Literary perspective on ecological crisis

In the research master track Environmental Humanities, students will analyse ecological issues in their full historical and cultural complexity. The goal is to understand the interconnectedness of man with life on earth and to learn how to inhabit the world responsibly.

Understanding human behaviour

“Students themselves asked for more in-depth knowledge in this field," says Steenbergh, associate professor of English Literature. "Short specialisation tracks have already been offered, but they want to work more thoroughly on the ecological crisis: look for tools and concepts to actively work on it. The natural sciences focus on the question of what exactly happens in ecosystems. But you can't look at that without considering the intertwining of nature and culture. Man has a major role in today's problems: we consider nature to be an inexhaustible source of human prosperity. In doing so, we put man above nature." She says there are even calls for the current geological epoch to no longer be called Holocene, but Anthropocene – because of that human influence.

Talking to each other

The Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam was the first in the Netherlands (2016) and the new master track is unique in the Netherlands. There is increasing awareness of the complexity of the world's problems. "A wicked problem," says Steenbergh, "that cannot be solved by a single factor. So you have to look wider." That is why humanities studies the ecological crisis in an interdisciplinary way: from history, archaeology, literature, philosophy, art and culture. This goes beyond multidisciplinarity, she explains, "because you don't look at the problem next to each other, but with each other." Environmental Humanities also collaborates with other faculties, such as the Faculty of Science and Law, and with parties outside science, such as NGOs and activist groups.