COLLABORATORY
Through the Humus Economicus Collaboratory we visit and learn from growers, researchers, planners, ecologists, artists, and organisations invested in soil and soil cultures, to better understand how different forms of interaction with soil can increase knowledge about its life sustaining processes and promote practices of soil care. Below you find a list of guests, companions, collaborators, and networks that have been important to us.
The research process includes excursions, art & science retreats, literature studies, alongside seminars, exploratory workshops, exhibitions, and other public activities. Through place-based and situated modes of working we seek to create a critical and creative milieu.
Through the research team of Humus economicus, National Historical Museums (SHM), KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Uppsala University, Linköping University and the lively research community of The Posthumanities Hub have been linked.
Networks
The Posthumanities Hub (KTH/LiU) is a strong Environmental Humanities environment in Sweden, and is at the forefront of feminist posthumanities research in Sweden and internationally. It is a feminist research group and a multi-university platform for more-than-human humanities, founded in 2008 by Professor Cecilia Åsberg at Linköping University (LiU), connected to the Gender, nature, culture platform of Åsberg’s LiU chair. Bringing science and art to the humanities, the Hub has been a transformational force of the societally relevant, extra-disciplinary, super-networked, new humanities in Sweden and beyond.
Soil Care Network is an interdisciplinary, global community of scholars and practitioners animated by the love of, sascination with, and dedication to soils. It is a place for soil scholars and those interested in soil research to find one another, and a space of supportive and creative exchange of ideas. The Network was founded by Dr Anna Krzywoszynska at University of Sheffield, UK, in 2017.
Anthropogenic Soils is a collaboratory at the University of Oslo, Norway, and part of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities. They focus on practices and understandings of remediation and soil repair in response to historical and contemporary concerns about soil health, and bring together scholars, practitioners, and artists to develop new research questions and interdisciplinary methodologies for the study of soils in the Anthropocene. Principal investigators are Daniel Münster and Ursula Münster.
State of the Art Network (SOTAN) is a Nordic-Baltic transdisciplinary network of artists, practitioners, researchers, and organizations who have come together to discuss the role, responsibility, and potential of art and culture in the Anthropocene. State of the Art Network is initiated and headed by Bioart Society/SOLU in Finland, with The Posthumanities Hub as partner and co-pi. SOTAN is supported by Nordic Culture Point, Nordic Culture Fund, and A. P. Møller Foundation.
LOESS – Literacy boost through an Operational Educational Ecosystem of Societal actors on Soil health is a Horizon Europe project, a programme for the recuperation of soil health under the EU Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’. It focuses on increasing soil literacy, via developing educational offers and continuous training programmes as well as skills development activities addressing multiple actors, stakeholders and target groups connected to soil education. The Swedish partner in the consortium is Vetenskap & Allmänhet (VA Public & Science).
Soil Stories Companion
Germund Sellgren is an educator with long experience of outdoor pedagogy. He has worked for the World Wide Fund for Nature WWF for 17 years as an educator within Education for Sustainable Development ESD nationally and internationally. He has authored two books in the field of outdoor education and has created a large number of educational materials for WWF. Today he works as a consultant in the field of education. During 2020-2021, he is part of course called Regenerative Agriculture and Holistic Management at an independent adult education college. Among the interests are photography and filmmaking as well as vegetable growing as an amateur. He has recently written his credo embracing soil. Germund organizes workshops and collects soil stories for the Humus Economicus Collaboratory.
Guest & collaborators
Malmö konstmuseum and urban growers in the cities of Malmö and Lund in The Soil Celebration.
Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, curator and moderator for The Soil Symposium at Accelerator.
Christina Schaffer, PhD candidate at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and a cultivator, focusing on agroforestry in both theory and practice. She teaches interdisciplinary courses that touch on sustainable development at Stockholms University, Sweden. Her interests include a sustainable food supply and urban ecology. Collaborator with Humus economicus in The Soil Symposium at Accelerator.
The artist group Skifte, with Frøydis Lindén and Sidsel Bonde, in the seminar ‘Soil and Shadow Sites’, and (F)jorden, a floating symposium in the Hardangerfjord, Norway.
Urban growers and soil stewards in Södertälje, Järna, and Dalarna through soil celebrations and storying workshops conducted by Germund Sellgren.
Participants in the course ‘Regenerative agriculture and holistic management’ at Bäckedals folkhögskola through soil celebrations and storying workshops conducted by Germund Sellgren.
Thomas Hahn, researcher in ecological economics at Stockholm Resilience Centre, in the seminar ‘Ecological Economics, Soil Care, and Homemaking in Times of Transition‘.
Mathilda Tham, design researcher at Linneaus University, in the seminar ‘Ecological Economics, Soil Care, and Homemaking in Times of Transition‘.
Åsa Ståhl, design researcher at Linneaus University, in the seminar ‘Ecological Economics, Soil Care, and Homemaking in Times of Transition‘.
The Network Making the Voices of Nature Heard, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm City Council and Bee Urban.
Stadsodlarnätverket [Network for Urban Gardening] with Christina Shaffer, Karin Saler, Jenny Salmson, Ulrika Flodin Furås in workshops around urban farming, community gardening, and allotments.
Edith Hammer, soil ecologist, Lund University, lab visits concerning ‘cyborg soil’ and research on microbial ecology.
All the researchers that took part in the 3-day workshop ‘Soils as Sites of Emergency and Transformation‘, at Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference (NESS), 2022.
Caroline Owman, Stockholms University, in the seminar Humus economicus and Curating Time – Art, Research and Environmental Humanities in Times of Transition.
Art Lab Gnesta with curator Caroline Malmström and the fantastic co-workers at Nynäs Castle and Sörmlands museum in the project ‘Tänka med jorden‘ [Thinking with Soil].
The visitors and participants in ‘From Manure Heap to Money Stack’, part of the public art program ‘Från brasa till brasa‘ with (p)Art of the Bomass and Humus Economicus at Nynäs Castle, on invitation from Art Lab Gnesta.
Lina Isaacs, researcher, ecological economist, guest in the public conversation ‘Två sidor sidor av samma mynt – kan ekonomin jordas?’ part of the public art program ‘Från brasa till brasa‘ with (p)Art of the Bomass and Humus Economicus at Nynäs Castle, on invitation from Art Lab Gnesta.
Norwegian BioArts Arena (NOBA) in soil symposium 2022: ‘Humans, fungi, rottenness, and the future of soil‘.
Mossutställningar and curator Stella d’Ailly, initiator of the art program ‘Artistic Undressings of Fokus Skärholmen’ and editor of the art publication Elementa, in which Soil Correspondences was published
Tumba Paper Mill Museum, in the exhibition ‘Down to earth, self sufficiency then and now‘.
Students and teacher from St. Botvid’s Gymnasium, in the workshop ‘The value and future of soil’ at Tumba Paper Mill Museum.
Petra Lilja, Jenny Salmson and Anton Poikolainen Rosen in workshops involving soil chromatography
The research platform Climaginaries through a contribution to ‘The Rough Guide to Zero-Carbon Skåne‘.
Eléonore Fauré, researcher at Lund University, in the workshop Toxic Heritage, or How to Wash an Island at the Climate Existence Conference 2023, Sigtuna.
Gylleboverket, artist group, cross-disciplinary art platform and permaculture in Skåne.
Österängens konsthall, a space for Swedish and international contemporary art. It is also a meeting place and a community center in Österängen – Jönköping. The Art space is characterized by openness, collaboration and diversity and highlights young urban art and culture.
Jenny Salmson, permaculturist and soil activist that initiates and runs pedagogical co-cultivations in the association Odla Ihop in the Stockholm region, developing the sites with micro-life-focused composting methods. Long-term collaborator in Compost-o-scene activities and exhibitions. She also conducted a microbial analysis of an archaeological soil sample from an Iron Age grave.
