Sie sind herzlich eingeladen, an der Vorlesungsreihe „Habitability in the Global South” im Wintersemester 2026/2027 teilzunehmen. Die Vorlesungen finden mittwochs von 18:00 bis 20:00 Uhr (c.t.) statt, der Ort wird noch bekannt gegeben. Ziel der Vorlesungsreihe ist es, einen exemplarischen Einblick in die vielfältige Habitabilitätsforschung an verschiedenen Universitäten zu geben und die interdisziplinären Ansätze vorzustellen, mit dem Fokus auf verschiedenen Ländern des Globalen Südens.
Die Veranstaltung ist öffentlich und eine Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich. Wir freuen uns auf Ihr Kommen und auf eine spannende Diskussion über die Herausforderungen und Chancen von Bewohnbarkeit und Nachhaltigkeit!
Hinweis: Die Inhalte auf dieser Seite sind eine verkürzte Übersetzung der englischen Originalseite. Die Vorträge der Ringvorlesung werden vollständig auf Englisch stattfinden, lesen Sie gerne die englische Seite, die weitere Informationen und Hintergründe zu den Vorträgen enthält.
Note: The content of this website is an abridged translation of the original English page. The lectures in the lecture series will be held entirely in English. Please refer to the English page for further information and background details on the lectures.
According to a report from the Climate Impact Lab released on 23 September 2026, the Super El Nino hitting the planet in the next months, affords us a frightening insight into our future. The report predicts that 451,000 human lives will be lost due to unprecedented heat in 2027, the vast majority in the global South. The report focuses on inhabitability due to different incomes, development and climates of vulnerable human populations worldwide. They do not offer what will be the predicted loss for marine ecosystems and other living beings sharing our planet. Marine scientists anticipate unprecedented change in biodiversity and species loss with fires, droughts, floods, coral bleaching and stressed wildlife behaviour. These are doom scenarios, based on extensive data that is measuring horrific changes in our habitats. But Dr. Wendy Hartcourts argues, that even while it is vital that we take these predictions seriously, it is important to look at other narratives to consider how to ensure a habital planet. Her talk builds on the insights of feminist political ecology, environmental humanities and critical development studies to look for otherwise stories that offer hope, and practical action that is happening now among citizens, researchers and scientists concerned about our future habitability.
As a feminist political ecologist who has worked for years at the borderline of environmental humanities and sustainable development policy, Dr. Hartcourt is interested in in eco-social behaviour that informs community efforts to live with and conserve the natural world. In recent years she has paid attention to sustainable development processes in the Global South that are engaging in traditional knowledge systems and seek to provide space for communities and citizens to join scientists in conserving the environment. As an illustration, her talk focuses on the stories, research and hopes around the iconic sea turtles of the South Pacific and Far North Australia to show how we can change our narratives to overcome climate change and find habitability. She looks at how sea turtles are not only a fascinating marine species but are also cultural touchstones that have been cared for by indigenous communities for centuries, producing ecological knowledge that is now informing scientific, conservation and environmental practices. She will tell Turtle Stories from the global citizen science network ‘State of World Ocean Turtles’, story tellers and researchers in the Fiji Islands and Bawaka Country in Northern Australia, and the marine biologists of the IMOS Animal Tracking Facility.
List of publications (most are Open Access) that could be of interest:
Selected Books:
2025 - Conundrums of Care: feminist entanglements in critical development studies,
London: Bloomsbury Academic - Open Access
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350459632
2023- Contours of Feminist Political Ecology, London: Palgrave - Open Access
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-20928-4
2022 - Feminist Methodologies: Experiments, Collaborations and Reflections, London: Palgrave - Open Access
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-82654-3.
2019 - Political Ecology and the Economics of Care – In search of Economic Alternatives, London: Routledge (with Christine Bauhardt)
2015- Practicing Feminist Political Ecology: Beyond the Green Economy, London: Zed Books (with Ingrid L. Nelson)
1994- Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development: shifting knowledge boundaries, London: Zed Books
Selected Articles:
2026 - Why feminist political ecology matters. Space and Polity, 30(2), 191–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2026.2613240
2025- Earthcare in Ekman Ulrik and Daniela Irrgang (eds) 2025 Environmental and Humanities Glossary: Emergent Key TermsDepartment of Arts and Cultural Studies University of Copenhagen https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/art-and-earth/environmental-humanities-glossary/earthcare/
Debates on Sustainable Development: Personal Insights from a Feminist Political Ecology Approach Journal of Gender Studies 28:7-20 DOI:10.24567/0002005340
2021 -Ecología política feminista y política del cuidado. Ecuador Debate, 114, 113-134.Feminist Political Ecology and the Politics of Care
2020- Commentary: Rethinking life-in-common in the Australian landscape. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
, 33(3), 391-407. doi.org/10.1177/2514848621989602
2019- Editorial: Feminist political ecologies of the commons and commoning. International Journal of the Commons, 13(1):1-15 (with F. Clement, D. Joshi and C. Sato) https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.18352/ijc.972/
2016 - Gender and sustainable livelihoods: linking gendered experiences of environment, community and self, special section on Feminist Perspectives on Human–Nature Relations Agricultural Journal of Human Values 33(4):1007–1019https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-016-9757-5
Gender Dilemmas in International Development Studies. The European Journal of Development Research
, 28(2): 167-174 dx.doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2016.6
Multiple global challenges — including climate change, land degradation, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, poverty, and inequality — are deeply interconnected and mutually reinforcing. These challenges are particularly acute in the Global South and rural areas, where profound changes in land and food systems are required to maintain habitability. While socio-ecological transformations are widely recognized as necessary, many approaches, in both, the Global North and South, continue to prioritize technology-centred solutions that overlook equity and justice perspectives. Such approaches risk excluding relevant stakeholders, marginalising vulnerable groups, and perpetuating inequitable power relations and outcomes that undermine basic human rights.
This talk addresses equity and justice perspectives by combining systems, target, and transformation knowledge in a conceptual framework for research, project design, and policy. It understands habitability not merely as a biophysical condition but as a socially and politically produced outcome, arguing that land and food systems can only remain habitable for all if equity and justice are embedded at their core. It offers concrete suggestions for equity-centred research and implementation, emphasizes the value of feminist and human rights-based approaches, and argues for critical reflection on epistemologies and ontologies. As global efforts to achieve the SDGs for all face increasing challenges, this research underscores the urgency of placing equity and justice at the heart of socio-ecological transformations.
Short Biography:
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Beuchelt is a senior scientist and project leader at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. Since 20 years, she conducts inter- and transdisciplinary research on sustainable food and land use systems in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Her main topics entail agricultural adaptation to climate change, gender and social justice, human rights, food security and global biomass-based supply chains.
Global average temperatures are approaching 1.5°C above pre-industrial
levels — the threshold that states committed to pursuing in the Paris
Agreement. The severe impacts of climate change are already visible
across the world. Climate-related disruptions, including sea-level rise,
prolonged droughts, and extensive wildfires, are becoming increasingly
frequent and severe. As a result, some individuals are unable to secure
their basic human rights in their places of habitual residence and are
forced to seek protection in other states. Others, lacking the resources
to migrate, remain in place and require protection where they reside. In
this talk, I propose that both groups who are unable to secure their
basic human rights in their places of habitual residence should be
conceptualized as climate refugees. I begin by examining a moral
conception of the refugee and distinguishing it from legal and political
conceptions. I then unpack three distinctive features of the proposed
moral conception: climate-related harms, involuntariness, and
non-alienage. Finally, I consider two criticisms of my proposed
conception. The first criticism questions its action-guiding potential
and cautions against morally undesirable outcomes. The second raises
concerns about moralizing refugeehood. Despite the force of these
criticisms, I emphasize the value of the proposed conception for making
sense of moral claims of climate refugees and responsibilities to remedy
their predicament.
In this lecture, Prof. Egya takes African oral literature as an object of ecocritical analysis. Oral literature, in this regard, consists of oral genres such as, among others, folktales, myths, proverbs, songs, and chants. These forms of artistic culture, he argues, are rich in the wisdom required for planetary balance and as such should be centered in ecological discourses concerned with the wellbeing of the earth. As indigenous forms of culture, these genres also trouble ecocriticism’s fixation with the written text especially in contexts such as Africa where a large part of literary culture is still oral. The objective is therefore two-fold: to, on the one hand, decenter the notion of textuality in ecocriticism; and to, on the other hand, foreground the pluriversal knowledge systems needed today in order to confront planetary precarity. Prof. Egya will draw his illustrations from the Eloyi, Agatu, and Nupe ethnic groups in Nigeria.
Die Vorlesung ist öffentlich. Bei Teilnahme an allen Veranstaltungen kann eine Teilnahmebescheinigung ausgestellt werden (Anmeldung über StudIP erforderlich).
