Goethe-Universität

Feb 23 2026

Neue Publikation – Vicky Kluzik

Jan 21 2026

18:15 - 21:00

Buchvorstellung / Dr. Franziska von Verschuer: Collecting Seeds, Assembling Worlds.

How has the world lost three quarters of its crop diversity in less than a century? How does a collection of seeds frozen in the Arctic help face this loss and ensure future food security? And how can Indigenous knowledges and artistic interventions inspire modes of dealing with agrobiodiversity loss that respond to contemporary socio-ecological transformations with care rather than techno-salvationism? Franziska von Verschuer traces these questions from the world's stronghold against agrobiodiversity loss, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, to divergent worlds and modes of world-making it assembles along with seeds. This study shows that the future is more open than the popular story of the 'doomsday vault' suggests.

Franziska von Verschuer (2025): Collecting Seeds, Assembling Worlds. An Inquiry into Agrobiodiversity Conservation Through the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Bielefeld: transcript.

Dez 16 2025

12:00

Neue Publikationen – Josef Barla

Living Techno-Natures: Biohybrid Objects, Life, and Technology

Barla, J., and Marco Tamborini. 2026. Living Techno-Natures: Biohybrid Objects, Life, and Technology, History and Philosophy of Technoscience series, New York and London: Routledge.

Barla, J. "When Life is Made to Work Against Itself: Synthetic Biology, Metabolic Death Labor, and the Mechanization of Death". In Josef Barla and Marco Tamborini (Eds.), Living Techno-Natures: Biohybrid Objects, Life, and Technology (pp 41–56), New York and London: Routledge.

Link zum Buch: https://www.routledge.com/Living-Techno-Natures-Biohybrid-Objects-Life-and-Technology/Barla-Tamborini/p/book/9781032940168

Ecologies of Control: The Algorithmization of Borders and the Emergence of Transversal Solidarity

Barla, J., and Christoph Hubatschke. 2025. "Ecologies of Control: The Algorithmization of Borders and the Emergence of Transversal Solidarity". In Environments, Ecosystems, and Ecologies, Oxford Intersections: Borders. Ed. Maano Ramutsindela. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/9780198945222.003.0015

Link zum Artikel: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61655/chapter-abstract/540205591?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Making death on a molecular scale: transgenic mosquitoes, more-than-human biopolitics, and the emergence of necrovalue

Barla, J. 2025. "Making death on a molecular scale: transgenic mosquitoes, more-than-human biopolitics, and the emergence of necrovalue". In Nina Lykke, Tara Mehrabi, and Marietta Radomska (Eds.), Handbook of Queer Death Studies (pp. 183–191), New York and London: Routledge.

Link zum Buchkapitel: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-International-Handbook-of-Queer-Death-Studies/Lykke-Mehrabi-Radomska/p/book/9781032504384

Dez 15 2025

18:15 - 19:45

Ecological Grief and Mourning in the Current Climate of Change: A Conversation

Speakers: Dr. Yoalli Rodriguez Aguilera (DePaul University Chicago), Dr. Franziska von Verschuer (Goethe University Frankfurt), Dr. Julia Böcker (Zurich University)

Moderated by Annika Troitzsch (Technical University Darmstadt)

Climate change and other contemporary environmental challenges are shaking the foundations and certainties of previous ways and forms of life all around the globe. As an increasing number of studies show, these developments not only raise technical and political questions but also evoke a host of affective responses. One emerging phenomenon that this panel discussion focuses on is what scholars are now calling environmental or ecological grief. The conversation brings together three scholars whose empirical research explores different forms, sites, and practices of grief and mourning beyond the human. Through the anticipatory grief of foresters over dying forests, the grief and resistant mourning of Black or Indigenous communities facing the destruction of their homes and livelihoods, and artistic practices of mourning biocultural diversity loss, the panel explores what it means to feel, practice, and live with—as well as research and think with—ecological grief and mourning.

Complementary event on Tuesday, 16 Dec 2025, 10.00 – 11.30 a.m.:

Guided tour of the exhibition "Solastalgia: Walks through changing landscapes" at Goethe University's Museum Giersch (English)

To join the exhibition, please register via email to: verschuer(at)soz.uni-frankfurt.de