Registration is open: Annual Conference (digital) "Unsustainable Past - Sustainable Futures?" on 11/12 February 2021

11 January 2021

In its digital Annual Conference 2021, the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies "Futures of Sustainability" asks whether a sustainable future is still possible regarding the 200-year long history of disastrous ecological development of the earth. To pursue this question, it is necessary to define the place we find ourselves in more precisely and the way we describe our present situation of global warming, species extinction and the poisoning of soils, water and air. In order to know whether the historical path of ecosystem destruction is reversible, we must first ascertain what has led to this path and what continues to stabilize it.

All prospects for socio-ecological change depend on what futures are assumed to be likely. Can "sustainable futures" be achieved through ecological modernization or profound societal transformations, given that we are dealing with a crisis that is, in principle, still surmountable? Or is the earth system already leaving the planetary boundaries of a habitable planet? Are we heading for a global civilizational collapse?

Keynote Speaker:
Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)

Further contributions by:
Frank Adloff (Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies, Hamburg), Stefan C. Aykut (Universität Hamburg),  Tanja Busse (Publicist, Hamburg),  Giacomo D'Alisa (Ecology and Society Lab, Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal), Christine Hentschel (Universität Hamburg), Ulrike Kornek (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel), Birgit Mahnkopf (Institute for International Political Economy, Berlin), Sighard Neckel (Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies, Hamburg), Kohei Saito (Osaka University, Japan), David Spratt (Breakthrough - National Centre for Climate Restoration, Australia), Nina Treu (Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Leipzig)

Registration is open:
The conference will be held in English and as a Zoom-Webinar. If you would like to participate, please register by sending an e-mail to zukuenfte.der.nachhaltigkeit"AT"uni-hamburg.de

Registered participants will receive further information and the Zoom access details shortly before the conference.

For more information, please visit our conference website.