Lecture series "Beyond Sustainability: Humanities and Social Sciences Perspectives on the Ecological Crisis"

Climate change, extractivist devastation, ocean acidification, and the accelerating loss of species continue to worsen worldwide, with environmental damage intensifying across the globe. As the ecological crisis deepens, the humanities and social sciences are called upon to develop resources - conceptual, analytical, and methodological - in order to make sense of the current situation and to respond to its challenges. The concept of sustainability - once central to environmental discourse - has been criticised for its association with technocratic, managerial, and neoliberal agendas that fail to address the structural, historical, and cultural dimensions of environmental degradation. At the same time, the crisis demands more than critique: it calls for innovative ways of thinking, organizing, and acting that engage with the social, political, ethical, and symbolic foundations of human-environment relations. This interdisciplinary lecture series brings together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences to examine the ecological crisis from diverse and complementary angles, including critical sustainability studies, decolonial ecologies, environmental justice, or posthumanist theory. By bringing these perspectives in dialogue, the lecture series aims to push the debate beyond sustainability, towards new ways of thinking and acting in the face of ecological transformation.

27 October 2025 - keynote lecture, online

Jason W. Moore (Binghamton): On the 'Sustainability of the Rich'. How the One Percent Uses Nature to Make You Afraid, Keep its Wealth, and Hold on to Power

Jason W. Moore teaches Global Environmental History at Binghamton University (USA), where he coordinates the World-Ecology Research Collective. With concepts such as “Capitalocene” and “Cheap Nature”, his work has had a significant impact on the debate surrounding the socio-ecological crisis. In his lecture at the start of the lecture series, he will critically analyse the extent to which the planetary elite – the Point One Percent - exploits genuine biospheric crises to secure their wealth and power while imposing austerity measures on the masses.

(The lecture will take place online.)

03 November 2025

Stefan Janković (Belgrade): Digging into Ecopolitical Dispute. Mapping Controversies around Lithium Extraction in Serbia

Sociologist Stefan Janković will draw on a corpus of texts spanning more than 20 years, in order to provide insight into Serbia's eco-political controversies surrounding lithium mining. He aims to demonstrate how the government's political measures are being met with resistance from the civilian population due to doubts about the safety, transparency, and legality of these projects.

10 November 2025

Anna Henkel (Passau): Dilemmas of Sustainability

In her lecture, Anna Henkel, professor of sociology at the University of Passau, will address the handling of conflicts that underlie many dilemmas in discussions about sustainability. Based on her research, she will present guiding questions that are intended to stimulate reflection on the transformative, generative potential of such conflicts, especially with regard to project work and funding measures in this area.

17 November 2025

Gal Kirn (EUV): Liberation Ecology - A Blueprint for Future Research

The cultural philosopher from the EUV, Gal Kirn, will discuss so-called “liberation ecologies”. His lecture will deliver an analysis of heterogeneous liberation movements, especially from the second half of the 20th century, which, in their struggle against fascism and colonial oppression, called for explicit care for and alliances with the non-human world.

24.11.2025 - online

Miriam Lang (Quito): Fostering Desirable Ecosocial Futures in Times of Darkness

Miriam Lang will analyse current disputes around ecosocial transformation in the midst of a civilizational crisis, ranging from the political far right to approaches of systemic transformation, from a Latin American perspective. This will allow her to explore what the role of critical social sciences and humanities can be in this scenario, and how a pedagogy of liberation can be thought of and practiced in dark times.

(The lecture will take place online.)

01 December 2025

Jan-Erik Schirmer (EUV): Climate Liability. The David v. Goliath Dynamic in the Courtroom

In his lecture, legal scholar Jan-Erik Schirmer will provide insights into court proceedings relating to climate liability. He will mainly focus on cases between so-called carbon major players such as RWE, Shell, etc., and actors from the Global South. In addition to the actual damage caused to the environment, Schirmer will also demonstrate to which extent these court cases are a publicly effective way of articulating the concerns of the plaintiffs from the Global South.

08 December 2025

Pierre Wat (Paris): Paradise Lost? Art Facing the Anthropocene

The art historian Pierre Wat will investigate what function can be attributed to art nowadays, between consolation, lucidity, and the search for a new form of beauty despite the finitude of the world. By examining a selection of recent works, the lecture will address how artists are managing, or not, to preserve a sense of wonder in times of predicted disaster, while questioning of the power of art in the face of history.

15.12.2025

Leon Wansleben (Max Planck Institute): Decarbonisation at your Doorstep: How Infrastructures, Politics, and Climate Activists Shape Household Energy Transitions

Leon Wansleben will present his research on the difficulties that arise in the course of decarbonising households. He will pay special attention to distribution politics in order to analyse which social concerns and fears of material loss play a role among the broader population, and to what extent climate movements should take these into account.

05.01.2026

Estela Schindel (EUV): Beyond the (Hu)man. Challenges and Debates around the Anthropocene

Estela Schindel's lecture explores the Anthropocene as epistemological crisis, examining key theoretical debates and alternative frameworks that may help reimagine agency beyond human exceptionalism. In doing so, she will inquire, which conceptualisation of the human might allow for considerations of relational embeddedness and new emancipatory horizons, as well as the ontology of humans in sociology.

12 January 2026

André Rottmann (EUV): Images, Infrastructures and Intelligences. Ecologies of Contemporary Art between Nature and Technology

André Rottmann's lecture will provide further insight into the intersection between art and sustainability. Starting in the 1960s and continuing into the 2020s, his analysis traces the ecological interconnections that contemporary art has entered into over time. Additionally, the role of artificial intelligence in this regard will also be discussed.

19.01.2026

Andreas Bähr (EUV): Times of Crisis. Concepts of the Past, Present and Future in Early Modern Human-Environment Relations

Andreas Bähr's lecture will engage with ideas about crises from the early modern period. He will analyse the unsettling but also guiding nature that concepts of the past, present and future, which envisaged a co-constitutive interconnection between the human and non-human worlds, had for people in the early modern period.

26 January 2026

Amelie Kutter (EUV): Governmentalities of Sustainability Transition. The Case of Peatlands

Amelie Kutter, will use the example of peatlands in the State of Brandenburg in order to examine the way sustainability transition is made ‘governable’ across scales by both governance instruments and local actors’ strategies. Drawing on the perspective of governmentality studies and the political sociology of policy instruments, the lecture will outline the rationalities, technologies of knowledge production, and subjectivities that are constituted by these practices.