Climate change has become one of the most important fields of politics, on a global level and, in many parts of the world, also on the national scale. But climate change has also become influential in decision making, both on a personal and a collective level, in city planning or in the economy: Climate change has become part of our future, and of all forms of planning and 'making' it. How does this change the way the future is conceived, approached or imagined? And how do, on the other side, different forms of dealing with temporalities influence the way global warming is perceived and acted upon?
In this Q-Team we want to address these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students from a wide range of disciplines are invited to participate and to explore how climate futures are imagined and negotiated in their fields and beyond, from
the social or natural sciences, literature or the fine arts to law or economy. After two introductory parts on both climate change and future making, they will work on an inventory of climate futures, collecting and analyzing imaginations, narratives,
calculations or expectations of a world changed by global warming, be it in dystopian movies, in 'climate fiction', in the
calculations of insurance companies or utopian political visions like the Green New Deals of US youth movements. We will
discuss how these futures are framed, made, to which discourse, practices, material and non-material infrastructures the relate.
After a theoretical and methodological introduction the students will develop - individual or in teams - an own research project they will work on in the course, while collectively supporting and reflecting on the research process. At the end of the course, it is planned to present our final collections and findings in form of an (online) exhibition, showing and analyzing different forms of approaching climate futures, in form of video and audio material, texts and images, explorative or analytic texts and interview material.
The Q-Team is open to students from all disciplines that deal – in which form ever – with futures affected by global warming; my last Q-Team has strongly benefited from the wide disciplinary range of participants (from physics to anthropology), and their
exchange allowed new insights for all of us. Students of all stages of their studies are welcome. First research experience (p.e. writing an essay) would be preferable, but students with little or no experience in conducting research are also welcome,
in any case we will introduce the methods employed and their will be room for team work and peer exchange.
The teaching language will be englisch. International students are especially welcome to join, the study will profit from a wide range of
experiences and backgrounds to approach the question of climate change and future making.