The SDU Citizens Science research project Addressing Climate Anxiety Using Flash Fiction in the Classroom combines high school teaching and research to illuminate and focus on young people's climate ideas. Since young people are particularly aware of the negative impact the climate crisis will have on their life, we have asked to more than 250 high school students in Denmark to write a short story about the climate in 2060. By comparing these different versions of our shared future, we aim to gain insight into young people’s imagination and the role of post-anthropocentric narratives in their depiction of the years to come.

Participating Researchers: 

• Bryan Yazell, Associate Professor, Department of Cultural Studies. Lecturer, DIAS.

• Patricia Wolf, Professor WSR, Department of Business Management. Professor WSR, Center for Integrating Innovation Management.

• Karl Attard, Lecturer, Nordcee, Danish Center for Hadal Research. Lecturer, DIAS.

• Leonardo Nolé, postdoc, Department of Cultural Studies, DIAS.

The project is coordinated by SDU Citizen Science:

• Mette Fentz Haastrup, High School Coordinator, University Library of Southern Denmark, SDU Citizen Science

• Thomas Kaarsted, deputy director, University Library of Southern Denmark, SDU Citizen Science

• Line Laursen, Information Specialist, University Library of Southern Denmark, SDU Citizen Science

   

The Burning Man community is a global cultural movement that is guided by principles which, among other things, stress inclusion, decommodification, and collective stewardship of the environment. In this project, the researchers aim to co-develop and enact post-anthropocentric climate narratives through flash fiction writing, improvisation theatre, and music making. We aim to gain insight into radical envisioning processes in communities such as the Burning Man Festival and examine how they can inform alternative systems of production and consumption.

Researchers:

• Patricia Wolf, Department of Business & Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences at SDU, 
• Bryan Yazell, Department of Language, Culture, History and Communication & DIAS, Faculty of Humanities at SDU
• Christoph Kunz, Professor in Business Informatics at the Media University in Stuttgart
• Ella Fegitz, PhD, Project Manager at SDU Research & Innovation Organization

My postdoc-project is called Concepts in Action: The Borderlands of Environmental Theory and Practice. Many of our collective ideas and habits – expressed in political, socio-economic, and legal practices – lie beneath the climate- and biodiversity crises. How do we go beyond these ideas and habits? A green revolution requires knowledge about social norms, political strategies and mobilization, and sustainable life-forms. In my project, I am interested in recent theories about such life-forms and how they can be traced and accelerated in society. How do we mobilize an ecological class? In particular, I am interested in 1) new ways of organizing the production and distribution of food that we see in certain agricultural movements, and 2) in new ethical and legal perceptions of human/nature relations going beyond a narrow focus on human interests and economic growth that we find in climate movements and green NGO’s.

Researcher: Kristoffer Balslev Willert, postdoc.

In my PhD project, I examine how specific environmental organisations manage to mobilise an “emerging ecological class” by strategically utilising post-anthropocentric ontologies while balancing these with anthropocentric narratives of nature. I work with the basic assumption proposed by Anna Tsing (2015): “We are contaminated by our encounters - they change who we are as we make way for others.” Along these lines, my research will be examining whether being urged to use or consume nature influences people’s incentives to conduct climate action. Particularly, I’m focusing on environmental organisations managing to balance anthropocentric (consumption-oriented) and post-anthropocentric (ecological interdependence beyond a human-centred perspective) approaches to nature in their discourses on climate action.

Researcher: Ida Raunkjær, PhD Student

Rural communities must also be viable when we reach the other side of the climate transition. But what is a viable rural community, and how do we ensure that the disrespect and distance between urban dwellers and rural communities does not grow? With this project, the researchers aim to develop and test a workshop that can bring together urban dwellers, rural people, and sustainability advocates in the effort to find a common path to more sustainable rural communities. Important for the project is that it bottom-up style builds on the participant’s own ideas on what characterizes a viable and sustainable rural community. Researchers: Søren Askegaard, Professor, Dept. of Business and Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences. Sune Vork Steffensen, Professor, Center for Human Interactivity, Faculty of the Humanities. Manuela Zechner, postdoc. Dept. of Business and Management, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, SDU and Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking, Copenhagen University

In my PhD project, I will explore how Danish climate activists use literary fiction in their activist practices. Through qualitative interviews, fieldwork, and close readings, I will investigate how literary fiction, in particular sci-fi and cli-fi, can contribute to the creation of new visions of more sustainable future societies. Among other things, I am interested in what type of literature climate activists read, the ideas, language, and images that these stories provide, and how the activists use them in their practice. On a greater scale, I am interested in how storytelling can mobilize people to engage in the climate struggle.

Researcher: Tatiana Tilly, PhD Student