Just Futures? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cultural Climate Models

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This 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 text types - 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 understands models as representations of reality that reduce complexity and serve specific purposes. The project's approach to climate models (1) understands qualitative cultural modelling of climate change as a necessary complement to the dominant quantitative scientific climate models, and (2) takes an analytical look at the intertwining of descriptive and normative components that constitutes climate debates. Three 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 has two key objectives: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 open access publication of project results in the form of a special issue and articles in various journals central to the disciplines involved, the dynamic project website (artistic director: Jasmijn Visser) will document the research process and disseminate the results as a virtual exhibition to a wider audience.The applicants each have a track record in internationally-leading publications on central and complementary thematic and methodological aspects of the project: Higgins (PI UK) primarily 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 especially 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 in the Environmental Humanities generally; and Gurr in the field of model theory in literary and cultural studies and in literary studies 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, digital methods) and Duisburg-Essen (future and transition narratives, futures research in the humanities). The applicants are all centrally involved in these and related initiatives, and are therefore well placed to build a lasting and influential collaboration in environmental humanities research between the UK and Germany.