The interrelation of climate crisis denial and misogyny, the role of wetlands and marshes in our climate system, carbon capitalism, green economy, postcolonial perspectives on the climate crisis, the development of the climate movement, ocean and polar ecosystems – we explore all of this and much more in our lecture series on the climate crisis at the University of Hamburg.
With a team of seven students, we are organizing an interdisciplinary lecture series on the climate crisis that is about to enter its ninth semester. For four years, we have examined environmental, social scientific, and activistic perspectives on the climate crisis. Each semester, we invite various international and Hamburg-based speakers to present their research, work, and activism. The lecture series originated in 2021 as a project of Fridays for Future, Students for Future, and the Student Union (AStA), motivated by disappointment at the limited mention of the climate crisis in university curricula. Consequently, our goal over the past few years has been to reach students, academics, and interested individuals outside of everyday university life to impart knowledge about the climate crisis to everyone who is interested. Therefore, the individual lectures are structured so that no prior knowledge in the presented field is necessary to follow along while still maintaining an academic and researched-based foundation.
Students from the major universities in Hamburg – the University of Hamburg, the Technical University, the HafenCity University, and the University of Applied Sciences – can participate in our lectures for credits toward their studies. Each semester, more than 3,000 students have attended our lectures in person or online, not to mention the additional viewers who watch our lectures afterward on YouTube, allowing us to reach people far beyond the university context.
In the future, we hope that our format of a student-organized lecture series, created by students for other students, will spread to more universities and reach an even broader audience. Our lecture series will continue in the upcoming semester with speakers on topics such as climate migration, paleoclimate, environmental sociology, and many more. Everyone is welcome to join us every Tuesday evening, starting April 8, at 6 PM in Audimax I at the University of Hamburg or via Zoom to learn about different interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives on the climate crisis.
Mareike Munsch is a student of History and American and English Studies at the University of Hamburg interested in interdisciplinary approaches spanning beyond her study area. She is one of seven students organizing the lecture series on the climate crisis. The team can be reached at ringvorlesung@asta.uni-hamburg.de.