Sustainability and the Good Life - PhD course in Oslo, September 2012
What does it mean to live a good life in a time when the human population keeps on growing, the oil age is coming to an end, the climate is changing, the oceans are turning more acidic, fish populations are declining, and fertile soils the world over are eroding?
Photo: Colourbox.no
These and other simultaneous threats lead many to seek creative responses at several levels of consideration and action. Lighter individual lifestyles are being experimented with as much as is bioregional citizenship, national and international distributive justice, and the question of active green resistance to the dominant power structures.
These adaptations are emerging as increasingly noteworthy and critical research topics. Building on specialist expertise of different researchers and research institutions across the Nordic countries, this doctoral course seeks to confront these topics by exploring the above question, and also these:
- Where do contemporary visions of the sustainable good life come from?
- What functions do they serve?
- How are they expressed in current transition processes?
- Is a sustainable and satisfying life possible for all?
Among the lecturers are Lawrence Buell, professor at Harvard University and 2012 Arne Næss Chairholder; Kate Soper, professor at London Metropolitan University; Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor at the University of Oslo; Andreas Viestad, TV chef and food writer.
Students will be encouraged to participate actively in the course, and to integrate the offered content into a more comprehensive understanding of this research area. The course will enable them to identify new and relevant problems, and to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the convergence between ideas about sustainability and the good life.
Applications are invited from 1 May until 1 July 2012. Go to the PhD course web site for more information.
Organisers: Karen V. Lykke Syse & Martin Lee Mueller. SUM Research School in cooperation with Milen (Environmental Change and Sustainable Energy) and Kultrans (Cultural Transformations in the Age of Globalization), University of Oslo.