image: Cecilia Asberg is pictured. view more
Credit: Stefan Holgersson
The Seed Box, Sweden's largest research programme in the environmental humanities, is now allocating grants to researchers, writers and artists around the world. The projects investigate urgent environmental problems and present new, often artistic methods and pathways forward, aimed at exploring our relationship with the environment.
"Until now, the environment has mainly been a subject for natural science and engineering. But environmental issues are also very relevant for the humanities and social sciences. They concern values and human conditions, and these are the domains of the humanities. With the Seed Money we want to nurture good ideas and green initiatives from the humanities, from all round the world," says Cecilia Åsberg, professor of gender, nature and culture at Linköping University and programme director of the Seed Box, which is based at Linköping University.
The Seed Box's Seed Money venture aims to foster research in interdisciplinary and environmental humanities, by increasing researcher mobility and facilitating knowledge exchange between Swedish and foreign universities. To this end, 16 projects involving 40 individuals have received funding. The grants will go to exchanges for researchers, writers and artists, and to workshops, travel grants and a project on citizen science.
Herbarium 3.0, a project that has secured USD 43,434 (EUR 40,854), investigates the plants around us that we no longer see. Our history is full of collected and pressed plants that have been put into herbaria with data on how, where and when they were found. And yet, despite this robust botanical history, many humans are now notably blind to the plants that share our world.
"Plant blindness can make us insensitive to both the lives of plants and the deeply connected history of plant-human interactions. We want to move herbaria out of the archive and back into people's lives," says Tina Gianquitto, associate professor, Colorado School of Mines.
The project will create a website where the public can share their experiences and relationships with plants. The narratives will be collected in public gardens around the world, including the New York Botanical Garden and the Gothenburg Botanical Garden in Sweden.
The international projects that received funding will collaborate with a Swedish university, to bolster the exchange of knowledge.
"The Seed Box: An Environmental Humanities Collaboratory" is a four-year pilot programme funded by Mistra, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research and Formas, the Swedish Research Council. It is based at Linköping University and has received roughly USD 4.9 million (EUR 4.1 million) to advance the environmental humanities in Sweden and worldwide. The call for funding was made in consultation with the Seed Box's funders.
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Projects granted Seed Money:
Hanna Husberg (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)
Project: Troubled atmosphere: On the governance of air
Will cooperate with Linköping University
Amount granted: SEK 111,000
Erika Sigvardsdotter (Red Cross University College) and Jonas Gren
Project: A poetic writer in residence. The return of bacteria - on the dangerous reduction of complex to complicated
Will cooperate with Linköping University
Amount granted: SEK 60,000
Franziska Bedorf (Uppsala University)
Project: Travelling exhibition. The Melting Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories: Of People, Land and Climate Change in East Africa.
Amount granted: SEK 175,000
Jesse Peterson (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Project: Two-day writer's workshop. Writing with Undisciplined Discipline: An Environmental Humanities Workshop.
Amount granted: SEK 88,000
Olga Cielemecka (Linköping University, The University of Arizona)
Project: Plantarium: Re-imagining green futurities
Amount granted: SEK 100,000
Katherine Gibson (Western Sydney University)
Project: Urban Food Economies: Re-thinking Value for 'More-than-Capitalist' Futures.
Will cooperate with KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Amount granted: SEK 180,000
Thorvadur Arnason (University of Reykjavik)
Project: Bifrost Multimodal Action and Platform
Amount granted: SEK 420,000
Tina Gianquitto (Colorado School of Mines, USA) project: Herbaria 3.0.
Will cooperate with University of Gothenburg
Amount granted: SEK 400,000
Eva Hemmungs Wirtén (Linköping University) Project: A Tropology of Conceptual Climate Change
Amount granted: SEK 450,000
Sebastian Ureta (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile) with Linda Soneryd (University of Gothenburg)
Project: Assembling transnational toxic bodies: Embodying and mobilizing responsibility on the 'Arica Victims VS Boliden Minerals AB' case
Will cooperate with University of Gothenburg
Amount granted: SEK 505,000
Marco Armiero (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Project: The United Toxic Autobiographies of Europe.
Amount granted: SEK 365,000
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw (Western University, Canada) with Maria Svedäng (Stockholm University) Astrida Neimanis, (University of Sydney)
Project: The Wild Weathering Collaboratory
Amount granted: SEK 275,000
Jennifer Mae Hamilton (University of Sydney)
Project: Research travel, Weathering the City
Will cooperate with Linköping University
Amount granted: SEK 75,000
Therese Asplund (Linköping University)
Project: Narratives as a bridge-building practice? Exploring thresholds for climate maladaptation
Amount granted: SEK 218,000
Ylva Uggla (Örebro University)
Project: Visualization of biodiversity in EU policy.
Amount granted: SEK 195,000
Åsa Össbo (Umeå University)
Project: Damage done: Exploring the ongoing consequences for Sami communities as a result of the Swedish hydropower development.
Amount granted: SEK 372,000