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INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research

Asia-Norway Environmental Storytelling Network (ANEST)

Alternative title: Asia-Norway Environmental Storytelling Network (ANEST)

Awarded: NOK 4.2 mill.

The Asia-Norway Environmental Storytelling Network (ANEST) brings together researchers and students from three Norwegian and six university partners in Greater China and Japan to explore environmental storytelling across a wide range of arenas and topics. Drawing upon the expertise within the humanities, this project will draw out the complexities, limitations, and possibilities of environmental storytelling. From a disciplinary perspective, ANEST is situated in the environmental humanities, which brings together history, literary criticism, philosophy, media studies, religious studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and anthropology. Through the project period, ANEST will enable significant knowledge exchange and international mobility between the partner institutions. In the first half of the project, international travel restrictions due to COVID-19 have made mobility between Norway and Asia impossible to achieve, so none of the planned activities have been achieved. The network has instead organized an online seminar series where the partners have met to discuss and exchange experiences. These meeting are laying the groundwork for mobility and collaboration when international travel between Norway and Asia becomes possible again. The network has also established a forum for PhD students at the partner institutions. The network also organized an international workshop in conjunction with a summer school in Taiwan. In 2023, extensive international mobility has finally started, with several bilateral research exchanges undertaken and more are under planning. An international workshop was successfully arranged in Taipei, Taiwan, in October 2023, on "Teaching Through and With Environmental Storytelling" with participants from Norway, Japan, and Taiwan. In December 2023, a call for papers was issued for the closing conference of the ANEST network, to be held in Stavanger, Norway, in August 2024.

The Asia-Norway Environmental Storytelling Network (ANEST) brings together researchers and students from three Norwegian and six university partners in Greater China and Japan to explore environmental storytelling across a wide range of arenas and topics. Drawing upon the expertise within the humanities, this project will draw out the complexities, limitations, and possibilities of environmental storytelling. From a disciplinary perspective, ANEST is situated in the environmental humanities, which brings together history, literary criticism, philosophy, media studies, religious studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and anthropology. The three Norwegian partners already have active collaboration on the Norwegian Researcher School in Environmental Humanities (NoRS-EH), which offers three weeklong courses each year at the PhD level. The Asian partners feature environmental humanities researchers in the region who have been active in both teaching and research.

Funding scheme:

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research