Love and the Nonhuman World
Wednesday 5 October Pia Lindman: Chill Survive Network
Wednesday 26 October mirko nikolić: After Extractivism in the Semi-periphery
Wednesday 16 November Maarit Mäkelä: Working with Soil

The series is presented by Professor Andy Best, Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki
All lectures start at 17.00 (GMT +2) and are held online using the Zoom platform. They are free and open to all. The language of presentation is English. Please remember to use the passcode to access the meeting, and keep your mic muted unless asking a question.
Wednesday 21 September 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/65689597891
Passcode: 422930

Elisa Aaltola: Philosophy of Love and the Nonhuman World
Discussions concerning the climate crisis often ignore nonhuman viewpoints. Yet, it is predominantly nonhuman animals, who suffer most from a warming climate, whether by undergoing agonizing deaths in forest fires, struggling due to loss of habitat or by facing species extinction. The lecture focuses on how moral love holds the potential of reminding us of other-than-human perpectives. Two philosophical definitions of love (by Plato and Iris Murdoch) will be introduced, and the role of art in evoking love toward animals will be mapped out. Can art make us fall in love with the nonhuman world?
Elisa Aaltola, PhD, works as a senior researcher and adjunct professor in philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research has focused on animal philosophy and normative moral psychology. Aaltola has published 12 books on these topics, including Esseitä eläimistä (Into 2022), Varieties of Empathy: Moral Psychology and Animal Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield 2018) and Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Palgrave MacMillan 2012). In 2021 she was awarded the Pro Animalia Prize for her life’s work for animals, and in 2022 she was awarded the Reformer of the Year Prize by Maailman Kuvalehti.
https://www.utu.fi/en/people/elisa-aaltola
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisa_Aaltola
Wednesday 5 October 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)

Pia Lindman: Chill Survive Network
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/65300671383
Passcode: 024187
Chill Survive Network is a platform for mutual exchange and collaboration between researchers, curators, artists, and institutions in the North-beyond-the-global-North. We engage in human and nonhuman entanglements and the development of new strategies, tactics, methodology and language that speak to our present ecological crisis. The objective is to explore, learn, mediate, cope with the future transformations in the Arctic. The network consists of several physical and online meetings including seminars and workshops.
Pia Lindman as artist and researcher works with performance art, healing-as-art, installation, microbes, architecture, painting, and sculpture. In “Nose, Ears, Eyes“ (Sao Paulo Biennale, 2016) Lindman gave treatments to members of the audience and made paintings based on the visions she saw during these treatments. As Professor of Environmental Art at Aalto University from 2013 to 2018, Lindman initiated the art/science network Chill Survive focusing on the Arctic and organised the first global Radical Relevances Conference (2018). Since 2017, Lindman is doctoral candidate at the program of Nordic Cultures and Environmental Politics at Lapland University researching her concept of the subsensorial. A result of many years of investigation into the body and its place within the cultural space, Lindman’s work now moves beyond the human body proper to multiple realms of organic and inorganic life.
http://pialindman.com/
https://chillsurvive.org/
Wednesday 26 October 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/62121956520
Passcode: 813978

mirko nikolić: After Extractivism in the Semi-periphery
As the climate and ecological crises escalate, the metal mining sector is attempting to position itself as a fundamental provider of materials for the “energy transition.” Never before seen quantities of minerals are projected to substitute fossil fuels in the quest for lower-carbon and cleaner energy, transport and infrastructure technologies. While possibly reducing the carbon footprint of material use, the effects of mining on water, air, human and more-than-human communities are less visible in the technocratic discourses and calculations.
Well documented are mining industry’s deep relations with colonialism, imperialism and related social engineering techniques of militarisation, policing, racism and sexism. Mining as part of a larger set of strategies of large- and long-term use of “natural resources” coagulates in the logics of extractivism. The concept and discussion was born in Latin America, but has since travelled across fields and geographies to tell many histories and illuminate a multitude of alternative world-making projects.
In the discussion we will explore how the evolving notions of extractivism and alternatives relate to our life, work and being.
mirko nikolić (Institute for Culture & Society, Linköping University) works through text, place-based performance and organising, often in different collaborative constellations and collectives, in solidarity with climate and environmental justice efforts. Since 2015, the principal focus of activity has been tracing the impacts of “mining booms” in North and South-East Europe, and non-extractivist alternatives from below.
https://minoritarianecologi.es/
https://www.hiap.fi/resident/mirko-nikolic/
https://liu.se/en/employee/mirni99
Wednesday 16 November 2022, 17.00 – 19.00 (GMT +2, Helsinki)
https://uniarts.zoom.us/j/62423118318
Passcode: 576714


Maarit Mäkelä: Working with Soil
Recently I spent one year in New-Zealand. Because of its volcanic nature, the place offered diverse raw materials that were suitable for ceramics making. The core of my creative practice became the natural environment and the earth samples – sand, stones, and clay – I gathered during my walks. The materials were processed further in the studio and then used as raw materials for ceramics. The lecture presents this ‘seed’ project with four interrelated projects where these practices are used in urban context. Three of the projects were conducted together with Working with soil group: first
took place in Research Pavilion #3 in the context of Venice Biennale 2019; second in Design Museum Helsinki 202
0-2021; third in Espoo Museum of Modern Art EMMA 2021-2022. All the projects discuss the entangled relationship between human and soil from different perspective. The fourth project is ongoing research with the aim of learning how to use geopolymers to work with soil matters with the result of construction that would not need firing.
Doctor of Arts Maarit Mäkelä is an Associate Professor of Practice-led Design Research at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland, where she is leading EMPIRICA research group and Contemporary Design master programme. Her own creative practice locates in the context of contemporary ceramics. She uses her own ceramics making as an embodied, slow practice through which to (re)consider the entangled relationship between human and non-human realms in the context of soil. Her current research interest lies in collaborative creative processes, especially how craft-based practices can be used for raising critical discourse around the stage of the environment. She has published and exhibited widely in international arenas.
https://www.maaritmakela.com/
https://empirica.aalto.fi/traces-from-the-anthropocene

MUSaiC FESTIVAL

November 22-24 Stockholm

A series of lectures and concerts devoted to the themes of the MUSAiC Project and beyond! How can one judge applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to music along dimensions of utility, impact, and ethics? How do creative AI systems affect the use and worth of music in particular contexts? How can ethical considerations be folded into the engineering and application of these kinds of systems? Should there be “laws of AI” that make explicit the responsibility of the AI technologist to the domains where the technology is to be applied? What creative possibilities are hindered or facilitated by the “flaws” of an AI system’s knowledge of music?

Confirmed Keynotes

Jonathan Sterne, Professor and James McGill Chair in Culture and Technology

Cecilia Åsberg, Professor and director of the Posthumanities Hub, Linköping University

Eric A Drott, Associate Professor of Theory, University of Texas at Austin

Confirmed Speakers and Performers

This event is organized by Bob L. T. Sturm (KTH) in collaboration with KMH and Fylkingen, with funding provided by:

Posthumanities Hub – online group meeting 1 September, 13.15 hrs-15:00 hrs

Wow, we are growing as a research group! Exciting things may be lurking ahead – and challenges for extra-ordinary academics like us. This is why we work together: to support each other and do really inventive, good quality research and edgy research training across the borders of nations, disciplines and universities. Together, apart and in various constellations with other curious research partners.

Call for our first meeting this term, dears!

A warm welcome to all you group members for our first zoom meeting this term, Thursday 1 Sep, 13:15 hrs! Group members and team on location – this is who we are whom work in the closer group. Zoom link will be sent out over email.

September 1 we launch this new fall term of 2022 with a group meeting where new postdoc researchers and visiting scholars say hello, and we meet and greet and discuss our priorities and themes for the year ahead. The Posthumanities Hub research group members commit often to the group one year at the time (with parts of their research), except of course for the PhD candidates and postdocs or more senior research staff whom have longer employment contracts – and visiting scholars who are with us for shorter periods. Together we set the living agenda for online webinars this fall, applications we do best together or for other co-written efforts of research.

Thank you for making the time and the space in your schedules and hearts for the off-road activities of The Posthumanities Hub.

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