Imagining Climate Futures: Dialogues on Climate Fiction

In the academic year 2026/27, the GCSC participates in the Climate Futures Initiative hosted and funded by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). The Climate Futures Initiative brings together humanities scholars and arts practitioners around the globe in a sustained, long-term commitment to environmental humanities — work that can endure even as the shape of our climate crisis shifts, offering ways of interpreting lived experience, interrogating power, envisioning alternative futures, and reshaping collective narratives.

Project description “Imagining Climate Futures: Dialogues on Climate Fiction”

The accelerating climate crisis has generated an unprecedented demand for future-oriented knowledge. While climate science provides complex models and scenarios, public and political engagement with climate futures is arguably shaped equally by cultural narratives and imaginaries. In literature and other media, climate fiction (Cli-Fi) has emerged as a particularly influential cultural arena in which possible futures are imagined, contested, and negotiated. This project investigates the role of climate fiction as a form of future-making and explores its contribution to the development of climate futures across disciplinary and societal boundaries. Bringing together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, climate scientists, policymakers, artists, and civil society actors from JLU's wider region, the project establishes an interdisciplinary reading and discussion forum centered on selected works of climate fiction from literature, film, graphic novels, and other media.

Recent scholarship in the environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and future studies has increasingly emphasized the importance of imaginaries and narrative practices in shaping societal responses to climate change. Hence, climate change can only be understood culturally and climate, as a large abstraction or hyperobject, depends on its imaginative surplus and mediation. However, relatively little research has examined how climate fiction is perceived by readers and mobilized by actors outside literary and cultural studies, particularly climate scientists, policy practitioners, and local publics. This project addresses this gap.
The project asks how different stakeholders evaluate the relevance, credibility, and transformative potential of climate fiction, which in the project serves as a kind of 'boundary object' to facilitate exchange between various disciplines as well as institutional contexts. Rather than assessing these narratives solely in terms of their scientific accuracy or probability, the project examines how they generate alternative modes of knowing, imagining, and anticipating climate futures. At the same time, the discussion of climate fiction can shed light on the social, emotional, ethical and cultural dimensions of climate futures that are underrepresented in recent political and scientific scenarios. Through a series of structured reading groups, workshops, and collaborative reflection sessions, the project aims to identify how fictional climate narratives shape expectations, challenge assumptions, expand the range of imaginable futures, and potentially inspire new scientific and societal approaches to climate adaptation and transformation. 

Research team:

Apl. Prof. Dr. Michael Basseler (American Literature and Culture) 
Prof. Dr. Kirsten von Hagen (French Literature and Culture) 
Prof. Dr. Annette Simonis (Comparative Literature) 
Prof. Dr. Jörn Ahrens (Sociology) 
PD Dr. Corinna Dziudzia (Comparative Literature and German Studies) 
Dr. Carolin Jesussek (American Literature) 
Dorothea Sawon (English Literature) 
Rabea März (French Literature and Culture)
Nirina Ralantoaritsimba (French Literature and Culture)

Project Partners at JLU:
Prof. Dr. Malte Gruber (Civil Law, Legal Philosophy, and Law of New Technologies)
Prof. Dr. Frederic Hanusch (Political Science, Planetary Change and Politics)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Dittmann (Geography and Climate Change)

Institutional partners: 
Haus der Nachhaltigkeit Giessen 
Phantastische Bibliothek Wetzlar (especially their section "Future Life")
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel