Research Statement
I am Chair of the Department of English II and Co-Director of the Cologne Research Hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) and of the UNESCO/MOST BRIDGES Hub for Planetary Well-being. in these contexts and beyond, my ambition is to advance subject-specific education and to bring educational research into conversation with work in the environmental and public humanities as well as with policy.
I have a background in the study of Anglophone literatures and cultures, especially postcolonial ecocriticism and environmental and sustainability education (ESE), and in inclusive and inter-/transcultural pedagogies. Currently, I am working on agonistic pedagogies in the context of democratic and political education and on literature- and arts-based approaches to futures literacy and mental health, often at the intersection of environmental sciences and humanities, pedagogy, and public intervention.
Previously, I have been researchin processes of and avenues into modelling learning objectives in times of large-scale extincion and climate catastrophe, for instance the DFG/AHRC/FWF-funded project “Just Futures: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cultural Climate Models”, the interdisciplinary research initiative HESCOR, and the practice- and design-based project “Eco-critical Literacy in musical and literary practices of Arts Education (Eco-Lit).” I have also served as Director of the IFDG and as member of the Research College of the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.
More information on past projects can be found below as well as in my list of publications and conference presentations and invited lectures.
Please note that I am currently not accepting new PhD/Postdoc Researchers.
Past Projects (Selection)
Teacher Academy for a Future in Flux (teff)
(Erasmus+/DAAD)
The Teacher Academy for a Future in Flux (teff) is a dynamic consortium of ten leading European universities, partner schools, and government as well as further educational institutions committed to enhancing teacher education. Teff addresses the pressing need for adaptable educators prepared to navigate diverse, mobile classrooms in a rapidly changing world. Our innovative model-framework blends digital, green, diversity, inclusion, and well-being skills with a European dimension, empowering students and teachers to champion European democracy and citizenship. Through transversal, agile, and lifelong learning, teff aims to elevate the teaching profession's appeal and impact, fostering futures-literate educators equipped to tackle current and future challenges.
Research output (together with Wiebke Dannecker):
International Conference: Future Fiction Makerspace (April 2025)
Publications (selection):
Wiebke Dannecker & Roman Bartosch (2026). “Assembling Future Skills Together: The teff Future Fiction Makerspace”. (Re-)Imagining Teacher Education for a Future in Flux. Perspectives from the Erasmus+ Teacher Academy teff. Eds. Jan Springob, Daniela Frison, Dagmar M. Benincasa, Giovanna del Gobbo and Beatrix Busse. Münster: Waxmann, 191-195.
Roman Bartosch, Wiebke Dannecker, Natalie Dederichs, Sina Derichsweiler, Leonie Carell & Tanya Gautam (2025). “Zukünfte imaginieren, erzählen und reflektieren: Der Future Fiction Makerspace als Reallabor einer zukunftsfähigen Lehrkräftebildung”. Kölner Online Journal für Lehrer*innenbildung 9.9, 120-137.
Conference Presentations (selection):
"Bildung - Nachhaltigkeit - Entwicklung: Literatur- und kulturdidaktische Perspektiven auf das Lernen und Lehren in Krisenzeiten" (Keynote), Tag der Bildungsforschung des IZfB (Beiträge der (Bildungs-)Forschung zu Nachhaltigkeit an der Schnittstelle von Wissen, Handeln und Zukunft), University Duisburg-Essen, February 10, 2026.
“English for Sustainability? Recent Developments and New Opportunities for Literary and Cultural Learning in the ELT Classroom”, University of Bonn, December 18, 2025.
“The Erosion of Trust in Sustainability Education and the Promise of Radical Reading”, ASLE-UKI Biennial Conference Erosion|Creimeadh, NUI Galway (Ireland), August 12-14, 2025.
“Advice - Communication - Application: Policy Strategies at the Cologne Hub for Planetary Wellbeing”, UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES General Assembly, Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea (UK), July 16-17, 2025.
“Rendering Literacies: Environmental Learning and Climate Action in Inclusive English Classrooms”, University of Tübingen, May 27, 2025.
Student Dissertations (selection):
BA:
"No Future in the Early English Classroom? A Review and Analysis of Teaching Materials and the Pedagogical Potentials of Futures Literacy in Primary School Education"
MEd:
"Fostering Futures Literacy in Primary English Teaching through Storytelling"
Sharing a Planet in Peril
(UoC Excellence Support Programme)
Together with Profs Kate Rigby and Michael Bollig, I was speaker of the international research alliance "Sharing a Planet in Peril" (SAPP) from 2023-2025.
Bringing together researchers from the University of Cologne’s Global South Studies Center and Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities with a wide network of international partners, SAPP advances actionable knowledge concerning the socio-cultural dimensions of Global Environmental Change from an Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences perspective:
Sharing a Planet in Peril Project Website
The Environmental Humanities for Well-being (EHWell)
(EUniWell seed Funding/Research Incubator)
(in collaboration with the Universities of Nantes (PI), Birmingham, Florence, Leiden and Linnaeus)
The project wants to position EUniWell as a trailblazer for a European space of teaching in EH to foster the well-being and empowerment of students, citizens, and communities in a new climactic regime. It recognizes the centrality of shared curricula development through international collaboration as a pivot for change via research and practice. Specifically, it will develop a rotating field study summer school for in-depth engagements with transnational questions for a sustainable Europe conceptualised and conducted by involved Universities and local communities. It will be an integral part of a transnational EHWell teaching module.
Funded by EUniWell Seedfunding and Research Incubator Grants.
- March 2022-February 2023: Mediating Socioecological Emergencies (lead: Linneaus University)
- September 2023: Across Nature and Culture - The City of Florence as a Case Study for Natural-Cultural Conservation and Preservation Issues (Summer School; lead: University of Florence)
- November 2023-May 2024: Human and Non-Human Well-being in the Anthropocene City: Guidelines for Interdisciplinary Research and Sustainable Policies (lead: University of Florence)
- October 2024: EUniWell MESH BRIDGES Autumn Academy for Planetary Wellbeing - A Graduate School on Multispecies Conviviality (lead: University of Cologne)
Vom Anthropozän erzählen: Historische und narrative Kompetenzen in der Nachhaltigkeitsbildung
Seed funding UoC, 2023
(with Professor Sebastian Barsch, History Education (PI), and Professor Wiebke Dannecker, German Literature Pedagogy)
The project investigates the effectiveness of pedagogic measures in the context of sustainability education in the field of German, English, and History Education. It will focus on the extent to which both historical and narrative competencies are necessary for learners to grapple with the concept of the Anthropocene and what the investigators are calling (deep-)time awareness. The project includes the development of teaching materials in close collaboration with teachers and schools as well as an explorative study on assessment and evaluation.
Output:
(with Sebastian Barsch and Wiebke Dannecker) "Vom Anthropozän erzählen: Narrative Könnerschaft und Zukunftsverstehen", Zeitschrift für Geschichtsdidaktik 23 (2024), 78-92.
"Rethinking Agency in the Anthropocene", Literature and the Anthropocene in Education, Luleå University of Technology, February 20-21, 2024. (Keynote)
"Reading Rocks! Hermeneutics in the Anthropocene", ZfL Ringvorlesung 'Fokus BNE', July 4, 2023.
Extinction and the Environmental Humanities
in collaboration with MESH
The project investigates cultures of death and imaginaries as well as practices of dying in light of the existential threats of climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss and explores the pedagogic implications for a sustainability education in times of large-scale species extinction and the pre-trauma of run-away climate change.
Output (selection):
Research monograph (with Ursula K. Heise and Kate Rigby): Unsettling Extinctions (under review)
Research article: "Dying to Learn: Teaching Human-Animal Studies in an Age of Extinction". Multispecies Futures. New Approaches to Teaching Human-Animal Studies. Eds. Andreas Hübner, Micha Edlich and Maria Moss. Berlin: Neofelis, 2022.
Keynote presentation: “Teaching Animality in the Face of Extinction” (Teaching Human-Animal Studies, Leuphana University Lüneburg, 2020).
Conference presentation: “‘to die will be an awfully big adventure’? Death, Extinction, and the Limits of Competence Orientation” (Taboo Topics in Foreign Language Education, Würzburg University, 2020).
Lecture Seminar: “The Pandemic Imagination: Reading and Teaching Fictions of Crisis" (University of Cologne, Winter 2020)
Lecture Series (with Ute Planert): "a.r.t.e.s. moriendi" (as part of the a.r.t.e.s. Research Master programme) (University of Cologne, Summer 2021)
Climate Change Literacy
funded by VolkswagenFoundation (Az.: 9A794)
October 2020-September 2021
Output (Selection):
Hoydis, Julia, Roman Bartosch and Jens Martin Gurr. Climate Change Literacy. Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2023).
Bartosch, R. et al. „Zukunftsgestaltungskompetenz im Angesicht der Katastrophe.“ Ecological Literacy als mehrdimensionale Herausforderung.“ Futures Literacy. Eds. G. Brandhofer, E. Rauscher & C. Sippl. Pädagogik für Niederösterreich, 2023 (forthcoming).
Bartosch, R. „Scale, Latency, Entanglement: Wege zur Klimakompetenz durch kreative Kommunikationen.“ Metaphorik (forthcoming 2023).
Wissenschaftsforum zu Köln und Essen: 'Cultures of Climate'
April 2022-October 2022
Output (selection):
Visiting Professorship for Public Humanities 2022: Ursula K. Heise
Lecture Series 'Perspectives on Climate Change Communication'
More info: Wissenschaftsforum zu Köln und Essen and Cultures of Climate project group
Cultivating Sustainability
in cooperation with ZfL Köln und Zukunftsstrategie Lehrer*innenbildung
October 2018-October 2020
International Conference and edited research monograph: Cultivating Sustainability in Language and Literature Pedagogy. Steps to an Educational Ecology (Routledge 2021/2022).
Transversale Literaturdidaktik
Output (Selection):
Research monograph: Literary Theory for Educators (in preparation).
Research monograph (edited with Julia Hoydis): Teaching the Posthuman (Winter 2019). (LINK)
Open-Access Journal publication (edited with Julia Hoydis): Reading in Ruins – Exploring Posthumanist Narrative Studies (Open Library of Humanities, publication in 2020).
Research article: "Literature Pedagogy in the Anthropocene" (in: The Anthropocenic Turn: The Interplay between Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Responses to a New Age. Eds. Gabriele Dürbeck & Philip Hüpkes. Routledge, 2020).
Research article: "Posthumanism in Theory and (Reading) Practice" (in: New Approaches to the Twenty-First-Century Anglophone Novel. Eds. Sibylle Baumbach & Birgit Neumann. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Keynote presentation: "Posthumanism and Literary Learning: Lessons in Relatability", (6. Tag der Englischdidaktik, Augsburg University, 2020).