The current environmental crisis offers an important opportunity for humanities scholars to rethink the meaning of “sustainability” and its role in popular narratives. The RICH research group Environmental Humanities (Faculty of Arts) received an RCSC Seed Grant in 2025-6 to organize an artistic research project that seeks to (re)frame narratives of sustainability through the elemental perspectives of soil and water. Since these elements are understood as both direct, material forces and sources of cultural and imaginative power, they offer a unique opportunity to “get our feet wet and dirty” and bring matter and imagination together to build creative narratives.
The project, Elementary Pathways to Critical Sustainability: (Re)Framing the Future through Narratives of Soil and Water, has brought together the local academic and artist communities of Nijmegen in a collaborative exploration of how creative ecological narratives can foster communities of care and cure.
During this lunch session, you will learn more about our collaboration and our research on art and elemental thinking in times of ecological crisis. We will present the project outcomes and discuss future research directions.
