About environmental humanities

Environmental humanities research has a significant impact on our understanding of complex environmental challenges. The humanities provide crucial knowledge about the structures of everyday lives and the resources needed to make human behaviour sustainable.

From research on values, communication, and cultural practices to historical traditions, belief systems, and aesthetics, the humanities collaborate to ensure popular engagement, green education, and new visions for a sustainable future.

The research field of environmental humanities at the Faculty of Humanities is organised in two centres, five research clusters and several individual researchers and projects across the departments. Each group and centre has a different profile and approach. Furthermore, the faculty hosts a network of internal researchers interested in the environmental humanities.

Centre for Sustainable Futures

The Centre for Sustainable Futures (CSF) is committed to research that supports a green transition of society. CSF’s overall ambition is to generate and disseminate humanities-based research on climate change, socio-environmental crises, and loss of biodiversity. And through this research, brought into conversations within and beyond the Humanities and Academia, to engage in imagining and promoting sustainable futures.

Centre for Applied Ecological Thinking

Through partnerships and cross-sectoral engagements, the centre focuses on bringing humanistic perspectives into public conversations and thereby nuancing the common knowledge base about the ecological crises, climate-changing living conditions and how we create meaningful futures.

The centre is committed to making humanistic environmental and climate research widely accessible to the public. The profile is therefore focused on talks, workshops, seminars, laboratories, and debates. They also produce the podcast, Eco Thoughts, and publish both classic and innovative written research-based products.

Research clusters

The Faculty of Humanities hosts five green research clusters each with their own profile and approach to the field. The clusters are located at the different departments and are run individually by engaged researchers.

Environmental Humanities Forum (EH Forum)

The EH Forum is an internal research network of researchers at the University of Copenhagen, who are interested in the diverse field of environmental humanities.

The aim is to spark conversations around environmental issues and although the network primarily consists of researchers within the humanities, all interested researchers at the University of Copenhagen are welcome to join the network.

The EH Forum is coordinated centrally at the Faculty of Humanities and run with input from the members.

Four missions for the humanities’ contribution to the green transition

The faculties and departments of humanities at the Danish universities have drawn up four missions for environmental humanities research. The purpose of the missions is to describe and clarify how the Humanities can contribute to the green transition and facilitate sustainable behaviour.