Participant: Eva Lövbrand, Ass. Prof. at the Department of Thematic Studies: Environmental Change, Linköping University, Sweden

Project description: The Anthropocene concept was coined at the turn of the millennium to describe the state of the global environment and has since then taken root in scientific and popular discourse. While originally wedded in a dystopian narrative of human resource exploitation, planetary tipping points and environmental urgency, the Anthropocene is a travelling idea that has opened up new imaginative worlds as it has entered into interdisciplinary conversation within and beyond academia. Today the Anthropocene is as much a social and cultural event as it is a scientific one that is inspiring scholars, artists, and novelists to reconsider the links between nature and culture, economy and ecology, science and fiction. In this project we study the stories told about this new era in planetary history, and examine how these inform how contemporary environmental problems such as climate change are imagined, known and acted upon across the worlds of environmental science and politics.

Output:

Lövbrand, E., Beck, S., Chilvers, J., Forsyth, T., Hedrén, J., Hulme, M., Lidskog, R., and Vasileiadou, E. (2015) Who speaks for the future of Earth? How critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene, Global Environmental Change 32: 211-218.

Lövbrand, E. 2015 ‘Anthropocene politics: tracing a travelling idea’, conference panel at the 2015 Earth System Governance Conference, Australian National University, Canberra 14-16 December 2015;

Lövbrand, E. 2015. ‘The Anthropocene – a story with many endings’, key note talk at the 2015 Earth System Governance Conference, Australian National University, Canberra 14-16 December 2015.

Lövbrand, E ‘The Anthropocene: Environmental Crisis or Opportunity?’, invited talk at ‘Art and Humanities in Environmental Crisis: A Walking Workshop’ (Funded by ACSIS, Linköping University), Vårdsnäs Stiftgård, 3-4 October 2016.

Lövbrand, E, ‘The end of what? The nature politics of the Anthropocene’, invited talk at the symposium ‘The Anthropocene: Between the Earth and Social Sciences’, 25 November 2016, University of Zürich.