Hybrid International Conference – 5-6 October 2026
This conference positions planetary storytelling as a key methodological and conceptual entry point to engage with the planetary crisis from an ethnographic perspective. Storytelling — through mutual listening, conversation, and dialogue, positioned in their ontological context — serves as a tool to render the universalised dimensions of the planetary crisis more relational, tangible, and reflective. Sharing experiences of environmental loss and hope with a wider audience may also hold a healing potential. At the same time, such narratives can evoke eco-anxiety, rupture, or feelings of isolation. Further, storytelling’s performative dimension may inspire new ways of thinking and acting. By bringing these dimensions into conversation, the conference aims to expand the methodological, conceptual and imaginative repertoire for rethinking the planetary crisis and its multi-scalar manifestations across diverse contexts.
Organisation: This workshop is organised by the Reinhart Koselleck-Project on Planetary Healing: Transformation, (De)colonization and Climate Change convened by Eveline Dürr, LMU Munich.
Venue: LMU Munich, Geschwister Scholl Platz 1, Main Building, Room M 203
Registration until September 28, 2026: planetary.healing@ethnologie.lmu.de
PROGRAM – OCTOBER 5, 2026
| 1:00 PM | Eveline Dürr and Research Group (LMU Munich): Welcome and Introduction |
| 1:15 PM | KEYNOTE Anne W. Johnson (Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City): Cosmic Diplomacy as Planetary Healing: The Autonomous International Space Agency and the Limits of the Anthropocene. |
| 2:00 PM | Coffee Break |
| 2:30 PM | Daniel Dumas (Leibniz Institute for RegionalGeography in Leipzig): “The Arctic is Not Dead”: Polar Imaginaries and Visual Storytelling in the 1930s. Marc Brightman (University of Bologna) & Vanessa Grotti (University of Bologna): The Planetary Eel: Cosmopolitics, Climate Change, and the Entangled Worlds of a Migratory Species. Mandy Geise (Technical University of Munich): Planetary Storytelling through Community-based Forest Cartographies: Environmental Mapping in Northwestern Costa Rica. Sarah Mund (LMU Munich): Stories of Change in the Mesoamerican Coral Reef – Connecting Local and Planetary Scales of Environmental Changes and Human Responsibility. |
| 4:15 PM | Coffee Break |
| 4:45 PM | Chakad Ojani (Stockholm University): (Extra)planetary Narratives among Swedish Space Professionals: On One Worldism and the Scale of One-to-All. (online) Ayesha Siddiqi (University of Cambridge): Stories, Orientation and the Planetary from Below. (online) Camilo Castillo (University of Gothenburg): Attuning to the Infrastructures of Planetary Crisis through Storytelling: Dealing with the Scales of Potato Plant Diseases in the northern Andes. (online) |
| 6:15 PM | Closing |
PROGRAM – OCTOBER 6, 2026
| 9:15 AM | Welcome |
| 9:30 AM | KEYNOTE Alessandro Rippa (University of Oslo) & Elizabeth DeLoughrey (UCLA): Planetary Literacies: Reading for Depth in an Age of Acceleration. |
| 11:00 AM | Coffee Break |
| 11:30 AM | Martín Fonck (Universidad Católica de Chile): Staging the Planetary: Healing, Scale, and Anticipation in the Volcanic Andes. Markos Panayiotou (LMU Munich): Stories of the End of the World: The Salvation of Runa Bodies in Napo, Ecuador. Taynã Tagliati (MAE-USP): Becoming Witness: A Mebengokré-Kayapó Practice of Storying Other-Than-Human Worlds. (online) |
| 12:45 PM | Lunch |
| 1:45 PM | Sasha Gora (University of Augsburg): The Scales of Salt. Andrea Bordoli (University of Bern): Remediating Extractivism: Cinematic Remediation in the Nitassinan. Dominika Kolenda (Independent): Grief as a Scaling Practice: Storying Personal and Planetary Pain. (online) Işıl Karataş (LMU Munich): Anarchafeminist Divinations. (online) |
| 4:30 PM | Coffee Break |
| 5:00 PM | KEYNOTE Michael Uzendoski (FLACSO, Ecuador): Planting in the Ruins: Izhupunzha, Ecological Intimacy, and the Uneven Anthropocene in Napo. |
| 5:45 PM | Concluding Discussion |
| 6:15 PM | Closing |
For more details about the event, keynote speakers, and presenters, please view the Event Booklet here: