Video Series from the "Environmental Pasts and Futures" Conference Now Online

We'd like to draw your attention to the latest uploads on our YouTube channel: Most of the contributions to our the final public event of the “Strengthening the Environmental Humanities” project were professionally recorded, and the final videos are now available on our YouTube channel. So please head over to the channel and watch any and all of the talks you might have missed!

From 8 until 10 July 2026 the “ Environmental Pasts and Futures” event took place at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, Germany. This three-day RCC event brought together scholars from around the world under the title “Beyond Dualism—Thinking Creatively Across Worlds.” It included a Young Scholars Forum, “Repressed Pasts, Crossed Borders, Just Futures: Environmental, Social, and Political Perspectives,” with tandem presentations, as well as several roundtables focusing on the future of the environmental humanities.

The event was the final public event of the project “Strengthening the Environmental Humanities,” which was led by Founding Director Christof Mauch and funded by the Volkswagen Foundation through its “Hochschule der Zukunft / University of the Future” funding scheme.

The conference culminated in a farewell event for Christof Mauch. RCC alumna Kate Rigby has recently published a piece on the farewell with ICEHO. You can find her essay here.

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Video Overview and Direct Links

Day 1

The Young Scholars Forum "Suppressed Pasts and Liberated Futures"

The Young Scholars Forum “Suppressed Pasts and Liberated Futures” featured four tandem presentations:

Lizzie Hobbs (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Senel Wanniarachchi (University of Oxford, London School of Economics and Political Science) on “Searching for the Beasts in the Archive as Abolitionist Praxis”

Ngoc Hoang (Independent Researcher) on “Living Boundaries: Human–More-than-Human Practices of Conservation in Postcolonial Vietnam”

Anisha Palat (Independent Researcher) and Ashni Dhawale (San Diego State University) on “Photographing the Wild: Ethology, Violence, and the Colonial Legacies of Capture”

Petra Steffen (TU Braunschweig) and Siran Liang (TU Braunschweig) on “Between ‘Data’ and Experience’: A Transdisciplinary Effort to Understanding Tibetan Grassland Changes”

Panel I "Natural and Supernatural Convergence in the Little Ice Age of Asia and Europe"

The first panel was titled “Natural and Supernatural Convergence in the Little Ice Age of Asia and Europe” and featured presentations by Joana van de Löcht (University of Münster), Chen Zhang (Hong Kong Baptist University), and Yizhou Wang (Hong Kong Chu Hai College).

Roundtable I "Environmental Humanities, Institutions"

The first roundtable, with Dolly Jørgensen (University of Stavanger), Catherine Rigby (University of Cologne), and Thaïsa Way (Dumbarton Oaks), focused on the Environmental Humanities institutions and was moderated by the conference convenors, Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch, Founding Director of the RCC, and Prof. Dr. Sonja Dümpelmann, Chair of Environmental Humanities.

Day 2

Panel II "Plantiness in the Plantationcene"

The second panel was titled “Plantiness in the Plantationcene: Vegetal Bodies, Decolonial Knowledge, and Environmental Politics in Southeast Asia” and featured presentations by Gaik Cheng Khoo (Sunway University), Jennifer R. Morris (British Museum), Jueling Hu (University of Amsterdam), and Syarifah Nadhirah (SOAS University of London).

Panel III "Developing Interactional Expertise to Move Beyond Dualism"

The third panel was titled “Developing Interactional Expertise to Move Beyond Dualism: Case Studies from India, Alaska, England, and Antarctica” and featured presentations by Aishwarya Ramachandran (Ashoka Centre for a People-Centric Energy Transition), Ben Bobowski (Former Superintendent of Wrangell St. Elias National Park), Adrian Howkins (University of Bristol), and Steve Chignell (Independent Researcher).

Panel IV "Dams, Displacements, Legacies"

The fourth panel was titled “Dams, Displacements, Legacies: Reservoir Construction and Drowned Communities from a Multidisciplinary Perspective” and featured presentations by Mererid Puw Davies (University College London, presentation not included in the recording), Sebastian De Pretto (University of Bern), Laurent Dissard (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, EHESS), and Anna Koch (University College London).

Panel V "Pelicans, Fruits, and Pelts: Multispecies Entanglements in the Americas & Europe"

The fifth panel was titled “Pelicans, Fruits, and Pelts: Multispecies Entanglements in the Americas & Europe” and featured presentations by Marcy Norton (University of Pennsylvania), Marian Leech (University of Pennsylvania), Vikram Tamboli (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, UCLA, presentation not included in the recording), Alexandro Solórzano (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro).

Panel VI "Extractive Technologies, Ecospirituality & the Sustainability of the Mangrove Ecosystems"

The sixth panel was titled “Extractive Technologies, Ecospirituality, and the Sustainability of the Mangrove Ecosystems in the Niger Delta and Mississippi Delta’s Oilscapes” and featured presentations by Abosede Omowumi Babatunde (University of Ilorin), Jackson Tamunosaki Jack (University of Groningen), Jemima O’Farrell (University of Galway), and Anthony Chukwudumebi Obute (University of Tübingen).

Panel VII "The Whale in the Room: Music, Language, and Meaning"

The seventh panel was titled “The Whale in the Room: Music, Language, and Meaning” and featured presentations by David Rothenberg (New Jersey Institute of Technology), Alex South (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of St Andrews), Finley Woodson-Gammon (University of Nevada), and Marie Comuzzo (Brandeis University).

Day 3

Panel VIII: "Edges and Thresholds of Incorporation"

The eighth panel was titled “Edges and Thresholds of Incorporation: Multispecies Ecologies of Absence, Flourish, and Speculation in Global Asia” and featured presentations by Nga Shi Yeu (Stockholm University) and Gina Grace Song Lopez (Lund University).

Panel IX: "Fermenting Dualisms"

The ninth and final panel was titled “Fermenting Dualisms: Human–Microbial Relations Beyond the Environment/Technology Divide” and featured presentations by Aaron Bradshaw (Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen Nuremberg), Maya Hey (University of Helsinki), Stephanie Sacco (Federal University of Paraíba), and Nikolai Siimes (University of Auckland).

Roundtable II: "The Future of the Environmental Humanities—Trends and Themes"

The conference concluded with a second roundtable, which focused on the future of the environmental humanities. It brought together Simon Richter (University of Pennsylvania), Sverker Sörlin (KTH Stockholm), Henriette Steiner (University of Copenhagen), and Sule Emmanuel Egya (Badamasi Babangida University). The roundtable was moderated by the conference convenors, Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch, Founding Director of the RCC, and Prof. Dr. Sonja Dümpelmann, Chair of Environmental Humanities.