Transformative Research for Perilous Times: Perspectives from Environmental Humanities

This lecture provides a brief introduction to the environmental humanities as a multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary research field as it has emerged and developed over the past two decades. It then focuses in on the question as to what might be considered to constitute ‘transformative research’ in this field: transformative, that is, with respect to both the conventional methods and questions of discrete disciplines in the humanities, and to potential research impacts beyond academia. Particular attention will be given to the three broad areas of enquiry that lie at the centre of the work of the research hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities at the University of Cologne: ‘decolonial cultural ecologies’; ‘multispecies conviviality’; and ‘disaster preparedness’.

Copyright: Prof. Kate Rigby

Professor Dr. Kate Rigby (Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities) is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Cologne, where she leads a research hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental literary, philosophical, historical and religious studies, with a specialist interest in European Romanticism, ecopoetics, multispecies studies, and disaster studies. She was the inaugural President of the Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture (Australia-New Zealand), and the founding Director of the Australia-Pacific Forum on Religion and Ecology. A founding co-editor of the journal Philosophy Activism Nature, she also co-edited the University Press of Virginia series, Under the Sign of Nature, and her books include Dancing with Disaster: Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous Times (2015), Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization (2020) and Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction (2023).