Global environmental problems such as climate change, destruction of natural habitats, biodiversity crises, and more, make it abundantly clear that the humanities can contribute in important ways to tackling contemporary societal problems. Green technologies are important, but do not suffice. More fundamental changes are required; transformations of habits, thought patterns, and traditions that contribute to the current imbalance between humans and our non-human surroundings and our interactions with non-human others. Humanities perspectives have a lot to offer in facilitating change. The humanities can contribute importantly in terms of analyses of social practices, cultural traditions and values that bind communities together, affect patterns of action and our understandings of our-selves and others in relation to our physical surroundings and our relations to other species. The necessary green changes have cultural (including religious), historical, aesthetic, linguistic, and ethical aspects. This means that a significant research potential can be identified in terms of investigations of these aspects of the relationships between humans and non-human life forms and milieu; it means that the humanities can contribute to identifying some of the preconditions for the creation of sustainable interactions with the life forms of the planet.
All these aspects, and more, call for contributions and perspectives from the humanities. The perspectives and approaches described above can be understood as falling within the broader field of Environmental Humanities. These are topics, questions, and problems that this network seeks to address and discuss. The network aims to establish forms of collaboration and conversation across all disciplines and departments at the faculty of Humanities, SDU. Our goal is simply to collaborate in order to learn about Environmental Humanities approaches and about each other’s work. We wish to facilitate networking, dialogue, and collaboration between all interested researchers at the Humanities, SDU, by organizing seminars, Zoom-talks, study groups, and more. We are also interested in collaborations across faculties, if possible. All are welcome!