Respondent: Joost Adriaanse and Juliette Huijgen Date: Tuesday, 22 May 2018 Time: 4 p.m. – 5.15 p.m. Room: VU main building, room HG-12A33 Drinks afterwards Attendance is free of charge; please register using the form below. Facing social and ecological changes that may threaten the very survival of our species, our times require large-scale collective... Continue Reading →
Environmental Humanities Center Symposium Friday 23 March 2018, 14.00 – 17.00u Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Main Building, room 12A-00 For catering reasons, please register using the form below. Climate change, increasing rainfall, sea level rise, and flood risk pose significant challenges for low-lying countries such as The Netherlands. Historically, Amsterdam has devised a number of strategies... Continue Reading →
The History department of the University of Manchester seeks to appoint a Presidential Fellow specialising in environmental history. Environmental history is a growing area of research that seeks to understand how people have understood, shaped and been shaped by their world. Applications are welcome from researchers working on any historical period or geographical area, whose... Continue Reading →
16 February 2018, 15.30hrs Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Main Building Room 10A-00 Please register below. The Dutch 'Thinker Laureate' (Denker des Vaderlands) René ten Bos will visit the Environmental Humanities Center to talk about his new book Dwalen in het Antropoceen. Please note that this lecture will be in Dutch. Leven in het Antropoceen Hoe overleven... Continue Reading →
In October and November 2017, the Environmental Humanities Center organised the Nuclear Waste Weeks in cooperation with Anna Volkmar (Leiden University) and Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou (CRAL, EHESS). Nuclear waste is one of the major unsolved challenges of our time, raising an array of questions, from the possibilities and politics of storage and disposal, over deep time,... Continue Reading →
Tuesday December 12 17.30-19.00 uur Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Lecture Hall 0B-60 Initium Building, ground floor De Boelelaan 1077 Behind Main Building, across from stop De Boelelaan/VU (tram 5/metro 51) Admission free; please register below. NB: Because of overwhelming interest, we are moving to a bigger lecture hall: 0B-60 in the Initium Building, behind the Main... Continue Reading →
This blog post shares some impressions from an excursion with the Environmental Humanities Center to an underground research laboratory for the storage of nuclear waste and an art exhibition on nuclear culture. By Anna Volkmar (Leiden University) On October 27, I went underground. Together with thirteen volunteers I descended into the bowels of HADES, the... Continue Reading →
Our Nuclear Waste Weeks have come to a close. Student board member Ankie Petersen reports on the Nuclear Waste Event: Nuclear Waste Event During our Nuclear Waste Weeks, local and global news outlets talked about the extent of the pollution of sea water after the Fukushima disaster of 2011, an anti-nuclear weapon campaign won the... Continue Reading →
In the context of our Nuclear Waste Weeks, Anna Volkmar and Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou invite you to a film screening this Friday 15-16hrs. They will show two recent short films that focus on the issue of nuclear waste: Julian Charrière's Somewhere (2014) and Myroslav Slaboshpitskyy's Nuclear Waste (2012). Everyone is welcome to this (free) screening on... Continue Reading →
On Thursday 28 September, 14-17hrs, the Research Center for Material Culture organises the workshop Earth Matters in the Museum: Planetary Entanglements and Precarities. The workshop is organised by Wayne Modest, professor (by special appointment) of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies in the faculty of humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Member of the board of... Continue Reading →
Please find below the call for abstracts for the International Sociological Association World Congress, July 2018 in Toronto, where our thematic group TG07 Senses & Society is organizing 9 panels and a business meeting. The deadline for abstract submission is 30th September 2017. Abstract submission - https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Symposium436.html Panels organized by TG07 Senses and Society (ISA)... Continue Reading →
Amsterdam University Press has started a book series devoted to Environmental Humanities in Pre-modern Cultures. The first book in the series is just out: Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes: Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination by Heide Estes. "Literary scholars have traditionally understood landscapes, whether natural or manmade, as metaphors for humanity instead of concrete settings for people's actions.... Continue Reading →
The opening of the academic year at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam focused on the question ‘Thin ice! What can science do to help?’, and explored what the arts can teach the sciences in the case of climate change - a topic we also explored last year at the Environmental Humanities Center. The question was addressed by... Continue Reading →
The annual On the Roof Film Festival, held on the roof of the main building of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam this week, is devoted to the theme of Sustainability. Together with the Green Office, the organizers put together a programme of four films, talks, food, and drinks. For four evenings the latest films from world cinema... Continue Reading →
Drought, flooding. Water is the main environmental problem of the near future, already the cause of wars. How did we deal with water in the past? This summer, the results of a large research project into the history of water were published in a special issue of the journal Environment and History. Our board member Petra... Continue Reading →
