Research Statement
I work in the field of Education and the Environmental Humanities, with a background in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, literary and cultural theories, and inclusive and inter-/transcultural pedagogies.
I am interested in questions of educational philosophy, especially in terms of modelling learning objectives in times of large-scale extinction and climate catastrophe, for instance in the DFG/AHRC/FWF-funded project “Just Futures: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Cultural Climate Models”, the interdisciplinary research initiative HESCOR, and the international Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences initiative “Sharing a Planet in Peril”. Drawing from previous research results concerning literary and critical literacies (Climate Change Literacy), I am also exploring potentials of “Eco-critical Literacy in musical and literary practices of Arts Education (Eco-Lit)” in a BMBF-funded project and together with musicologists and music educators. Finally, I am writing about the role of literary fiction in education for climate action as well as the role of dissent and controversy in culture-sensitive and inclusive educational settings, for a book project on resilience and student mental health.
I am supervising BA/MEd and PhD projects on these and related topics, also in my capacity as Director of the IFDG, Co-Director of MESH, and Mentor and Speaker of a.r.t.e.s. Graduate Class 10. More information on past projects can be found below as well as in my list of publications and conference presentations and invited lectures.
Past Projects (Selection)
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 (in preparation)
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):
(with Julia Hoydis & Jens Martin Gurr). Climate Change Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Bartosch, R. et al. "Zukunftsgestaltungskompetenz im Angesicht der Katastrophe." Ecological Literacy als mehrdimensionale Herausforderung.“ Futures Literacy. Zukunft lernen und lehren (Pädgogik für Niederösterreich 13). Eds. Carmen Sippl, Gerhard Brandhofer & Erwin Rauscher. Innsbruck/Wien: Studienverlag, 111-122.
"Scale, Latency, Entanglements: Wege zur Klimakompetenz durch kreative Kommunikationen". metaphorik 33 (special issue: Narrative und Metaphern zur Nachhaltigkeit: Perspektiven für den Unterricht in sprachliche Fächern), 275-294.
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).