For humanities-led responses to current crises
The Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network was set up in 2013. We are an interdisciplinary research network, interested in developing collaborative work in the Environmental Humanities throughout Scotland, the UK, and worldwide.
We believe the current environmental crisis is best understood as a collection of diverse but mutually-reinforcing political, economic, philosophical, ethical, relational, and spiritual crises. The Environmental Humanities can compliment responses to environmental problems in the hard sciences, by examining the social bases for climate change, biodiversity loss, and marine desertification, addressing the values which underpin environmental decision-making, and exploring more ethical ways of imagining, narrating, and inhabiting environments global.
Our network aims to be a place to examine these questions through dialogue, innovation, and creative partnerships.
Our values
The Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network aspires to be:
- Relational in its approach to key issues and problems
- Responsive to new developments, opportunities and research insights
- Open to public or artistic collaborations.
Events and Actitivies
We are an active and inclusive research network, with interests that span the Environmental Humanities (including deep time, the Anthropocene, and multispecies relations). You can find information about recent and upcoming events below, and on our Resources and Activities page
You are welcome to advertise your own Environmental Humanities event on our website: please use the form here.
Join our Reading Group
We host a monthly reading group where we discuss new work in the Environmental Humanities. The group is cross-disciplinary (including geography, anthropology, philosophy, literary studies, and more), and readings are selected by different members each month. You can find a list of themes and reading so far on our Reading Group page.
We meet at the University of Edinburgh on the second Friday of each month, from 4.00-5.30pm. New members are welcome – if you’d like to come along, please email david.farrier@ed.ac.uk for details of the current readings and venue.
Lecture Series
In 2015-16 EEHN was given an IASH International Interdisicplinary Research Group grant, to develop our series of lectures and workshops on Unexpected Encounters with Deep Time.
Our interest was in bringing deep time to bear on the everyday. Whether it is a fossil in the polished floor of a hotel lobby or an encounter with a turtle washed up on a Scottish beach with a gut full of plastic, chance meetings such as these suggest the uncanny ability of deep time to telescope into and out of the everyday. Rather than appearing as an abstract concept, an unending line forward or backwards, deep time is met in material encounters that disorient and reframe. For instance, fossil fuel simultaneously casts us back in to the deep past of their formation, and the deep future shaped by their consumption. Deep time enfolds and enlivens our existence, and thinking about the intersection of deep time with the everyday offers a different view onto the processes of disruption that mark the extended ‘geological moment’ that has been named the Anthropocene.
Our three themes were Enchantment, Violence, and Haunting, and each theme was explored via public lecture, workshop, and postgraduate masterclass. You can find recordings of the lectures and presentations on our Resources and Activities page
Collaborate and connect with us
The Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network provides opportunities to connect with researchers who share a common interest, and a forum for discussion around future directions in the Environmental Humanities. A list of members’ research interests can be found under the Members tab.
We are keen to develop links with other Environmental Humanities networks, and are always open to new people. If you would like connect with our network, or be added to our mailing list, please contact david.farrier (at) ed.ac.uk. You can follow us on Twitter: @EEHNetwork.
Please find our current events and activities below and
here.
