The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have funded a Global Humanities Institute (GHI) on “Climate Justice and Problems of Scale” to be held at the University of Pretoria (and over virtual platforms) from July 29 through August 7, 2022. This is one of several Global Humanities Institutes supported by CHCI and the Mellon Foundation since 2017. Originally planned for 2021, the GHI was delayed and made hybrid in response to the coronavirus pandemic.  

The 2022 Global Humanities Institute on Climate Justice and Problems of Scale will convene 22 senior scholars and 19 early-career scholars from around the world for an eight-day conference intended to develop a research program and model for inclusive collaborative work in the environmental humanities. Building on a previous project, the Humanities for the Environment Observatories, the GHI will utilize the interdisciplinary scalar turn to generate more nuanced, holistic, and actionable understandings of the relationship between the effects of climate change and the intensification of injustices in the social, cultural, and political spheres. 

Participants: The project is an international collaboration among six CHCI members, including the University of Texas Humanities Institute, which is administering the project, the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (University of Pretoria), which is hosting the Institute, the Center for American Studies and Research (American University of Beirut), the Institute for Humanities Research (Arizona State University), the Humanities Center (Carnegie Mellon University), and the Sydney Environment Institute (University of Sydney). Several scholars from each participating university collaborated in organizing the GHI’s activities.

The team from most of the institutions organizing the conference includes one early-career scholar. Other early career scholars have been selected by applicants from other CHCI institutions. Early career scholars will become part of the Institute’s interdisciplinary teams, participate in workshops, and receive mentoring from senior scholars.

Themes: The Institute’s inquiry will be organized according to three strands: Conceptualizing Scale for a Changing Climate, Climate In/Justice on the Ground, and Futures of Climate Justice. Participants will share and develop research and creative work concerning how matters of scale shape understandings and experiences of climate change; help us identify the sources and attributes of climate injustice; and impede and facilitate collective action to mitigate climate change, more evenly distribute impacts of climate disruption, and work towards climate justice. 

Program: Lectures, panels, and workshops will be hybrid and recorded in order to facilitate the participation of scholars unable to attend the Institute in Pretoria. 

We welcome virtual and in-person attendance at our public events. Links will be posted prior to each public event.