Research

On this page you can find out more about the previous research clusters that were part of The Seed Box first phase during 2015 - 2019.

The Seed Box develops research in the field of environmental humanities, attending to both the early traditions such as ecocriticism, environmental philosophy, environmental history, and political ecology, and new horizons opened up by theoretical innovations such as new materialism, post humanities, plant theory and citizen humanities.

The research projects within the Seed Box explore the boundaries between scholarly research and artistic and activist practices; they explore and create new methodologies and ways of communicating scholarly knowledge to the academic community and beyond. Taking the cue from the wider field of environmental humanities at large, which invites researchers to make their work more relevant and accessible to non-academic communities living and working closely with environmental problems, our citizen humanities projects connect Swedish and international communities to cutting-edge academic research. Consequently, the Seed Box research portfolio realizes a citizen humanities approach that is methodologically innovative and engages collaborations across diverse media and areas within the humanities and related interdisciplines, as well as a wide range of knowledge-makers and stakeholders from communities beyond academia.

The research and project portfolio during phase one of The Seed Box was organized in eight, often interrelated areas:
Deep Time, Deep Earth, Deep Water, Toxic Embodiment, Weather and Climate Change, Green Futures, Media Ecologies and Multispecies Stories.

Transversal Environmental Humanities

In our efforts to make an impact, citizen humanities and artistic outputs are integrated.  In this section, program publications and activities transversing environmental humanities is presented. Below, artistic and scholarly output from the different research areas included in the first phase of...
7Projects

Deep Time

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. The overarching research problems within the theme can be summarized as follows: It focuses on long-term cause and effect and how deep time mattering (natural and cultural) shapes a variety of relational processes. It...
4Projects

Deep Earth

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. Many of the most pressing contemporary environmental challenges are related to the workings of extractive industries. The extraction of natural resources from underground, be it fossil fuels or ores, is creating a growing...
8Projects

Deep Waters

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. Water is a pressing question for the Anthropocene. Ocean acidification, rising sea levels, erratic drought alongside dramatic flooding, plastic contamination, and large-scale hydroengineering all underscore the ways in which...
11Projects

Toxic Embodiment

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. Existential concerns around health today take on a much wider set of issues as we intra-act with antibiotics, nanoparticles and untested chemical cocktails through the food we eat, the make-up we wear, the new sofas we sit it...
9Projects

Weather and Climate Change

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. Climate change has in recent years become much more than its scientific description. Matters of climate change and related environmental concerns are too important and too urgent to be left to climate science alone (Steiner...
7Projects

Green Futures

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. Green discourse is no longer produced solely by governments, parliaments, and public authorities. Contemporary socio-environmental movements inspired by concepts such as degrowth, transition, relocalization, Buen Vivir/Vivir...
5Projects

Media Ecologies

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. The media infrastructures and digital networks of the 21st century has transformed the environment in drastic ways, making it necessary to describe and analyze new media ecologies. New media have, like nothing else, transformed...
19Projects

Multispecies Stories

This research cluster was part of The Seed Box first phase 2015 - 2019. Raymond Williams famously called “nature” the most complicated word in the English language. This complexity stems, in part, from the notion of a non-human “nature” that is separate from human culture: in American...