Advanced Studies
Futures of Sustainability
Photo: Macario Lacbawan
24 February 2026

Photo: Design: Martin Kollmann
Responsibility is often invoked in relation to the climate crisis to assign historical blame to high-emitting nations, indict extractive corporations, or moralize individual behavior. It has become an expansive and elastic lexicon for navigating the overwhelming reality of climate change (Hentschel, 2022). Yet, even as the climate crisis demands new forms of responsibility, it simultaneously unsettles the very terms through which responsibility has conventionally been understood. In this conference, we aim to explore responsibility as a contested and generative concept, shaping how environmental harm is attributed and governed, while also opening possibilities for collective care and accountability.
Download the CfP here (PDF).
Dates and Deadlines:
The conference will take place from 7–9 October 2026.
It is hosted and organized by the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies »Futures of Sustainability« at the University of Hamburg.
Submission of abstracts (300 words) with a 100-word short bio by: 22 February 2026
Submission of conference papers: September 2026
Please send abstracts to: futures.of.sustainability"AT"uni-hamburg.de [subject: Responsibility Abstract]