Nature-Society Relations and the Global Environmental Crisis – Thinking on Climate Change and Sustainability from the Fields of Intersectional Theory and Transdisciplinary Gender Studies

Workshop

12th-13th July 2024

Planetary Confluences: Streaming Riperian Solidarities

Two-day transdisciplinary festival organised by our lab “Plantary Tactics” in partnership with Labtek Apung (Jakarta), Salve Saracura (São Paulo) Floating (Berlin) and BUA TD Lab

The lab “Planetary Tactics for Cohabitation” worked with a network of researchers, artists and climate activists from São Paulo, Jakarta, and Berlin to share and exchange knowledge and tactics on localised water struggles across the three cities. In partnership with BUA TD-Lab, we will host a two-day transdisciplinary festival, including multiple workshops, screenings, and lectures showcasing and disseminating projects learnings at Floating, Berlin.

Workshop

11th July

Toward an International of Water Bodies: Voicing, Visualizing, Evidencing, Mobilizing

Tomás Uson & Laura Kemmer Endira Julianda (Labtek Apung, Indonesia) Victor Prospero, Ж, and Lucio Teles (Salve Saracura & Mobilização Saracura Vai-Vai, Brazil) Mijo Miquel (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain) Camille de Toledo (writer and activist) Ana Luiza Nobre and David Sperling (Ground Atlas)

How can diverse water bodies at various localities learn from each other and build solidarity? How can we think this form of support as an international effort where the main protagonist is water and all the living networks it sustains? This hybrid workshop will gather scientists, artists, legal scholars, activists, and writers from Brazil, Indonesia, and Spain to bring their experiences in advocating the protection of water bodies at their localities. Inspired by Camille de Toledo, artist and activist who launched the research program “Towards and Internationale of Rivers and Other Elements of Nature,” the workshop will focus on sharing the experiences of voicing and visualizing water bodies, evidencing environmental violence and healing beyond jurisdictional logics, and mobilizing legal-political supports to protect water.

e-mail

Workshop

6th July 2024

Rights of Nature

TU Berlin

workshop plus exhibition at TU

Lecture

4th July 2024

Lecture on the Rights of Nature

Teresa Vincente

IRI THESys, HU Berlin

Workshop

5th June 2024

The Nature of Cities Festival 2024 ↗

Untangling the Interconnectedness of Biodiversity and Human Health in Urban Areas via Social-Ecological Networks

Tanja Straka, Zeno Porro, Monika Egerer, Florian Ruland, Joanna Coleman, Aletta Bonn, Solène Guenat, Jonathan Jeschke

In this session, experts and decision-makers delved into the complex relationship between biodiversity and human health in urban areas through social-ecological networks. Through presentations and discussions, we gained fresh insights into these complex relationships.

Workshop

31st March 2023

Planetary Health and Resilient Society

Antonio Saraiva, Sandra Jasper, Laura Kemmer

Lecture

9th of April 2024 4:15-6pm CET

Video Recording ↗

Designing with the Planet with Guest Lindsay Bremner

Jamie Baxter and Laura Kemmer

Hosted online by University of Basel. Part of South Designs lecture series.

Speaker include: Jamie Baxter and Laura Kemmer with David Sperling, Ana Luiza Nobre, Teresa Huppertz, Carla Lombardo, Endira Julianda.

poster

Lecture

13 February 2024 18-20:00

Center for Metropolitan Studies ↗

Animal-Aided Design: A Stakeholder Approach to Incorporating Wildlife into Urban Planning

Thomas Hauck (Berlin/Wien)

Publication

2024

Berliner Blätter ↗

Urbanizing soil. Berlin Teufelsberg as leaky archive

Laura Kemmer and Sandra Jasper

In this contribution, we argue that the material process of urbanizing soil is not limited to the transformation of a “natural” into an “urban” element. Rather, soil is produced in and from cities. This is exemplified through the case of Teufelsberg, a rubble mound in the southwest of Berlin, created from 26 cubic metres of city rubble from the early 1950s onwards. We accompany soil scientists on an excursion to trace the scientific debates and troubles around classifying urban soil, studies about sulphate leaching from bricks, and recent ideas of resignifying the experimental rubble mound as a soil monument of both scientific and cultural significance. The Teufelsberg process of rubble pedogenesis confronts us with an imaginary of soils as leaky archives of human activity. Through their hybridity as both material and lively, organic and technogenic, rubble soils trouble imaginaries of elemental “purity”.

Conference

1st November 2023

Berlin Science Week ↗

Planetary Health: What Can we Learn from the Multispecies City?

Embassy of Brazil in Berlin, Berlin University Alliance | Laura Kemmer, Marcia Chame, Antonio Mauro Saraiva, Sandra Jasper, Jamie-Scott Baxter, Ulrike Beisel, Túllio Da Silva Maia, Roberto Jaguaribe, Christoph Schneider, Ж, Pia Rafalski

This transdisciplinary talk will explore complexities and contradictions of ‘planetary healing’ & use of urban nature as remedy for human malaise Planetary Health points us to how human health is no longer separable from the health of animals, plants, and ecosystems. As a concept, it urges us to understand how man-made processes such as climate crisis, urbanization, habitat destruction, pollution and toxicity have repercussions on both the “natural” and “social” worlds. However, there has been only few occasions where the concept has been discussed in a trans-disciplinary manner, between the natural and the social sciences.

Our event crosses the boundaries between Brazil and Germany, biology and anthropology, engineering and urban studies. It unites established planetary health experts from Brazil with Berlin-based researchers exploring global health through a multispecies city lens. Join us and learn about the possibilities and limitations of translating “planetary health” for studies that scrutinize urban initiatives for improving human-environment relations.

Conference

4-6 May 2023

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin ↗