Priority Area 2 Humans and Environment
Priority Area 2 bundles measures that explore the relationship between humans and the environment, whereby 'environment' can encompass both natural and cultural spaces. Particular attention is paid to major crises or transformation processes and the perception of these in artistic expression. In addition to projects that deal with sustainability - in the broadest sense - and thus the preservation of natural and cultural spaces, the FoF 3 area also includes projects that examine utopian/dystopian imaginaries of the future, as they are often expressed in crisis situations. Close cooperation with projects from the other Fields of Focus, particularly on environmental and climate issues, but also on other aspects of sustainability, is desired.
Priority Area 2 builds on the FoF 3 focus research areas “Transformation Processes” and “Cultural Heritage” as well as on the ongoing research projects Center for Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Studies (CAPAS), “Worldmaking” and the TRN “Environments - Upheavals - Rethinking”.
The following measures are funded in Priority Area 2:
TRN Human-climate-environment interaction in ancient Crete. Approaches to a relational explanatory model of historical change
The aim of the TRN is to investigate the influence of climate and environmental changes on the cultural development of Crete from the Neolithic period to modern times. A central element of the project is a marine core sample obtained in 2023 during a Heidelberg expedition with the German research vessel METEOR directly off the south coast of Crete. This unique geoarchive covers the past 8,000 years without any gaps and enables the terrestrial climate and environmental conditions in its immediate catchment area to be reconstructed in detail. The core has exceptional cultural-historical potential for linking the climate and environmental data obtained from it with terrestrial sediment cores and archaeological findings. Selected, archaeologically critical key intervals will be analyzed as paradigms for the interactions between ancient society, environment, and climate. The focus is on both the ecosystem as a risk and resilience factor and possible anthropogenic influences on the Cretan landscape.
Project lead: Prof. Dr. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos (Archaeology, diamantis.panagiotopoulos@zaw.uni-heidelberg.de), Prof. Dr. Olaf Bubenzer (Physical Geography), Prof. Dr. Jörg Pross (Geosciences)
TRN „Denk(t)räume – (Re-)Thinking and Doing Futures“
Catastrophes, as threatening as they are, can also be the beginning of radical metamorphoses, new world models. What scope for action arises from such Rethinking? How do crises become catalysts? The TRN takes a transculturally and historically informed look at changing, threatened environments and uses the particular strengths of the Humanities and the Social Sciences to initiate discourses, (re)shape narratives and thus, to develop alternative models for a ‘realisable future’. In inter- and transdisciplinary Critical Dialogues, we will form a network of scientists that will form the basis for the establishment of a Junges Kolleg that will fertilise existing activities in the field of transformation research at the university and that brings young scholars to Heidelberg.
Project Lead: Prof. Dr. Barbara Mittler (China Studies), Prof. Dr. Susann Schäfer (Geography)