UiO - Oslo Center for Environmental Humanities

02/11/2026

A lot is happening at OCEH this November! 🍂

From cultural history and the Anthropocene to ecology, religion, archives, and orchids, we have a busy month ahead with plenty of interesting talks and discussions.

Have a look at what's coming up and join us for an event or two!

Find out more on our website:
https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/events/oceh-events/

31/10/2026

A new OCEH newsletter has landed — our October issue is here!

After the slower rhythm of summer, autumn has filled the Center right back up. This issue looks back on a busy month: a seaweed workshop on the Oslofjord, bread baked with a microbial ecologist, a wetland walk guided by its animals, a lab talk on extinction, and more.

And to finish, a curiosity we couldn’t resist: did you know most of an octopus’s “mind” isn’t in its brain at all, but spread through its eight arms? 🐙

There’s plenty coming up in November too — have a look and join us if you can.

Read the full newsletter here:https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/news/oceh-newsletters/newsletter-october-2026-(2).pdf

Not subscribed yet? Sign up here: https://sympa.uio.no/hf.uio.no/subscribe/oceh-newsletter?previous_action=info

30/10/2026

Looking for something fun and cozy to do in Oslo today? 🎃🍂

OCEH is hosting a Halloween Gathering starting at 3:00 PM at the OCEH Lab (4th floor, P.A. Munchs hus, UiO).

Expect warm drinks, sweet treats, spooky stories, and pumpkin carving! It’s super casual and open to everyone — bring along your friends, partners, or kids.

If you're around, drop by and get into the autumn spirit with us:

Join us for a Halloween-themed OCEH social with treats, warm drinks, spooky stories, and hopefully some pumpkin carving!

01/10/2026

As the autumn weather sets in, we’re cozying up with a full calendar of events at OCEH! 🍂

From book discussions and seaweed tasting workshops to wetland walks and lab talks, there’s plenty happening at OCEH this October.

Check out the overview below, and head over to our website for full details: https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/

21/09/2026

The semester's first meeting of the al-ARD Book Club is approaching, and we hope you have grabbed a copy of Palestinian author Sahar Khalifeh’s novel “My First and Only Love” — a book that invites reflection on land, belonging, memory, love, and the political and personal meanings of place.

Ahead of the meeting on 6 October, al-ARD is sharing this 1991 interview with Sahar Khalifeh, in which she reflects on her writing, feminism, and land dispossession — questions that remain timely today.

https://youtu.be/vsme5Y1_uM0?is=WK-fWz-Z1wBem-f5

The interview offers some additional perspectives to bring into the first discussion.

More information about the meeting:
https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/groups/al-ard/events/al-ard-book-club/reading-my-first-and-only-love-(hubbi-al-awwal)-by.html

Sahar Kalefeh is a Palestinian novelist best known for her 1976 wor...

24/08/2026

📬 The August OCEH Newsletter is out!

Summer has been quiet around the Center — but the new semester is stirring, and it opens on a lovely note. Our junior research group Creative Agency and Environmental Humanities is bringing visiting artists from Hong Kong, Beijing, Japan, and beyond to Oslo for a cluster of late-August events on art, myth, and extraction across Asia and Northern Eurasia.

Inside this issue: what's coming up this autumn, and a curiosity we can't stop thinking about — did you know that for centuries, painters made art using a brown paint ground from actual Egyptian mummies? 🎨

📖 Read the full newsletter here: https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/news/oceh-newsletters/OCEH%20Newsletter%20%237%20August%202026

✉️ Not subscribed yet? Sign up here: https://sympa.uio.no/hf.uio.no/subscribe/oceh-newsletter?previous_action=info

21/08/2026

A beekeeper searching for wild honey. A lone desert dweller protecting one of the Sahara's last wild moufflons. A young girl's body found in the Nile. Two Iraqis rebuilding their lives in exile after the Gulf War.

Meet this year's reading list 📖

The al-ARD Book Club is back — once a month, a small group gets together to read a work of Arabic literature that explores environmental disruption and care for the land, and to talk it over in a relaxed, friendly discussion.

Seven novels, seven countries — Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Oman, Sudan, Libya, and Lebanon — from October to May.

No expertise required, and no need to read in Arabic — bring the book in whatever language you like. All backgrounds welcome.

🗓 One Tuesday a month, 15:00–16:00 · Oct 2026 – May 2027
📍 OCEH Lab, 4th floor, P.A. Munchs hus, University of Oslo

The club is part of the al-ARD research group at IKOS, University of Oslo:
https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/groups/al-ard/

Full programme and all the dates:
https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/groups/al-ard/events/

Come read with us 🌿 To RSVP or ask anything, email Teresa Pepe at [email protected].

06/08/2026

🌻 We’re back — and ready for a new semester!

After the summer break, OCEH is kicking things off with three inspiring days of art, storytelling, ecological thinking and creative encounters, organised by our junior research group Creative Agency and Environmental Humanities (CAEH).

Here’s what’s happening in August:

**25 August**
Spirituality and Mythmaking — a workshop exploring artistic research practices across Northern Eurasia

**25 August**
Film Screening by Mia Yu — two experimental documentaries imagining post-extractive futures

**26 August**
Multispecies and Multicultural Encounters — a creative writing workshop, shared lunch and viewing of Asian artefacts

**27 August**
Living with Otherness — an artist talk by Aki Nagasaka, followed by a panel discussion with four CAEH artists

Late August offers plenty of opportunities to gather, exchange ideas and explore how artistic practice can open up new perspectives on ecological questions. We’d love to have you join us.

👉 Full event details and registration information:
https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/

26/06/2026

What do rivers, cobalt mines, ice, sediments, sound, goblins, and Saharan dust have in common?

They all appear in the June issue of the OCEH Newsletter, which gathers a lively season of events, fieldwork, conversations, and reflections from the Oslo Center for Environmental Humanities.

This month’s issue looks at what the earth holds onto — in bodies of water, in minerals, in archives, in landscapes, and in stories — before we pause for the summer and prepare for a new autumn programme.

Read the full newsletter here:
https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/news/oceh-newsletters/OCEH%20Newsletter%20%236%20June%202026

Subscribe to future newsletters here:
https://sympa.uio.no/hf.uio.no/subscribe/oceh-newsletter?previous_action=info

15/06/2026

🌍 Did you know the world's greenest place depends on one of its most barren?

It sounds like a contradiction, but it's one of the most striking connections on the planet — and a reminder, dear to the environmental humanities, that no landscape really stands alone.

The Amazon rainforest sits on surprisingly poor soil. Its heavy rains constantly wash nutrients away, leaving the ground far less fertile than all that lush green would suggest. So what keeps it growing?

The answer blows in from thousands of kilometres away. Every year, winds lift vast clouds of dust off the Sahara Desert and carry them across the Atlantic Ocean — and that dust is rich in phosphorus, the very nutrient the rainforest keeps losing. The desert, in effect, fertilises the jungle.

And much of it comes from a single place: the Bodélé Depression in Chad, an ancient dried-up lake bed whose dust is rich in the remains of long-dead microorganisms. A vanished lake, on another continent, quietly keeping the rainforest alive 🏜️🌳

We tend to imagine deserts as empty and rainforests as full — but the living world rarely respects the tidy categories we draw around it.

📖 Read more: https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/29apr_amazondust/