The Centre for Climate Emergency Studies

We live in a state of planetary climate emergency. This is becoming increasingly clear in all aspects of life. But what is meant by the terms “climate” and “emergency,” and what happens when they are brought together in a “climate emergency”? What does it mean for us to orient ourselves ethically, culturally, politically and cognitively in the near-to unfathomable complexity of the climate, especially in a situation defined as an “emergency”? How can we create spaces for action in relation to temporalities and scales that are difficult to grasp?

Center for Climate Emergency Studies (Centre CES) is a transdisciplinary platform for research, education and action related to the climate emergency. Critical theoretical, scientific and not least artistic perspectives and methods meet in the centre’s activities. The focus is on experimentation, creativity, criticality and climate emergency-related action.

This site is an informal project “playground” for participants and those interested in working more with us. For our formal Linnaeus University web presence, please visit us here.

Activities

Focusing on higher education, Centre CES aspires to establish Climate Emergency Studies as a main field of research and study at Linnaeus University and as part of an emerging international network. The activities of the centre include seminar series exploring different aspects and dimensions of the climate emergency, a number of smaller close reading groups on specific themes, and an in-process compilation of texts, films, audio recordings and other resources making up an expanding set of Climate Emergency Studies literatures.

Furthermore, the group seeks to participate in the public debate around the climate emergency and the different forms of action it involves in a proactive fashion. Pedagogical activities and collaborative projects of different kinds, including experimental prototype modules and courses in Climate Emergency Studies, are also being developed.

About

Climate crises with potentially catastrophic consequences constitute a planetary state of affairs. This has been indicated with sufficient certainty across scientific disciplines. In response to scientists’ climate warnings, nation states, local municipalities and universities around the world have, in increasing numbers, declared a “climate emergency”. Despite such dramatic proclamations, however, business-as-usual tend to continue. A problematic gap thus appears between political declarations based on science, and the lack of required climate action.

Climate Emergency Studies proposes that the gravity of this lack of action urges forth a paradigm shift across ecological, socio-cultural, artistic, political and scientific domains. This entails the incorporation of what might be referred to as a geo-ontology and geo-epistemology across disciplines figuring the Earth as the active foreground rather than a passive backdrop and placing an emphasis on the geo-oriented ethical, aesthetic and pedagogical practices this implies.

Taking such paradigm shift as a point of departure, Climate Emergency Studies situates itself at the nexus between current expertise regarding the causes and impacts of the climate emergency and the construction of cross-sectorial, multifaceted spaces for action and agency. From this vantage point, it seeks to critically map out existing knowledges and articulations of the “climate emergency” exploring its current epistemological and political status, and furthermore, developing new transdisciplinary, transversal conceptual frameworks and collaborative, project-based pedagogical models enabling “climate emergency” to be translated into “climate action”.

The intention, in other words, is not so much to provide expertise and competence in any specific field but to provide geo-oriented knowledges apt for implementation across different fields.

Seminar Series and Reading Groups

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Reading Groups

#1 Critical Zones A reading group exploring the exhibition and publication Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, (eds.) Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Taking as its point of departure, the introductions to the eight parts of the book, the reading group explores the diverse contents while bringing in other references and cases relevant specifically to Climate Emergency Studies …

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Seminar Series

#1 Mobilization and Empowerment A seminar series exploring different engagements with the climate emergency from the perspective of mobilization and empowerment. What spaces for action and agency are available to us, within and across specific sectors, institutions, organizations and disciplines? Where do we find sites and practices for transformative action relevant to the climate emergency? …

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Contact

Centre for Climate Emergency Studies
c/o Ola Ståhl, Department of Design
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Linnaeus University
Box 451
351 95 Växjö
Sweden

Telephone: +46 (0) 470 – 70 80 66
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