Invited
"Rethinking Agency in the Anthropocene", Literature and the Anthropocene in Education, Luleå University of Technology, February 20-21, 2024. (Keynote)
"Doing Nothing to Save the Planet. Resisting the Solutionist Imperative in Education", Unterricht auf einem bedrohten Planeten – Perspektiven und Herausforderungen einer Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung im Unterricht der sprachlichen Fächer, University of Duisburg-Essen, November 3-4, 2023.
"Reading Rocks! Hermeneutics in the Anthropocene", ZfL Ringvorlesung 'Fokus BNE', July 4, 2023.
"Wozu Literatur? Die Rolle von Literatur in Zeiten der Klimakatastrophe" (Keynote), 3. Norddeutscher Leseförderkongress, Lübeck, February 15-17, 2023.
"Reading for (a) Change: Die Cli-Fi-Bibliothek als Zukunftslabor", 3. Norddeutscher Leseförderkongress, Lübeck, February 15-17, 2023.
"How Can We Read When Our Beds Are Burning? Teaching English Literature in Terrible Times" (Keynote), UNITE Summer School Sustainability in Schools and Teacher Education. International Perspectives and Impulses, University of Cologne, September 19-23, 2022.
"'What the...?!' Wellbeing in a Furious Future", EUniWhat?! - EUniWell!-Workshop, University of Cologne, April 26, 2022 (via Zoom).
"Englisch für alle! Inklusion als Aufgabe", Fachtag Inklusive Fachdidaktik, Freiburg Advanced Center of Education/School of Education, PH Freiburg, Febuary 8, 2022 (virtual meeting).
"Climate Change as Troublemaker: Why Climate Education Needs More than Facts and Feelings", CCLS Lecture Series, University of Cologne, January 24, 2022 (virtual meeting).
(w/ Jens Martin Gurr & Julia Hoydis) "Climate Change Literacy", Lecture Series of Literacies.net, Universities of Duisburg-Essen and Cincinnati, December 9, 2021 (virtual meeting).
(w/ Ulla Schäfer) "English and/or Sustainability? Scaling Tasks", Fachtag(e) English: Environment and the Teaching of English, University of Tübingen, November 18, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"'Kreative Kommunikationen' und nachhaltige Narrative: Scale, Latency, Entanglements", Narrative und Metaphern zur Nachhaltigkeit, Bochum University, October 7-9, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"Changing Fearscapes in Climate Change Fiction" (together with Jens Martin Gurr), Ecologies of Fear, Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen, September 2-4, 2021.
"Dying to Learn/Learning to Die", Joint Research Seminar, Universities of Jena/Georgia College (USA), June 30, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"Distance Learning: Science - Literacy - Critique", annual GAPS conference Science, Culture, and Postcolonial Narrative, Oldenburg University, May 13-15, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"Mediating Climate Justice: On Agonistic Education", University of Leeds, April 29, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"Agreeing to Disagree: From the Negotiation of Meaning to Negotiations of Agonality", AAAL 2021, March 20-23, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"Scaling Crisis: Critical Environmental Education and the Affordances of Film", Critical Environmental Education and American Popular Culture: Local Practices, Transatlantic Conversations, March 16-17 (virtual meeting).
"Against 'Values'? Komplexe Konflikte, symbolic power und die Aushandlung von Widerstreit" (with Irene Heidt and Sina Derichsweiler), Ringvorlesung Kulturelles Lernen im Fremdsprachenunterricht, Bielefeld University, January 14, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"Posthumanism and Literary Learning: Lessons in Relatability", 6. Tag der Englischdidaktik, Augsburg University, 17.7.2020 (virtual meeting).
"How Can We Read when Our Beds Are Burning? The Urgency of Climate Catastrophe and the Importance of Teaching English," Environmental Learning in the EFL CLassroom, TEFL-Day University Würzburg, March 5, 2020.
"Teaching Animality in the Face of Extinction" (Keynote) Teaching Human-Animal Studies, Leuphana University Lüneburg, January 23-25, 2020.
(w/ Elisabeth Gilbert) "Close Reading from a Distance: Fremdverstehen and the Teaching of Nigerian Fiction," Guest Lecture, University of Bonn, October 29, 2019.
"Nicht-Wissens-Poetik: Animalische Ambiguität und nachhaltige Literaturvermittlung," Natur – Kultur – Mensch: Sprachliche Praktiken um ökologische Nachhaltigkeit, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaft/University of Heidelberg, September 30-October 2, 2019.
"Future-Writing," a.r.t.e.s. Summer School Beyond Humanism: Cyborgs, Animals, Data Swarms, University of Cologne, September 27, 2019.
(with Sina Derichsweiler) "Ambiguitätsaushandlung im inklusiven Unterricht," unterricht - kultur - theorie, University of Göttingen, July 1-3, 2019.
"The Agency in and of Literature: Fictions of the More-than-Human World," a.r.t.e.s. lecture series Experiencing Agency, University of Cologne, June 24, 2019.
"Teaching Animals". Guest Lecture at the University of Santiago de Compostela, 7.5.2019.
"Doing Justice: Environmental Learning and World Literature", Symposium "Teaching for Environmental Justice: Environmental Education and the EFL Classroom", JMU Würzburg, 8.-9.2019.
"Diversitätssensibler Fremdsprachenunterricht: Die Integration der Inklusion in die Fachdidaktik", Ringvorlesung "Current Issues in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language", University of Bonn, 19.12.2018.
"Komplexitätserhalt als Kompetenzaufgabe", Literaturdidaktisches Kolloquium des IDSL II, Universität zu Köln, 4.12.2018.
"The Agency of Literature - Which Responsibility Does Literature have towards the Non-Human?", Roundtable Discussion, University of Düsseldorf, 17.11.2018.
"Reading the Non-Human: Ecocritical Approaches to Teaching Anglophone Texts", Tracing Non-Human Agency in Literatures in English, University of Düsseldorf, 16.11.2018.
"An 'ecology' of everything and anything? Epistemologie, Interpretation und Literaturvermittlung im Zeichen transkultureller Ökologie", Anthropocenic Turn? Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf das Anthropozän-Konzept, University of Vechta, 12.9.2018.
(with Ulla Schäfer) "Grundlagen und Handlungsoptionen einer modernen Sprach- und Kulturdidaktik: Inklusives Lernen mit offenen Lernaufgaben", University of Cologne, 6.6.2018.
"Animals in Academia: Teaching Literature in the Environmental Humanities". Guest Lecture Postgrad Module "Environmental Humanities: Issues and Approaches", Bath Spa University, 13.11.2017.
"Towards Transcultural Ecology: Learning | Reading". NELK Research Colloquium "Transculturality in the English-Speaking World", University of Frankfurt am Main, 6.7.2017.
"Teaching World(ly) Literature: Transcultural Ecology and the Scaling of Perspectives". Modernities and Modernization in North America: Annual Conference of the German Association of American Studies,
Hanover University, 9.6.2017.
"Identity and Interdependence: Relationality, Animality, and the Teaching(s) of Literature" (Keynote Address). The Discourse of Identity, University of Santiago de Compostela (ESP), 8.6.2017.
"Englischdidaktische Perspektiven auf Differenzierung und Prozessorientiertes Lernen: Fachzugänge zum Gemeinsamen Gegenstand". Planung von Unterricht für heterogene Lerngruppen - Im Gespräch mit Georg Feuser, Universität Rostock, 18.-19.5.2017.
(with Ulla Schäfer) "Kompetenzorientierung im inklusiven Englischunterricht". Kompetenzen inklusiv in der Lehrer*innenbildung, Universität zu Köln, 22.2.2017.
"Petrofiction and the Crude Side of Cultural Ecology". Transnational Dimensions of the Local (DFG-Network Environmental Crises and the Transnational Imagination), Universität Augsburg, 20.-21.2.2017.
(with Ulla Schäfer) "Ist Inklusion machbar? Einige Bemerkungen zur Gestaltung inklusiven Unterrichts". Arbeitstreffen Inklusion im Englischunterricht, Universität Marburg, 29.8.2016.
"Creatural Fictions and Aesthetic Relationalities: Making Kin in a More-than-Human World" (Keynote Address). Figuring Animals. Images and Imaginaries in Anglophone Literary and Media Texts. Mid-Sweden University, Campus Sundsvall (SWE), 15.-16.8.2016.
"The Energy of Stories: Postcolonial Petrofiction as a Contribution to Cultural Ecology". Departmental Staff Seminar, University of Bath, (UK), 25.4.2016.
"Æsthetic Æffect: Relationality as a Core Concept in Environmental Studies and Education". Literary Environments: Ecocritical Theories and Ethics in Anglophone Literatures, Universität Düsseldorf, 4.-6.4. 2016.
"Tiere im Klassenzimmer? Tiergeschichten aus aller Welt verstehen lernen". Kölner Kinder-Uni, Cologne, 23.02.2016.
"Transnational Crises and Transcultural Ecology: Scaling | World | Literature". DFG-Research Network Environmental Crisis and the Transnational Imagination. Rachel-Carson-Center, Munich, 18.-20.02.2016.
(with Monika Tautz & Sieglinde Grimm) "Didaktik zwischen den Kulturen: Interkulturalität, Interreligiösität und transkulturelle Ökologie". Zwischen Interdisziplinarität und Fachspezifik. Denk-, Lehr- und Lernprozesse in den Geisteswissenschaften. Ringvorlesung des IFDG, Universität zu Köln, 13.01.2016.
"Inclusive (Language) Teaching aus Sicht der Fachdidaktik Englisch" (Vor- und Primarstufe/Sek I). Gastvorträge in den Seminaren "Anforderungen an eine inklusive (Fach)Didaktik" und "Inklusiver Unterricht als potentialorientierter Möglichkeitsraum - Didaktische Konzepte und Methoden" an der FHNW Basel, Schweiz, 29. und 30.10.2014.
"Ecodidactics – Eine Herausforderung für den Literaturunterricht?". Literaturdidaktisches Kolloquium des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache und Literatur II, Universität zu Köln, 14.01.2014.
"Writing the City, Reading One's Environment - Towards a Functional Analysis of the Literary Gaze". The Politics of Modernist Aesthetics, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder, 29.-30.11.2013.
(with Kylie Crane) "Response to Anthony Carrigan’s Keynote 'Ecocriticism, Economic Globalisation and Disaster'". Ecocriticism and Globalization – Postgraduate Forum ‘Environment, Literature, Culture’, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, 21-22.06.2013.
"Teaching Popular Culture: Teaching Rock and Metal Lyrics". Gastvortrag (Universität zu Köln), 23.11.2012.
“Understanding India? The Hermeneutic Challenge of Environmental Fiction in a Transnational World”. Gastvorlesung (Universität Mainz/Germersheim), 21.05.2012.
"'The Reverie Will Do' – Critical World Making, Poetry, and Ethics". Gastvorlesung (NUI Galway), 13.01.2012.
“Postcolonial Ecocriticism – Textual Environmentality and the Task of Close-Reading.” Gastvorlesung (Radboud Universität Nijmegen), 15.11.2010.
Contributed
"Den Klimawandel gibt es nicht". Spotlight Panel "Beiträge zu einer Sprachbildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung" (with Fabian Krengel, Uwe Küchler, Ricardo Römhild and Carola Surkamp) , DGFF Conference Grenzen, Grenzräume, Entgrenzungen, Freiburg University of Applied Sciences, September 26-29, 2023.
"Teaching the Future Imperfect: Intergenerational (In)Justice and Future-Making in the Literature Classroom", ASLE-UKI Conference Transitions, University of Liverpool, August 29-September 1, 2023.
(with Julia Hoydis) "Imagining Infrastructural Collapse: Modelling Human Survival in Recent 'Pandemic' Fiction", GAPS Conference Postcolonial Infrastructures, University of Konstanz, May 17-20, 2023.
(with Julia Hoydis and Jens Martin Gurr) "Climate Change Literacy", Forum Originalitätsverdacht, VolkswagenFoundation, Schloss Herenhausen Hanover, November 8-9, 2022.
(with Julia Hoydis) "Climate Change Literacy", Research Colloquium at the Dept of English II, University of Cologne, July 8, 2022.
(with Annika Krahn, Leonie Carell and Wiebke Dannecker) "Klimawandel und Nachhaltigkeit - Jenseits der Fakten", IFDG-Denkraum, University of Cologne, June 2, 2022.
"Language, Literature, Environments: Two Apes in Conversation", Symposium The Long and Winding Road: Sprache, Diversität und Englischunterricht, University of Cologne, May 20, 2022.
(with Konstantin Pfoser) "How to Talk Convincingly and Creatively about Climate", EUniWell FestiWell "Towards Global Sustainable Well-being", University of Cologne, May 10, 2022 (via Zoom).
"Mental Health and Climate Change Literacy", Mental Health in Foreign Language Education (TEFL Day), University of Würzburg, November 26-27, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"The Pandemic Imagination and the Pedagogic Potential of Fiction", lecture series The Pandemic Imagination, University of Cologne, February 11, 2021 (virtual meeting).
"'to die will be an awfully big adventure'? Death, Extinction, and the Limits of Competence Orientation", Taboo Topics in Foreign Language Education, Würzburg University, 13.-14.11.2020 (virtual meeting).
"The Transhumanist Creep," Co-emergence, Co-creation, Co-existence (Biennal Conference of ASLE-UKI), University of Plymouth, September 4-6, 2019.
"From Local to Global - and Back: Affordances of Scale in Literary Pedagogy". Educating the Global Citizen. International Perspectives on Foreign Language Teaching in the Digital Age. Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, 25-28.3.2019.
"Transculturalism Reloaded: Aporia in the Anthropocene". How Now! What News? Current Political Developments in/of Anglophone Studies, University of Cologne, 20.12.2017.
"New Directions in Literary Pedagogies: (Teaching) Transcultural Ecology", EFL Research Colloquium of the English Department, Universität zu Köln, 24.10.2017.
"Anthropocene F(r)ictions: World Literatures and Transcultural Ecology in an Age of Climate Change", Anglistentag 2016, Universität Hamburg, 21.-24.9.2016.
(with Andreas Köpfer) "Gemeinsame Lernprozesse im inklusiven Englischunterricht – Theoretische Implikationen und praktische Konsequenzen am Beispiel 'Stadtnatur'", GFD-Workshop "Inklusion im Fachunterricht" im Rahmen der GFD-Tagung Befähigung zur gesellschaftlichen Teilhabe - Beiträge der fachdidaktischen Forschung, Universität Hamburg, 28.-30.9.2015.
"Knowledge of the Gaze: Focalisation through the Lens of Zoonarratology", Green Knowledge, Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, UK and Ireland, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2.-4.9.2015.
"Graveyard Poetry und die Ästhetik des (verfallenden) Körpers", Die Materie des (bildenden) Geistes. Der material turn im Kontext von Literatur- und Bildungsgeschichte um 1800, Universität zu Köln, 5.-6.2015.
"Das Über-Natürliche in der anglophonen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts". Lecture Series Horror. Inszenierungen des Schreckens in kulturvergleichender Perspektive, Universität zu Köln, 28.4.2015.
"Creaturely Poetics and Urban Texts: Crossing the Species Boundary in Nineteenth-Century Tales of the Nonhuman". Reading Animals, University of Sheffield, 16.-20.07.2014.
"Politics, Aesthetics, and Writing – J.M. Coetzee’s Numinous Materialities". Writing the 'Rainbow Nation'? Examining 20 Years of Post-Apartheid Literature, Universität Regensburg, 04.-05.04.2014.
"The Modern(ist) City - Materiality and Consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves". Ecological Encounters: Agency, Identity, Interactions, Biennial ASLE-UKI Conference, University of Surrey, United Kingdom, 29.-31.08. 2013.
"Topographies of Excess and Maps of Complexity – Literary Rendering of the Postcolonial City". Jahreskonferenz der ASNEL/GNEL, Technische Universität Chemnitz, 09.-11.05.2013
"Teaching a Poetics of Failure? The Benefit of Not-Understanding the Other, and the Works of Shaun Tan and Wolf Erlbruch". Teaching the Environment - Transdisciplinary Perspectives. University of Cologne, Germany, 18.-19.09.2012.
"Ecocriticism and Animals". Minding Animals – Building Bridges Between Science, the Humanities and Ethics, Utrecht University 03.-06.07.2012
“From ‘Pathetic Fallacy’ to ‘Thinking With’ – Changing Functions of Literature and the Ethics of Reading”, From Ego to Eco. Imagining Ecocriticism in Literature, Film, and Philosophy, Galway 10.-11.06.2011 (National University of Ireland, Galway).
"'Beckett on Horseback' – Othered, Commodified, and Taxidermied Animals in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi". Postcolonial Studies Across the Disciplines – Jahreskonferenz der ASNEL/GNEL, Hannover 02.-04.06.2011.
"The Teaching of Literature as Cultural Ecology – Close-Readings for a Green Humanities". Teaching the Green Humanities, London 25.05.2011 (Universität London).
“Textual Ethics and Interpretive Ecology – The Case for Literary Quality,” Literature, Ecology, Ethics – Recent Trends in European Ecocriticism, Augsburg 03.-05.03.2011 ('Ethics of Textual Cultures'- Programm, Universitäten Augsburg und Erlangen-Nürnberg).
"'Crisis?' 'Emergency?' Emergence! – Telling Stories, Imagining Change (Ghosh, Atwood, Martel)". Environmental Change – Cultural Change – EASLCE/ASLE-UK Konferenz an der Universität Bath, Bath 01.-04.09.2010.
"Human-Animal Communities: Imagined Accounts of Resistance". Contested Communities – Jahreskonferenz der ASNEL/GNEL, Bayreuth 13.-15.05.2010.
"Environmental Ethics in Postcolonial Fiction – Negotiating a Latent Conflict". New Grounds: Ecocriticism, Globalization and Cultural Memory, Nijmegen 13.-15.01.2010 (Radboud Universität Nijmegen).