The Planetary Workshop Series is an integral part of the Planetary Scholars and Artists in Residence Program. Each semester, the visiting scholars and artists prepare a workshop of one or more days with reference to the Fellowship theme and their own focal points. The thematic orientation as well as the organizational design of the workshop are left entirely to the Fellows, and thus the Planetary Workshop Series features exciting content, creative formats, and unusual perspectives. Here you can find information on all past events of this series.
Please note that the event will be held entirely in English.
This workshop recognizes soil as vibrant, alive, and communicative. Starting from the insight that soil constitutes an agency that significantly shapes planetary life, Soil Translations asks how humans can better understand this agency and how they may sharpen their sensibilities to become able to read its expressions and translate its semiotics, its text(ure).
Starting with a panel discussion among artists, gardeners, farmers, soil scientists and humanities scholars, the workshop invites participants to think across and beyond disciplines, schools of thought, and human perspectives. Consequently, a guided farm tour and hands-on engagement with soil is to inspire active thinking with this planetary agency and reflection on what it means to be touched by soil-worlds.
The workshop emerges against the backdrop that planetary politics hinges upon the formation of more horizontal relationships to the more-than-human world. Yet in hegemonic understandings, one of the most distinctive features between ‘humans’ and the 'more-than-human’ is the ability to speak and be communicative. Therefore, it seems taken for granted that soil—unable to express itself in human words—is unable to participate in politics. Contrary to these hegemonic understandings, many Indigenous worlds enact cosmologies grounded in mutual exchange with the more-than-human world and lived through relational ways of being—ways in which nature speaks through diverse vessels. And interestingly, the act of "reading" the soil is also part of the daily work within scientific knowledge practices in the Global North—particularly in agriculture.
Through the lens of agricultural practices, art and reflections on translation, the workshop explores how to communicate with soil and asks what it means to listen to it in times of climate change and soil devastation. If humans learned how to translate soil’s expressions, what would they get to know? And how would that knowledge change their understanding of more-than-human agency and its political relations to human society? And how would that change our understanding of what it means to be human? To be democratic?
The workshop welcomes everyone interested in soil, human-nature-relationships and planetary politics – including, artists, gardeners, farmers, and researches from the nature, social sciences, and the humanities.
13:00 | Plant-based lunch (provided for participants)
14:30 | Guided tour - Soil at Gladbacherhof: Soil Genesis and Current Cultivation by Franz Schulz (Head of Research Farm, Oberer Gladbacherhof, JLU Giessen)
16:00 | Closing remarks / departure to Giessen
Sophie von Redecker
Currently completing her PhD in Organic Agricultural Sciences at JLU Gießen with a scholarship from the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation. In her dissertation, she proposes the Agrarian Humanities as a new research field, which complements Critical Agrarian Studies with approaches from More-than-Human Studies, Environmental Humanities, artistic research methods, and decolonial science criticism. She is a state-proved actress and has curated exhibitions that arose from scientific-artistic research. She is an associate member of the research cluster "Crisis and Socio-Ecological Transformation" at Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation. She received her first training from strawberries and sandy soil on the organic farm, where she grew up.
Brad Harmon
Studied German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Minnesota (B.A. 2017) and Scandinavian Literature at the University of Washington (M.A. 2020) before beginning his PhD in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at Johns Hopkins University where his dissertation traces an ecopoetics of “flesh” in 20th century German and Scandinavian poetry. He has been a 2023-2024 American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow in Comparative Literature at Södertörn University (Stockholm), a 2024-2025 Fulbright Fellow in German Studies at FU Berlin and a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow. As a translator into English from German and the Scandinavian languages, his book-length translations include poetry by Johannes Anyuru, Katarina Frostenson, Esther Kinsky, Lív Maria Róadóttir Jæger; novels by Monika Fagerholm, Eli Levén, Birgitta Trotzig; and biographies of Avicii and Björn Borg. Since March 2025, he is a guest researcher and guest lecturer in the Department of Northern European Studies at HU Berlin.
Lisa Krall
Postdoc at the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Cologne (GeStiK). Her new materialist doctoral thesis focused on epigenetics. Lisa is part of a collective that reflects on compost and how to work with compost practically in art and academia. Other areas of interest: interdisciplinary gender studies, feminist science and technology studies, feminist new materialisms, (queer) feminist perspectives on motherhood and care, methodologies.
Wiebke Niether
Holds a Diploma degree in Biology from the University of Greifswald, Germany, and a Master of Science degree in Sustainable International Agriculture from the Universities of Kassel and Goettingen, Germany. She finished her PhD under supervision of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Gerold at the Institute of Landscape Ecology, University of Goettingen, and in cooperation with the Research institute on Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Switzerland. She continued working at the University of Goettingen as a scientific coordinator. Thereafter she was Deputy Head of Cocoa Department at Rausch GmbH, Berlin, Germany. Since September 2020 she is senior scientist at the professorship of Organic Farming at the University of Giessen, Germany. Her research interest are the environmental interactions of crops-trees-soil-atmosphere in natural based farming systems, in particular climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies of complex agroecosystems like agroforestry systems.
Solawi Terra Lumbricus
We are a small, diverse farm called Gärtnerei Terra Lumbricus (loosely translated, “the earth of the earthworm”) in a village between Marburg and Gießen. Our main focus is a vegetable solidarity-based agriculture (SoLawi) with 60 different vegetable varieties and our own seedling cultivation. In addition, we farm a few hectares of arable land, where we grow grains, potatoes, animal feed, and materials for mulch and fertilizer.
alissa mirea weidenfeld
They are on a sensual quest: both themes and materials are explored experimentally and with curiosity; thereby moving between conceptual and intuitive approaches. As a former vegetable gardener they are still growing weeds and vegetables in different ways and various places. For them also their artistic works are like seeds. They care for them and let them grow into something nurturing. Through intense involvement, their processes lead to political positions with a fluidity between topics and fields. Societal fixation on gender roles, exploitation of people and nature are resources of rage in their practice. They have a strength in fragility and authenticity, reflecting their own lines of thinking and experiences, become visible and tangible. Their artworks often build up on one another, the proceeding is reminiscent of composting processes: in playful and tender proposals their works come together in a collage-like manner. Exchange, collaborations and creative gatherings are also a part of it. In their multimedia practice with film and video collages, drawing, text, sounds and performance, ceramic works and other sculptural objects exhibitions are often installation-based. Art is described by them as a constant companion „who can appear, and start anywhere and doesn’t have to end somewhere...“ and with whom they „want to turn inside outside, in hopes to touch others and open processes of thinking, reflecting and acting“ Instagram: @_fabaceae
Transportation by train on Fri, 24 Oct. 2025
Giessen > Aumenau Departure at 09:22, Track 11 with HLB RB 45 (24833) (direction: Limburg (Lahn)) Arrival at 10:15 | 11-minute walk (800 m) to Gladbacherhof (expected arrival 10:26) View connection here.
Aumenau > Giessen Departure at 16:46, Track 1 with HLB RB 45 (24833) (direction: Fulda) Arrival at 17:38, Track 13 View connection here.
