International Workshop SARAS 2022

Reclaiming Sustainability through HumanitiesScience Pathways

An Archive of Practices of Transdisciplinary Co-Production of Knowledge on Climate-Energy Futures

1.Introduction

The videos, texts and presentations offered here constitute an archive of research practices gathered at the international workshop “Reclaiming Sustainability through HumanitiesScience Pathways: Transdisciplinary Co-Production of Knowledge on Climate-Energy Futures” that took place December 1-2 in SARAS, Maldonado, Uruguay. Our intention is that this material serves as an educational resource that can be used for research and pedagogical purposes to address transdisciplinary environmental humanities, science-art interactions, community-based research and co-production of knowledge on climate-energy futures from Latin America and the Global South. We place this resource under the Art-Science collaboration at SARAS as it is part of a broader HumanitiesScience Collaboratory we are developing addressing sustainability in relation to climate and energy issues to bridge the gap between art, science, and activism for planetary healing.

The two-day international workshop that we had the pleasure to organize aimed at renewing and resignifying the field of sustainability studies by drawing on recent novel synergies between the humanities, social and natural sciences. It featured local and international scholars (Nordic countries, Latin America, USA, and South Africa) in humanities and science, artists and practitioners working on relations between sustainability and climate-energy issues through fully transdisciplinary methods of co-production of knowledge with local communities and across disciplines. The diverse presentations explored novel engagements to sustainability transformations from underexplored transdisciplinary mixed methods between the humanities, social and natural sciences. Through the focus on a diversity of case studies in the different presentations, we have been able to identify innovative and timely methods aimed at problem-solving approaches in sustainability and strong transdisciplinary collaborations. Among these methods, we would like to highlight collaborations between art and science, art and activism (“artivisms”), ethnoecological approaches, co-design methods involving citizen-science, digitalization, and collaborative mapping as the most salient forms of transdisciplinary engagement that integrate art and Humanities in the research process.

After the rise of ecocriticism in the 1990s, the environmental humanities (EH) emerged in the 2010s as one of the most dynamic interdisciplinary fields of inquiry dealing with relations between nature, culture, and technology. If, on the one hand, EH has become the umbrella term for the “greening” of the humanities, on the other, it still is under the imperative of producing knowledge that would be relevant for problem-solving scenarios. Through combining methodologies from a variety of disciplines such as anthropology, aesthetics, history, studies on technology and science, the environmental humanities serves as a framework that interpelates sustainability studies, and more specifically Sustainability Science.

The emergence of Sustainability Science was a deliberate high-level effort to promote a new field that sought to draw on other sustainability-related scientific disciplines. It is an effort for effectively pulling together and consolidating many of these scientific efforts under a common rubric, and which should be understood as a development of environmental science discourses in parallel to humanities and (some) social-sciences disciplines participating in so-called “sustainability studies” field. In 2015, UNESCO initiated a project as a means to support member states in their efforts to meet the obligations according to the Paris Agreement and the SDGs that were formalised in late 2017. After a two-year multistakeholder process that brought together international scientific councils with several UNESCO sectors and leading sustainability experts around the world, the “Broadening the Application of Sustainability Science Approach” initiative made recommendations that encouraged a merging of these distinct fields. The UNESCO’s “Guidelines for Sustainability Science in Research and Education” (2017/2018) provided a fruitful framework for this renewed attempt at sustainability. It also emphasized the importance of humanities as a meaningful part of the reconfigured sustainability science field. We are very proud to have been able bring to South America, for the first time, the recently established global UNESCO-based Coalition in Humanities-led Sustainability Science, BRIDGES. 

Considering the developments above, instead of abandoning the idea of sustainability, we propose to resignify it with new meanings through transdisciplinary approaches born out of truly integrated humanities-science collaboration. What are the relations that we need to sustain in the current climate and energy crisis? What role can a humanities-science collaboration play in helping us to conceptualize, imagine and act towards vital environmental futures for generations to come? What are potential landscapes of research for climate and energy when humanities methodologies are included in co-design of research? And, what responsibilities do educational institutions have to bridge gaps between disciplines and distant stakeholders to create life sustaining societies and help provide solutions to pressing societal problems?

The archive of materials that we offer in this website presents:

1. novel knowledge-building forms through transdisciplinary public engagement and education applied to climate and energy solutions; and 
2. cutting-edge forms of co-production of knowledge between humanities, social and natural science research to meet present and future sustainability challenges.

The varied presentations from a diversity of disciplines and perspectives showed interconnections where the preoccupation on how to connect disciplines of knowledge, what is the place of humanities research in environmental and energy questions, and how to engage with communities were salient. Another question we discussed openly was how to mobilize Humanities and art in meaningful ways for sustainability without losing the critical component. Also, how to draw on arts and Humanities interesting examples to integrate intersectionality (gender, class, justice) in transdisciplinary studies of sustainability. The different presentations also highlighted the importance to foreground local practices as agroecology through art (film) and the importance of understanding relational approaches (e.g., ancestral cosmologies) from situated practices/research on socio-ecologies. Risks in transdisciplinary research were also discussed and also how diverse case studies and approaches managed to address and sort out such risks. 

In what follows, the viewer/reader will find the videos from the presentations, a quote we chose to highlight from each speaker and the power point presentation used by each speaker. If any of this material is used, please quote the authors and acknowledge this source as an online publication. 

2. An Archive to reclaim Sustainability through HumanitiesScience Pathways

1. “Discoveries between Science and Art: Slowing Down in Uruguay and Stockholm” – Henrik Österblom (Stockholm Resilience Center and Stockholm University):

“using intuition much more in science and not focusing entirely on this sort of rational logical way of thinking that scientists are mostly trained to do, but really following intuition and listening more carefully, I have also learnt a lot about how scientists and artists relate to material […] the history, the technologies”.

1. “Mobilizing the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in Integrated Sustainability Science: How BRIDGES is Working to Promote Robust Communities of Knowledge, Action, and Purpose”- Steven Hartman (BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition, UNESCO Management of Social Transformations Programme)

“There are knowledges that needed to come into this process [Sustainability Science] to create more interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, multidisciplinary cooperations and […] different research projects require different approaches so we are not doctrinary to say everything needs to be transdisciplinary […] but transdisciplinary is an important principle because it helps to open the door and make clear the importance of those formerly excluded communities and knowledge domains”.

1. “From Watersheds to Fisheries: Lessons from Transdisciplinary Work at Multiple Scales in South America”- Micaela Trimble (SARAS, Associate Member)

“Art-based methods foster creativity, participant´s engagement and collaboration … There is room for further involvement of the Humanities in TD projects on socio-ecological systems”.

1. “To Do No Harm: Doing Research in Precarious Times by Foregrounding Rights and Taking Research Participants into Account”- Florencia Enghel (Jörnköping University, Sweden, Marie Curie Fellow )

“this is an important lesson when we go out to the communities: what we proposes needs to matter to them and we need to be very respectful of the fact that they are living difficult lives and they do us a favor when they engage with our research no matter how potentially significant our research might be”.

1. “Environmental Humanities: Binding Practices from the South”- Mirian Carballo (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, and Red Iberoamericana de Humanidades Ambientales, RIHUA)

“[The project for participatory budget] is a practice that is really participatory and is part of the exercise of autonomy […] The people in the province feel that they are taken into account for the first time […when] the National University of Córdoba is going there”.

1. “Reimagining the Transformations We Need for More Sustainable and Just Futures”- Laura Pereira (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Stockholm Resilience Center)

“It is about recognizing and being comfortable with different ways of seeing things and not trying to put them all into the same basquet […] and being able to go forward while looking backwards like is Sankofa”.

1. “Canto da Lama – Pedagogia E Cinema Desde El Sur Contra A Necropolítica” [“The Song of the Mud” – Pedagogy and Cinema from the South against Necropolitics]- Clementino Luiz de Jesus Junior (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

“How can the audiovisual practice contribute to focusing on those affected by environmental crimes so that new environmental pedagogies can emerge […]  for that I need to search for a methodology to act in the territory” (our translation)

1. “La naturaleza como escritura de lo inimaginable -Leandro Delgado (Universidad Católica de Uruguay, Escritor)

“La mínima conexión o correspondencia entre el lenguaje humano y la naturaleza […] Lo importante es aceptar esa distancia y asumir esa incertidumbre de comprensión, al menos en el ámbito del lenguaje, no como una carencia sino como una condición necesaria para entender otras formas de percepción de la totalidad en la que vivimos, que es inimaginable”. (traducción nuestra).

1. “Transdisciplinarity Requires Flexing Ontological Muscles and Softening Existential Commitments”- David Manuel-Navarrete (School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, USA)

[Ontological flexibility matters because it involves] realizing something is not working well with science and that meaningful interactions with non-Western cultures, in particular, indigenous cultures are crucial […] and these two factors triggered a process of letting go and unlearning”.

1. “Tekoporá. Revista Latinoamericana de Humanidades Ambientales y Estudios Territoriales”- Adriana Goñi Mazzitelli (Department of Territory, Environment, and Landscape, CURE; and Department of Resilience and Sustainability, FADU, Udelar, Uruguay), and Gerardo Ribero (Senior Editor, Revista Tekoporá, CURE)

[sobre Tekoporá] “Necesitamos una revista como la región necesita que se haga o como la interdisciplina necesita que se haga [..] que haya un lugar para la investigación regional pero con un alcance internacional”.

1. “GeoHumanities and Creative (Bio)Geographies: Addressing Sustainability and Co- conservation through ‘Rhizomatic Immersion’”- Pablo Arturo Mansilla Quiñones (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile, and BioGeoArt Lab)

“What we are aiming at is to establish a different dialogue with local knowledges from a device that allows to mediate dialogues and conversations [..] We have worked with augmented reality technologies to create sensitive atmospheres where people can share their knowledge and meanings in these immersive spaces”. (our translation)

1. “Festejando com as minas: Lobby, soberania e propagandas do clima na campanha publicitária “A mina sueca” [“What Would Swedish Mines Be without a Party? Lobbying, Sovereignty, and Climate Propagandas in the Advertising Campaign The Swedish Mine”- Isabel Löfgren (Södertörn University, Sweden, Artist)

“Climate propaganda or misinformation? […] Looking at the type of communication of mining companies it is interesting to see how these companies are trying to be sustainable through choice of images”.

1. “Alternative Pathways to Sustainable Futures: Linking Narratives across Scales in the Context of the Water-Energy-Food-Climate Nexus in Brazil”- Ana Paula Aguiar (Stockholm Resilience Center, XPATHS project, and Stockholm University)

“Using art processes (theater performance) in communities affected and threatened by mining was very successful both to make this ownership of their story [on a un/desired future] and to communicate emotionally to the other actors of other process”.

1. “Unhomely Home: Navigating beyond Oikos”- Diego Orihuela Ibanez (Universidad Católica del Perú, Visual Artist)

“I advocate for an ecology of thought. It is necessary to […]transparent the methods of production and power in knowledge and epistemodiversity that will then allow a biodiversity”.

1. “Colaboración y causa: una alianza frágil por las abejas Mayas” [A Collaboration and a Cause: A Fragile Alliance on behalf of Mayan Bees]- Katarzyna Olga Beilin (University of Wisconsin, USA, Filmmaker)

“The concept of biocultural memory coined by two importants Mexicans thinkers […] supports the claim about who was here first because it explains why after many generations people acquired knowledge about how to work with the territory… In the socio-environmental conflicts of Latin America it is important to look at the relations between the land and the people”.

1. “Reconstruir ecosistemas: una mirada a la colaboración entre una documentalista y una agrónoma e investigadora” [Reconstructing Ecosystems: A Look to the Collaboration between a Documentalist and an Agronomist]- María Teresa Rodríguez (Filmmaker), and Alda Maria Rodríguez dos Santos (BIO Uruguay Internacional Institute)

“If you look at what has been written on agriculture and farming but also in art and movies, the male perspective has always been dominant [and there have always been women working the land). My contact with the group Las Pampeanas Regenerativas Orientales led me to meet Alda, an agroecologist, and to think about the idea of ​a  participatory documentary.”

December 1-2, 2022 From 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. (GMT-3)
Venue: South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS) – Bella Vista – Maldonado, Uruguay
Presenters in-person and online, general public via Zoom

December 1st (local times)

9:30-10:00. Jorge Marcone (SARAS and Rutgers University, USA), and Azucena Castro (Stockholm Resilience Center, Sweden, and Stanford University, USA)
Opening remarks

10:00-10:30. Henrik Österblom (Stockholm Resilience Center and Stockholm University)
“Discoveries between Science and Art: Slowing Down in Uruguay and Stockholm” (online)

10:30-11:00. Steven Hartman (BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition, UNESCO Management of Social Transformations Programme)
“Mobilizing the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in Integrated Sustainability Science: How BRIDGES is Working to Promote Robust Communities of Knowledge, Action, and Purpose”

11:00 – 11:30. Coffee break

11:30-12:00. Micaela Trimble (SARAS, Associate Member)
“From Watersheds to Fisheries: Lessons from Transdisciplinary Work at Multiple Scales in South America”

12:00-12:30. Florencia Enghel (Jörnköping University, Sweden, Marie Curie Fellow )
“To Do No Harm: Doing Research in Precarious Times by Foregrounding Rights and Taking Research Participants into Account”

12:30-13:00. Diego Orihuela Ibanez (Universidad Católica del Perú, Visual Artist)
“Unhomely Home: Navigating beyond Oikos”

13:00-14:30. Lunch and free time

14:30-15:00. Mirian Carballo (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, and Red Iberoamericana de Humanidades Ambientales, RIHUA)
“Environmental Humanities: Binding Practices from the South”

15:00-15:30. Laura Pereira (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Stockholm Resilience Center)
“Reimagining the Transformations We Need for More Sustainable and Just Futures”

15:30-16:00. Clementino Luiz de Jesus Junior (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
“Canto da Lama – Pedagogia E Cinema Desde El Sur Contra A Necropolítica” [“The Song of the Mud” – Pedagogy and Cinema from the South against Necropolitics]

16:00-16:30. Coffee break

16:30-17:00. Leandro Delgado (Universidad Católica de Uruguay, Writer)
“La naturaleza como escritura de lo inimaginable” [Nature as Writing the Unimaginable]

17:00-17:30. David Manuel-Navarrete (School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, USA)
“Transdisciplinarity Requires Flexing Ontological Muscles and Softening Existential Commitments”

17:30-18:00. Adriana Goñi Mazzitelli (Department of Territory, Environment, and Landscape, CURE; and Department of Resilience and Sustainability, FADU, Udelar, Uruguay), and Gerardo Ribero (Senior Editor, Revista Tekoporá, CURE)
“Tekoporá. Revista Latinoamericana de Humanidades Ambientales y Estudios Territoriales”

December 2nd (local times)

9:30-10:00. Pablo Arturo Mansilla Quiñones (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile, and BioGeoArt Lab)
“GeoHumanities and Creative (Bio)Geographies: Addressing Sustainability and Co- conservation through ‘Rhizomatic Immersion’”

10:00-10:30. Isabel Löfgren (Södertörn University, Sweden, Artist)
“Festejando com as minas: Lobby, soberania e propagandas do clima na campanha publicitária “A mina sueca” [“What Would Swedish Mines Be without a Party? Lobbying, Sovereignty, and Climate Propagandas in the Advertising Campaign The Swedish Mine”](online)

10:30-11:00. Ana Paula Aguiar (Stockholm Resilience Center, XPATHS project, and Stockholm University)
“Alternative Pathways to Sustainable Futures: Linking Narratives across Scales in the Context of the Water-Energy-Food-Climate Nexus in Brazil” (online)

11:00-11:30. Coffee break

11:30-13:00. Screening of “Maya Land: Listening to the Bees” (Written and directed by Kata Beilin and Avi Paul Weinstein)

13:00-14:30. Lunch and free time

14:30-15:00. Katarzyna Olga Beilin (University of Wisconsin, USA, Filmmaker)
“Colaboración y causa: una alianza frágil por las abejas Mayas” [A Collaboration and a Cause: A Fragile Alliance on behalf of Mayan Bees] Versión en español libre: https://vimeo.com/729618506

15:00-16:00. María Teresa Rodríguez (Filmmaker), and Alda Maria Rodríguez dos Santos (BIO Uruguay Internacional Institute) “Reconstruir ecosistemas: una mirada a la colaboración entre una documentalista y una agrónoma e investigadora” [Reconstructing Ecosystems: A Look to the Collaboration between a Documentalist and an Agronomist]

16:00-16:30. Coffee break

16:30-17:55. Working groups: Imagining Humanities-Science transdisciplinary initiatives

17:45-18:00. Closure

Adriana Goñi Mazzitelli is a Professor and Director of the Department of Resilience and Sustainability at FADU; and an Associate Professor at the Department of Territory, Environment, and Landscape at CURE, both at the Universidad de la República (Udelar), Uruguay. Adriana’s expertise is co-design and participatory planning. She has held leadership positions at the Urban Laboratory on Participatory Planning in Montevideo, and in the Participatory Process for the National Environmental Plan for Sustainable Development. Adriana is Chief Editor of Tekoporá, Revista Latinoamericana de Humanidades Ambientales y Estudios Territoriales.

Alda María Rodríguez dos Santos is an agronomist and co-founder and coordinator of the BIO Uruguay Internacional Institute. She is also the founder and scientific director of CREBIO (Centro de Recursos Biológicos e Biología Genômica), BIO Uruguay, based in an agroecological farm in Tacuarembó, is devoted to promoting modes of sustainable production. It emerged from the interaction of local farmers, consumers, professionals, and teachers. In the past, Alda worked in coordination efforts, with other private and public stakeholders, for establishing the Organic Production protocols.

Ana Paula Aguiar is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden; and at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE). Ana Paula works on pathways to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a focus on cross-scale participatory processes and combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. She is the coordinator of the FORMAS XPaths Project which explores how to inclusively design pathways that lead towards achieving the SDGs, using drylands in Brazil, Senegal, and Spain as case studies.

Azucena Castro is a postdoctoral fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm University, Sweden, and at the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University, USA. Her postdoctoral project, “Multispecies Futuring: Biocultural Diversity in Latin American and
Caribbean Future Fictions,” is funded by the Swedish Research Council. This project investigates future fiction in relation to the biodiversity crisis and to biocultural rights. Azucena’s research expands also on environmental and energy humanities and cultural studies in Latin America.

Clementino Luiz de Jesus Junior is a filmmaker, educator, and Ph.D. candidate in Education at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), Brazil. He also holds an M.A. in Education, from the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). Clementino’s research and education practice revolve around audiovisual education and inclusion, environmental education, film clubs, Black cinema, and the Black Atlantic and African diaspora in film. His own films, twenty-six in total, focus on the fight for Human Rights and the struggle against racism.

David Manuel-Navarrete is an Associate Professor in Sustainability at the School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures, Arizona State University, USA. His research aims at enhancing societies’ capacity to purposely deliver structural changes that simultaneously reduce inequality and sustain the planet’s web of life. David’s most recent research explores adaptation, resilience, and transformation of water infrastructures in Mexico City, and the promotion of indigenous languages to advance sustainability in the Amazon.

Diego Orihuela Ibañez is a Peruvian artist and a Ph.D. candidate at the Université de Cergy-Paris, France. He also holds a Master’s in Critical Curatorial Cybermedia from the Haute École d’Art et Design de Genève, and a License degree in Visual Arts-Painting from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Diego’s synergy of visual arts, theory, and fiction centers, among other projects, on “terraformation,” or navigating territories in cyberspace. His approaches are informed by biopolitics, algorithmic logic, queer ecologies, and critical animal and plant studies.

Florencia Enghel is an Argentinian scholar currently working as Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Jönköping University, Sweden. She is a recipient of a Marie Curie Global Fellowship (2020-2023). Flor specializes in the relationship between communication, citizenship, and social change. Her research focuses on the relationship between citizens’ communicative practices and social justice. Flor has also written on the contributions of Latin American communication theory and practices to global knowledge. She has a prior professional record as a film producer and editor.

Gerardo Ribero is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the Department of Territory, Environment, and Landscape at CURE, and a researcher at the Center for Latin American Interdisciplinary Studies at FHCE, both at the Universidad de la República (Udelar), Uruguay. He works in the field of science and technology studies, environmental humanities, and territorial studies. Gerardo is Senior Editor of Tekoporá, Revista Latinoamericana de Humanidades Ambientales y Estudios Territoriales.

Henrik Österblom is a Professor of Marine Ecology and Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Center, at Stockholm University, Sweden. Henrik’s overall research addresses the question of how humans interact with each other and with the Biosphere, with a particular focus on the ocean: ocean governance, science-business collaboration, and the development and use of novel technologies. He has been a member of SARAS’s International Advisory Board since 2016 and is the chairman of the SeaBOS fundraising foundation.

Isabel Löfgren is a Brazilian-Swedish artist, curator, and Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden. There, she teaches media activism, media archeology, media production, and visual narratives with photography and film. As an artist and a curator, Isabel works in collaboration with local communities and artist collectives in participatory projects. These projects include the poetics of communication and narrative flows and political emancipation in urban and/or site-inspired art installations.

Jorge Marcone is a Professor of Latin American Literature, and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, USA, where he also serves as Associate Dean of Humanities. He is the Co-Chair of SARAS’s Advisory Board. Jorge’s broad interests are in how social-ecological crises, transitions, and resilience are addressed in Latin American culture. His preferable focus is Amazonian literature, film, and art; he is drawn to new explorations on human and nonhuman interaction redefining creativity and promoting publicly engaged research in the humanities.

Katarzyna Olga Beilin is a filmmaker, writer, and Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Director of the Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A. Kata works in transdisciplinary and collaborative research across different fields of studies, including nonacademic partners and indigenous knowledges. She has a particular interest in Mayan areas of Yucatan; Puebla and Oaxaca, Mexico; the Ecuadorean rainforest; and in soy plantation areas of Argentina and Paraguay.

Laura Pereira is an Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She also holds appointments at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University (South Africa), and the Stockholm Resilience Center. Laura’s research focuses on sustainability transformations in Global South contexts: food systems, traditional knowledge, innovation, biodiversity, futures thinking, and other approaches related to the Nature Futures Framework of the IPBES.

Leandro Delgado is a writer and an Associate Professor at the Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Universidad Católica del Uruguay. His research, teaching, and creative interests are wide: communication and humanities in environmental studies; communication, culture, and subcultures in the 1980s; literature and press of the 1900s in the River Plate region; evolution in science fiction; science fiction under the Argentinean dictatorship; and nature in anarchist literature. Leandro has published two novels, short stories, and poetry.

María Teresa Rodríguez is a filmmaker, producer, and recipient of the Leeway Transformation Award, which recognizes the work of women artists engaged in social change. Her films include Mirror Dance, which received a LASA Award of Merit and a Cine Golden Eagle Award; the documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?, which received a 2009 DuPont-Columbia Award and a 2009 Communication Award in TV/Radio/Film from the National Academies; and From Here to There/ De Aquí a Allá, which received a First Place Award for Short Documentary at the XVII International Film Festival of Uruguay.

Micaela Trimble is Associate Researcher at the SARAS Institute (Uruguay). She holds a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Management and Environment from the University of Manitoba (Canada). She specializes in governance and co-management of socio-ecological systems (watersheds, small-scale fisheries, protected areas). Micaela has led transdisciplinary research on adaptive water governance (GovernAgua Project, and GobHidro Project), and the recently created Latin American Network of PECS (LAPECS), for the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society.

Mirian Carballo is a Professor of English Literature and Comparative Literature at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC), Argentina. She is a founder and current director of the Iberian- American Network for Research in Environmental Humanities (Red Iberoamericana de Investigación en Humanidades Ambientales, RIHUA). Mirian’s research focuses on ecocriticism, Anthropocene studies, postcolonialism, and interculturalism. She has served as UNC’s Head of the International Affairs Office and in national and international associations of higher education.

Pablo Arturo Mansilla Quiñones is an Associate Professor at the Instituto de Geografía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile. Pablo is a researcher of BIOGEOART, an inter- and transdisciplinary platform investigating sustainability and co-conservation through a “rhizomatic immersion” methodology. The platform critiques current dominant discourses on nature-person relationships, proposes new discourses and performances for cultural change, explores nonhuman languages, and applies effective governance.

Steven Hartman is the Founding Executive Director of the BRIDGES Sustainability Science Coalition in UNESCO’s Management of Social Transformations Program. BRIDGES’s goal is to better integrate humanities, social science, and local and traditional knowledge perspectives into research, education, and action for global sustainability and resilient responses to environmental and social changes at local and territorial scales. Steven is a founding member and longtime coordinator of the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES).

Collaborating institutions and networks:
South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS); Stockholm Resilience Center (SRC) at Stockholm University; Rutgers University; BRIDGES (UNESCO’s Humanities-led Sustainability Science); Universidad de la República, Uruguay; Humanities for the Environment (HfE) Latin American Observatory at Arizona State University; Red Iberoamericana de Investigación en Humanidades Ambientales (RIHUA) at Universidad de Córdoba, Argentina.

Coordinators and organizers:
Jorge Marcone (Rutgers University/ SARAS) and Azucena Castro (Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm University/ Iberian, and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University)

Management team at SARAS:

Patricia Himschoot – Executive Director
Fiorella Polcaro – Coordinator
Gabriela Bardecio – Head of Communications

Download the program here

Register to participate via Zoom at https://bit.ly/SARAS_HA or by scanning the QR code

Generously funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ), Sweden and the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS), Uruguay