The nascent Centre for Environmental Humanities at Aarhus University receives a further financial boost: The Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education supports the Aarhus-Cape Town Environmental Humanities Partnership with a total of 272.197 DKK. These funds will strengthen collaborations between researchers in the Global North and Global South and support the next generations of environmental humanities scholars. The CEH, together with colleagues from the Cape Town-based Environmental Humanities South cluster – spearheaded by Associate Professor Lesley Green – will develop research conversations and a PhD course aimed at crossing disciplinary and geographic boundaries.

The Environmental humanities is a dynamic and growing field that explores a broad range of questions at the intersection of sustainability, human well-being, and the environment. Because such questions require scholars to work across longstanding conceptual and institutional divides between nature/culture and sciences/arts, Environmental humanities is spawning new types of interdisciplinary research projects and PhD coursework. At the same time as Environmental humanities actively cultivates relationships with the natural sciences, it also asks what humanities perspectives, in particular might contribute to addressing pressing environmental concerns. So far, however, Environmental humanities programs – primarily institutionally located in North American and Europe – have examined environmental issues largely from global North perspectives. The grant’s PI and CEH

Director Felix Riede says: “This networking project, which brings together Environmental humanities scholars from Denmark and South Africa, asks how Environmental humanities can be more alert to global South perspectives and better collaborate with Southern institutions in order to develop forms of environmental scholarship that are more responsive to continuing global inequalities. The scientific focus of this network is knowledge exchange about the different analytical frameworks, theoretical tools, and modes of collaboration that are developing around Environmental humanities in these two regions. We’re excited about this and sure that Environmental humanities scholars who are aware of multiple paradigms will be better positioned to suggest viable, responsible, and just policy interventions”.

Facts
The Centre for Environmental Humanities (CEH) was established in February 2017 with initial funding from the School of Culture and Society and follow-up funding from the Committee for Research and External Cooperation at Aarhus University.

• The Environmental Humanities South interdisciplinary research cluster and postgraduate programme