News Archive
February 2022
SPHERE researchers have contributed chapters to the new edited volume Times of History, Times of Nature: Temporalization and the Limits of Modern Knowledge, which is available Open Access. Sverker Sörlin’s chapter, “Environmental Times: Synchronizing Human-Earth Temporalities from Annales to Anthropocene, 1920s–2020s”, addresses the rise of the environmental discourse by tracing the emergence in the twentieth century of what he calls environmental times in a wide range of disciplinary contexts, and how they required synchronization with cultural, social, and political temporalities. Eric Paglia and Erik Isberg’s contribution, “On Record: Political Temperature and the Temporalities of Climate Change”, investigates the 2°C target in climate policy and the inherent multitude of timescales to reach ideas about global warming in the past and the now.
January 2022
SPHERE project member Eric Paglia has been awarded a four year grant by the Swedish funding agency Formas to research the intellectual foundations of the sustainable development concept. In the project “Sustainability’s Formative Moment: The Birth of the Boundaries Narrative and the Rise of the ‘Human Environment’”, Paglia will explore the origins of the enduring tension between the idea of environmental limits and the imperative of economic growth, which first emerged in the late-1960s - early-1970s during the preparatory phase and aftermath of the 1972 Stockholm Conference.
October 2021
SPHERE P.I. Sverker Sörlin awarded Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences' Great Gold Medal
September 2021
Sverker Sörlin taking part in conference celebrating the journal Ambio
Prof. Sverker Sörlin, P.I. of the SPHERE project, will take part in an online conference celebrating 50 years of the scientific journal Ambio, an important platform for environmental science and politics published by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Watch the conference on 9 September starting at 13:00 CET here.
SPHERE members Sverker Sörlin, Eric Paglia and Erik Isberg reflect on environmental temporalities in the edited volume Times of History, Times of Nature: Temporalization and the Limits of Modern Knowledge, edited by Anders Ekström and Staffan Bergwik, to be published by Berghahn Books in February 2022. Read more here.
25 May 2021
Green Energy? The development of Modern Wind Energy from Denmark to Taiwn
On Tuesday May 25th SPHERE project member Thomas Schrøder is giving a talk at Taipei Medical University entitled ‘Green Energy? The development of Modern Wind Energy from Denmark to Taiwan’! Taiwan has in recent years started a massive development of wind energy especially in the ocean - a development that to a big extent is enabled by experienced foreign businesses. Much of the wind energy technology used in Taiwan and several of the globally leading companies come from Denmark. This talk sees the development of wind energy in Taiwan in relation to the earlier development of wind energy in Denmark. The talk is particularly concerned with sociotechnical imaginaries – the technology and visions of green energy – how they travel and change across time and space.Read more about and sign up for the talk here »
21 April 2021
Postcards for Unstable Times: Environmental Narratives of Change and Crisis
The SPHERE project is contributing to ESEH’s event Postcards for Unstable Times: Environmental Narratives of Change and Crisis as part of the ongoing ASEH Environmental History Week! Jasmin Höglund Hellgren from the SPHERE project will present a virtual postcard showcasing Svalbard as a crossroads where efforts to preserve the past, protect the present, explore outer space and look towards the future all coincide in the context of climate change and geopolitical tensions. Tune in for the Zoom event this afternoon at 3pm (CET). Read more about the event here, or join the event directly through this link.
September 2020
The Mediated Planet - New Grant to the Division in one of Formas Biggest Targeted Calls Ever
We are proud to present that as one of eleven projects, "Mediated Planet: Claiming Data for Environmental SDGs" lead by Sabine Höhler et al. was awarded funding when Formas/the Swedish Research Council invested more than 210 million kronor into Swedish research with the call: Realising the global sustainable development goals. The project explores the global environment as emerging through environmental data and asks how data gathering practices, data access and data ownership shape environmental perception and politics. Sabine Höhler who is also a member of the SPHERE team leds the project together with Adam Wickberg, Susanna Lidström and Sverker Sörlin from the Division and Johan Gärdebo and Amanda Lagerkvist from Uppsala University. Accordning to Formas.se all the granted projects in this call "span the global arena and have the potential to impact many people around the world" “A mix of pioneering ideas, talented researchers and extraordinary collaboration gives these projects every opportunity to truly build knowledge in our efforts to achieve the sustainable development goals,” says Katarina Buhr, Senior Research Officer at Formas. “We have ten years to achieve the sustainable development goals. With this funding initiative, Formas thus encouraged researchers to both tackle significant scientific challenges and take action to enable their research results to bring real-world impact. At the same time, we are advancing the position of Swedish sustainability research and the Swedish Agenda 2030 efforts,” says Ingrid Petersson, Director General of Formas.
April 2019
Erik Isberg, SPHERE PhD student on Swedish Radio
On 25 April, Erik read his essay titled 'Att resa till Island under antropocene' on Sverige Radio.
Listen here »
