Research Area 9: Ecology and the Study of Culture

• Caesy Stuck
• Dorothea Sawon
• Dr. Deborah de Muijnck
• Ievgen Bilyk
• Isabella Engberg
• Ivana Dinic
• João Henrique da Costa Sol Afonso
• Silas Edwards
• Siyu Li
• Tien-Phát Nguyen

Current information on RA9’s meetings and events programme can be accessed by subscribing to our mailing list or MS Teams channel. The following offers an incomplete overview of previous events and projects:

• On February 4, 2026, João Henrique da Costa Sol Afonso led a critical discussion on the concept of Zoopoetics.
• On January 14, 2026, RA9 hosted a collaborative discussion with the group Reading Palestine on the topic of “Settler Ecologies”, applying a critical conservation studies lens to the use of nature reserves as a tool of dispossession and exclusion in Palestine.
• On December 3, 2026, Siyu Li discussed her artistic research project “Welcome to the Living Room”, engaging with the cultural construction of ‘edibility’ through categories of waste, domesticity, familiarity and plant agency.
• In November 2025, RA9 members participated in the Panel for Planetary Thinking’s concluding conference, “From Relations to Politics: Pathways Towards a Planetary Praxis”.
• On November 6, 2025, Ievgen Bilik hosted a discussion on the role of social media in mediating perceptions of climate change and environmental activism.
• On October 29, 2025, RA9 co-hosted a workshop by Dr. Katarzyna Macedulska titled “Literature in the Last Best Place – Montana’s Nature Writing”.
• On July 15, 2025, RA9 hosted the scholar Dr. Tore Størvold, who led a workshop and delivered a keynote lecture. The interactive workshop was titled “Popular Music and Ecocriticism: Possibilities and challenges for interdisciplinary cultural analysis”. The subject of the lecture was “Confronting Climate Change in Popular Music: Nostalgia, Apocalypse, Utopia”.
• On May 7, 2025, Dr. Isabella Engberg presented her research on “Travelling Ecologies”, a critical analysis of Ernst Haeckel’s travel narratives and the importance of narrative in shaping his notion of ecology.
• On April 2, 2025, RA9 hosted a workshop on “Houseplants and Postcolonial Ecologies”. The event featured a house plant swap as a provocation to discuss the colonial history of botanical collecting and the ongoing entanglement of houseplants with extractive networks and imaginaries.
• On October 25, 2022, RA9, in collaboration with Emerging Topics Group - Interfaces of the Study of Culture and Life sciences, have organized a Keynote Lecture by Prof. Timo Maran, from the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu. His lecture is titled, "Ecosemiotics of the Anthropocene: How to reground culture in ecosystem?" and was sponsored by the GCSC. This event was followed by a "Masterclass on ecosemiotics: Conceptual toolbox for reconnecting culture and ecosystem” (October 26). 
• In 2021 RA 9 engaged with New Materialisms and invited Dr. Rick Dolphijn (Associate Professor Utrecht University) to host a Master Class about "New Materialisms: Approaches in Transdisciplinary Research and Theory", which took place on April 26th.
• On Feb. 16th 2021 we realized a keynote lecture in cooperation with AG Moving Images by Hideaki Fujiki, who elaborated on "Ecological Reality as Contesting Global Imaginations: Documentary on Radioactive Waste"
• The Walk & Talk Series is an interdisciplinary podcast, for which we invite scholars to present their studies while going on a walk with us and exploring a surrounding that is linked to their research field. "Walk & Talk - the podcast on culture theory and practice on the walk" - came forth by an initiative from Oikos/RA 9 in 2020. Since then Walk & Talk publishes one episode per term.
• In 2019 the Emerging Topic Research Group 'Oikos – Ecology and the Study of Culture,'  formally became Research Area 9. It remains the newest Research Area at the GCSC.
• On the 9th and 10th of December 2019 Oikos hosted a postgraduate workshop on the topic "Ecocriticism and Narrative Form" in collaboration with the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment (EASLCE). Prof. Dr. Erin James (University of Idaho) presented as a guest lecturer and Dr. Michael Basseler (JLU Giessen, GCSC) functioned as a second senior scholar throughout the event. Here you can find further information on the event as well as the CfP.
• On 11th June 2019, Oikos, in cooperation with the JLU Geography Department’s working group Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change, welcomed historian Prof. John Haldon (Princeton University) for a keynote lecture. On Wednesday, 12th June, an open seminar on transdisciplinary climate research, with Prof. Haldon, Prof. Jürg Luterbach (JLU) and Dr. Elena Xoplaki (JLU), took place. For more information on the events, see: John Haldon: St Theodore – Euchaïta and Anatolia, c. 500-1000. Landscape, climate and the survival of an empire.
• On 14th May 2019, Oikos and the GGS Section Human Animal Studies organized a film screening of the documentary “Storytelling for Earthly Survival”, followed by a video Q&A with Donna Haraway. For more information see: Donna Haraway – Storytelling for Earthly Survival.
• In 2016, the team of the Oikos group has been engaged with other researchers in our center preparing the conference ‘For What It’s Worth: Nostalgia, Sustainability, and the Values of the Present’. The conference proceedings have been turned into a theoretical publication, which has been published 2019: Andressa Schröder / Nico Völker / Robert A. Winkler / Tom Clucas (eds.) Futures Worth Preserving: Cultural Constructions of Nostalgia and Sustainability. Transcript, 2019.