Concept Note

In recent decades, the term Global South has come to signify the distinctions between the industrialised nations of the “North” and the comparatively less developed nations of the “South.” The Global North-South designation, however, is not strictly geographical but instead reflects various geopolitical, economic, and ecological commonalities between countries.

In the field of the Environmental Humanities (EH), the North-South divide continues to serve as a defining feature of the discourses of ecology and sustainability. EH is an interdisciplinary area of research, pedagogy, and activism that has gained strong grounding in North America, Europe, and Asia as evident in the upsurge of publications, projects, and programmes.

The upward trajectory of EH presents an opportunity to examine the dialogues and dissonances arising from the Global North-South framework including the flows of environmental theories, practices, and methodologies between countries in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. These movements are crucial to consider in relation to higher education, biocultural justice, ecological sustainability, and the rights of more-than-human beings.

Environmental Humanities scholars stress that the field should become not only interdisciplinary and international but also transdisciplinary and transnational. Ecocritic Karen Thornber, for instance, proposes comparative environmental criticism as a transboundary approach that strives to overcome geopolitical demarcations. A transnational Environmental Humanities will likewise become transdisciplinary, drawing from the epistemologies of literature, humanities, the arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.

Hosted by the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at NOVA University of Lisbon (NOVA FCSH), the conference Dialogues and Dissonances: The Environmental Humanities from North-South Perspectives invites scholars from diverse disciplines to critically evaluate the implications of the Global North-South framework for environmental thinking and practice. We welcome investigations of contrasting conceptions of nature, environment, ecology, and sustainability between Global North-South countries. We encourage contestations of North-South framings through case studies and conceptual explorations. Through a focus on the dialogues and dissonances emanating from the North-South dyad, the conference will draw attention to emerging areas of the Environmental Humanities.

We invite abstracts that consider the North-South dynamics, tensions, and possibilities of: 

  • Animal Studies: zoological ideas, representations, texts, artefacts, materials
  • Anthropocene Studies: the Anthropocene designation as a Northern construct with differing impacts on the South
  • Biodiversity Conservation: conservation paradigms, collaborations, capacity-building
  • Blue Humanities: freshwater and saline waters and water bodies from comparative perspectives
  • Climate Science Communication: strategies, actions, interventions
  • Comparative Ecocritical Studies: environmental literature (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, performance)
  • Digital Environmental Humanities: archives, repositories, herbaria, participatory platforms
  • Ecomedia Studies: broadcasting, news media, television, film, social media, digital media
  • Energy Humanities: renewable energy, petrocultures, toxicity, e-waste
  • Environmental Activism: advocacy, community activism, scholar-activism, heritage protection
  • Environmental Education: comparative, cross-cultural, transnational pedagogies and perspectives
  • Environmental Histories: intertwined environmental histories of the Global North and South
  • Environmental Philosophies: ethics, values, phenomenology, aesthetics
  • Environmental Psychology: perceptions, solastalgia, mourning
  • Indigenous Studies: ecological knowledges, practices, and traditions of Indigenous societies and ethnic minority groups
  • Globalization Studies: worldwide circulation of ideas, materials, artefacts
  • Memory Studies:diasporas, displacements, adaptations, memorialisations
  • Plant Humanities: botanical ideas, texts, artifacts, materials
  • Postcolonial Criticism: carbon colonialism, climate imperialism, knowledge decolonisation
  • Sensory Studies: vision, sound, smell, taste, touch, kinaesthesia
  • Soil Studies: soils, microorganisms, mycorrhizae, symbiosis
  • Sustainability: social ecology, SDGS, the 2030 Agenda

Please send an abstract of 250 words, including your presentation title, and a bio-note of 100 words by 1 April 2025 to the organisers:

Teresa Botelho (tdbs@fcsh.unl.pt)

John C. Ryan (john.ryan1@nd.edu.au)

Please only send one MS Word document including your title, abstract, and bio-note.

The abstract submission period is open. Abstracts will be assessed on a rolling basis. The registration deadline is 1 June 2025

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