More-than-Human Studies Lab programme of the Centre for Sustainable Development

The More-than-human Studies Lab is a 21st century transnational open collaboration between academia at large, art institutes, NGO’s and others, that explores in what way our stormy times urge us to live our lives otherwise.

The lab is rooted in multiple intellectual and theoretical developments from the 20th century that include actor-network theory, systems theory, new materialism, post humanism, STS, feminist/queer/postcolonial theory, as well as the revitalization of non-western traditions in knowledge.

Engaging all the faculties of knowledge, it explores a humanism which is not based on parasitic relationships but on symbiosis.

Opening our eyes to the more-than-human world, the joint aim should be engaging actively with the rereading, rethinking, and rewriting, of the sympoietic alliances that we have been blind to for so long.

dr Irena Chawrilska

Coordinator of the Program: More-than-Human Studies Lab

Director of the Academic Centre for Polish Language and Culture at the University of Gdańsk, Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Polish Studies at the Institute of Polish Philology, visiting scholar (2023) at Utrecht University, visiting professor at the University of Toronto (2023-2024); author of books: Hybridity and Hybridity: from the borderland of literature and visual arts (2020), Polish for sustainability? Polish culture and global challenges (2022), LOST in Gdańsk! Polish culture in the age of uncertainty (2023).

Her research interests focus on:

environmental humanities, philosophy of the land, in particular wetlands and swamplife, literature and art in teaching Polish as a foreign language, migration experience in the process of education, the phenomenon of hybridity in culture, experimental literature, and the reception of Bruno Schulz’s works in the world

Fot. Renata Dąbrowska / renatadabrowska.com

The more-than-human studies lab that opens our eyes to new alliances is not about decentring the human, it is not about the new turn in the humanities, it is about embracing climate change, drought, biotechnology, war, terrorism and rethinking how we can work towards broad sustainability. In times of crisis and uncertainty, higher education institutions have a unique role to play in transforming the university in this regard, generating new ideas and developing solutions for a sustainable future. In our More-than-Human Studies Lab, we aim to create new alliances for new shared ideas about how to think together and otherwise coexist in stormy times.

dr Irena Chawrilska

Coordinator of the Program: More-than-Human Studies Lab