Campus 2014: The Anthropocene Issue

Anthropocene Curriculum
2014, Nov. 14-22

„The Anthropocene is based on a changing earth system as a complex system. We can also look at the Campus a complex system. I think we should let the participants enough freedom to self-organize, because that`s what a complex system does.“

Will Steffen, earth system scientist

How does the Anthropocene change our scientific approach to the world? How can teaching and research face the challenges of rapid global change in a responsible way? What forms of knowledge production and transmission are appropriate responses? What does it mean to question the borders between institutionalized disciplines, or even to renegotiate them entirely? What new fields of knowledge emerge when an atmospheric chemist, a historian of technology, and an architect develop a joint curriculum?

From the „geo-political“ interactions between desertification and armed conflict, across the mediatization of the Anthropocene, to the resource dependence of an urban system or phenomena of local climate change using the example of Berlin: by way of concrete case studies, international researchers and university teachers presented an Anthropocene Curriculum developed in transdisciplinary collaboration as exemplary for the new coordinates of an earthbound knowledge.

At the Anthropocene Campus, the exemplary curriculum was simultaneously tested and further developed. One hundred international young researchers from the sciences, humanities, and the arts as well as actors from outside of academia engaged in this curricular experiment, contributing their own perspective and expertise. Accompanied by a public program and closing off with a larger public forum, the specific role of education in the collaborative development of vital cross-topics for future engagement was extensively discussed. Hosted on non-academic terrain, this negotiation presented a rare opportunity to work out a pedagogically feasible design for knowledge building and knowledge transfer.

Anthropocene Curriculum & Campus 2014 in the framework of: