Just Futures? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cultural Climate Models

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Roman Bartosch; Professor Dr. Jens Martin Gurr; Professorin Dr. Julia Hoydis; Dr. Carolin Schwegler
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: from 2022 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508231631

The interdisciplinary project responds to calls for more humanities research on climate change by developing an innovative methodological approach to cultural models of climate futures. It focuses especially on the topic of intergenerational justice. The project group brings together literary studies, linguistics, science and technology studies and literature pedagogy to investigate how different texts - cultural forms such as literature, social media, and literature reception in educational contexts - move between seemingly neutral climate facts ("models of") and normative social values ("models for"). The project is framed by interdisciplinary model theory, which conceives of models as representations of reality that reduce complexity and serve specific purposes. Its approach to climate models (1) understands qualitative cultural modelling of climate change as necessary complement to the dominant quantitative scientific climate models, and (2) analyses the intertwining of descriptive and normative components in climate debates. The closely related sub-projects examine debates of climate change and intergenerational justice in Anglophone dramas and essays (WP 1), in social media (WP 2) and in the reception and communication of literature in criticism and education (WP 3). The project’s key objectives are: 1. to investigate how different kinds of texts engage in the cultural modelling of (un)just futures;2. to develop an interdisciplinary approach to cultural climate models that will be of wide benefit to researchers.In addition to the OA publication of project results in the form of a special issue and articles in journals central to the disciplines involved, the project website (artistic director Visser) will document the research process and disseminate results as a virtual exhibition to a wider audience.All applicants have track records in internationally-leading publications on central thematic and methodological aspects of the project: Higgins (PI UK) in literary studies research on climate change and in the Environmental Humanities generally; Hoydis (PI Germany) in literature and risk theory and climate change narratives; Pearce in digital methods of image analysis in social media representations of climate change; Schwegler in the field of multi-modal sustainability communication; Bartosch in educational research on the modelling of environmental literacy; and Gurr in the field of model theory in literary studies and in interdisciplinary research contexts. The project brings together the complementary research environments of the Universities of Cologne (Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities – MESH), Leeds (Priestley International Centre for Climate), Sheffield (Digital Society Network) and Duisburg-Essen (futures research in the humanities). The applicants are centrally involved in these initiatives and well placed to build lasting, influential collaborations in EH research between the UK and Germany.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Partner Organisation: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. David Higgins; Dr. Warren Pearce