The Arne Næss Symposium is an international forum for discussing cutting edge research and ideas on global justice and the environment. It is organized annually by the University in Oslo and is part of the Arne Næss Programme at SUM - Between 2009-2021 the Symposium has hosted such outstanding thinkers, writers and activists as James Lovelock, David Sloan Wilson, George Monbiot, Eva Joly, Sir Anthony Giddens og his Holiness the Dalai Lama (for the complete list see https: //www.sum.uio.no/english/research/networks/arne-naess-programme/arne-naess-symposia/). The Symposium - which is open for broad audiences - functions as a link between the academy, the public sphere, politics and industry. It is also a scholarly and pedagogical platform for young researchers at master- and PhD level, who are invited to participate in an informed, public debate with leading international scholars and writers. The 2022 Symposium med Olga Tokarczuk - an acclaimed nature writer and a Nobel Prize winner in literature - is designed to mobilize and inspire humanist researchers to rethink ecological and climate related issues which are crucial part of research in the sciences. One of the Symposium's aims is thus to contribute to diminishing the proverbial gap between the humanities and the sciences.
In 2022 the Arne Næss symposium will celebrate Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel Prize laureate, and one of the most exciting ecological writers of our time. Tokarczuk is not only known as a highly innovative and original creator of ecologically informed fiction; she is a passionate advocate of animal rights, as well as the promoter of human rights and civil freedoms in contemporary, neo-authoritarian Poland. The Nobel committee awarded her the highest literary distinction "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life." Tokarczuk’s evocative novels – such as Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Norwegian translation “Kjør din pløv over de dødes knogler) or Primeval and other Times - are literary masterpieces that cross the boundaries between human and non-human, local and global, and evoke deep affinity with - and philosophical reflection on - the natural world.
The Arne Næss symposium in 2022 has a threefold objective: 1) to honor with the Arne Næss professorship - for the first time - a world-class fiction writer who is deeply engaged in the defense of nature's and human rights; 2) to bring together scholars and creative writers to discuss he environmental and climate crisis problems of our time; 3) To invite students to a creative "jamboree" with the Nobel Prize winner in the festival on day 2 of the Symposium.
Funding scheme:
MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling