PhD in the Humanities Grant for Arts & Culture research

Ulrike Hahn has received a PhD in the Humanities grant for her research project "Imagining climate change: The visual arts to the rescue?".

Humanity has entered a new era, often labelled the Anthropocene – the human epoch. It poses a significant threat to the ecological integrity of the planet, particularly through human-caused climate change. The abstract and complex nature of climate change makes it a topic that is often framed and visualized in overly scientific and problem-focused ways. This research studies a promising alternative approach for imagining climate change from the contemporary visual arts. Scholars from the emerging and innovative field of the Environmental Humanities have started to investigate the role of the visual arts in the climate change debate. This PhD research will extend this important work by inquiring how contemporary artists frame and represent the human-climate change relation and, moreover, how they can foster public engagement with climate change through their imaginations. It is a response to urgent calls for the further mobilization of the Humanities to contribute to effectively addressing one of the biggest issues of our time.