The Rachel Carson Center Environment and Society, funded by the BMBF as the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities from 2009 to 2023, conducts interdisciplinary research on the relationship between nature and culture in various contexts.
Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch
Christof Mauch
What follows after the BMBF funding? The Rachel Carson Center has developed a unique doctoral program called "Environment and Society" in Germany, which will further strengthen the research focus on environment and society at LMU Munich. Discover the global challenges that researchers are currently addressing.
Interview with Prof. Dr. Christof Mauch , Director of the Rachel Carson Center.
The Carson Center's researchers are addressing many of the central challenges of our current day – from pandemics and environmental pollution to global injustice, climate change, and resource depletion. Unlike the fields of engineering and natural sciences, our primary focus is on people and society, and thus on the larger historical, ethical, and political contexts. For example, our researchers ask questions about the environmental impact of fast fashion, precarious working conditions in a global context, the effects of different perceptions of nature among children in the jungles of Ecuador versus Germany, and the ecological and social effects of China's “New Silk Road”. Overall, the RCC’s aim is to take a critical look at the often-unintended consequences of economic and political decisions and to contextualize them in a historical perspective while still maintaining an eye towards the future.
The Proenviron postdoctoral program is highly international and interdisciplinary. It brings together about 40 doctoral students, who currently come from 20 countries on five continents and comprise numerous disciplines, from anthropology and geography to ethics and medicine, from history to law. Our program is not a “school” committed to particular methods or theories. We thrive on a diversity of approaches and thematic exchanges under the broad topical umbrella of “environment and society.” Certain aspects of the program — such as workshops, reading groups, excursions, and skills sessions — are often organized by the PhD students themselves.
Our advanced graduate seminar, “Environment and Society,” often takes place over several days and includes discussions of, and feedback sessions for, our researchers’ ongoing work, as well as mini-excursions into the “field” to meet with various experts such as beekeepers, forest scientists, geologists, etc. An especially unique feature of our program is that, in addition to these PhD students, there are master's students, visiting scholars, postdocs, and established professors from all over the world at the Carson Center. This one-of-a-kind assemblage of minds makes it possible to present our doctoral candidates with co-teaching opportunities that facilitate the exchange of ideas across generational boundaries.
The majority of the candidates’ work is either comparative or interdisciplinary. For example, one of our PhD students from the Brazilian “eco-city” of Curitiba is questioning both the historical and current development of public mobility in the “bicycle cities” of Portland, Oregon, and Munich. With this research, she asks what one city can learn from the other. Another of our PhD candidates, from Turkey, is navigating the border between biology and anthropology, analyzing historical recipes and interrogating the cultural role of fermented dishes in Turkey and Bulgaria.
We also have a Dutch artist who is working on visualizations of contemporary crises and integrating her own computer-generated art into a “media dissertation,” and a Chinese candidate who is working with an external supervisor, one who is both a China-expert and a forest ecologist, to compare the different perceptions of wild boar in Germany and China. Specifically, her work deals with the problems caused by wild boars beyond the borders of national parks in both countries, and the results of her work will eventually culminate in policy papers and political guidelines.
Thank you for these insights, Professor Mauch!
(The interview was conducted in written form the 5th of June 2023, Questions: Katrin Schlotter)
Regina Bichler
The environmental damage caused and exacerbated by our garbage is now common knowledge, but the global waste problem cannot be solved solely by separating waste at home and going shopping with reusable bags. With my research on zero-waste initiatives in Japan and Germany, I want to help find pragmatic ways to significantly reduce the amount of waste generated locally and also to deal responsibly with the waste we cannot avoid.
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Moussa Douno
Threats posed by new and re-emerging diseases keep growing. My research on the devastating viral hemorrhagic Lassa fever aims to understand how past and contemporary approaches to the disease have shaped biomedical understandings and interventions at the community and institutional levels. My goal is to generate a new Lassa fever narrative through a One Health approach, integrating animal, human, and environmental health, to contribute to epidemic and pandemic preparedness in so-called disease “hotspots,” where poverty is overwhelming and basic health services are lacking.
Moussa Douno / Rachel Carson Center (LMU)
John Fayiah
My research examines how plantation and mining concessions in Liberia transformed the Upper Guinean forest region, created new disease patterns and burdens, and shaped public health interventions. Labor migration and ecological degradation altered the interactions between humans and nonhumans and created a hospitable ecology for the spread of diseases like malaria, sleeping sickness, and river blindness. In exploring the historical connections between environmental change and emerging infectious diseases, I will contribute toward addressing global health challenges.
John Fayiah / Rachel Carson Center (LMU)
Andreas Jünger
How can we produce food in a socially just and environmentally friendly way? As an environmental historian, I believe it is crucial that we acknowledge both the positive and negative lessons of past decades. Using southern Spain as an example, my research examines how people there have developed unique ecological modes of production and what lessons can be learned from them. In analyzing this region, the social and ecological issues that often surround food-production practices are thrown into sharp relief. Recognizing these factors is instrumental in developing sustainable food systems.
Andreas Jünger
Shadrach Kerwillain
My research on the changing meanings and values of forests in Liberia aims to provide insights that contribute to addressing poverty and biodiversity loss, among the most significant challenges of this century. Implementing sustainable forest management practices that balance ecological, economic, and socio-cultural considerations can help address these challenges. Furthermore, properly managing Liberia’s forests, carbon sinks that are the largest forests in West Africa, can help mitigate climate change, which exacerbates wealth inequalities and species extinction.
Shadrach Kerwillain/ Rachel Carson Center (LMU)
Lu Klassen
Planetary health concerns the intricate relations between human, animal, and ecosystem health, and the well-being of the planet as a whole. Understanding and recognizing these inter-relations is necessary to address the root causes of environmental degradation, instead of only treating its symptoms. In my dissertation, I am researching different representations of planetary health across science, art, and activism. Therewith, I hope to contribute to transforming our understanding of well-being on a planetary scale.
Lu Klassen/ Rachel Carson Center (LMU)
Katie Kung
My research challenges negative perceptions of invasive alien species (IAS), addressing xenophobia and cultural biases. I focus on animal and plant species, and their microbial counterparts like viruses and fungi, from domestic cats to Lyme disease. I aim to shift our scientific and societal approaches to IAS to align with a rapidly changing world with global challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss, by updating our conservation values to account for irreversible ecological novelty.
Wing Tung, KUNG/Rachel Carson Center (LMU)
Huying Ng
Is it more food the world needs, or more relationships within agro-ecologies? Can food production shift away from chemically-intensive monocultures to nurture cultures and ecologies, and soil-human-earth relationships? Following the work of farmers and government scientists in Thailand, my doctoral research traces the shape of hope as it grows, forming supportive infrastructures for agroecological transition. It identifies how communities, material things and living beings, narratives, and protective governance mechanisms can support an interconnected and localized world.
Huiying Ng/Rachel Carson Center (LMU)
Maria del Pilar
I would like my work to contribute to the recognition and appreciation of women environmental activists who are increasingly threatened, silenced, and murdered in Colombia. I hope to draw attention to the lives of those women who have been forgotten and the deaths that were justified or trivialized, as well as to those who continue to protect the environment and the land on which they live. Through storytelling, it is possible to prevent a repeat of these tragedies, dignify their lives, and acknowledge the fragility of life.
Maria del Pilar Peralta Ardila/Rachel Carson Center (LMU)
The Rachel Carson Center is part of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and collaborates with the German Museum in Munich, as well as numerous international university partners, from Norway to Estonia and China to the USA. It brings together researchers who explore the relationship between nature and culture across disciplinary boundaries and in various temporal and geographical contexts.
