Climate Imaginaries: Narrating socio-cultural transitions to a post-fossil society

The power to enable and govern transition to post-fossil society does not only rely on scientific facts and legislative measures, but also on effectual means to envision post-fossil worlds. Our key objective is to explore the transformative capacity of imaginaries; how compelling narratives are told, and how they can shape and enable efforts to confront climate change. Different academic perspectives are brought together to expand the knowledge on how climate imaginaries become effective. Around 80 imaginaries will be collected and compared in terms of content and persuasive power. Three particular field locations will provide insights into how imaginaries are acted upon. We will also work to generate new climate imaginaries by enabling a series of creative projects, such as modelling imaginaries from literary and visual culture.
A new community of practice will be created by assembling a multi-disciplinary group of scholars from Lund, Utrecht, Durham and Warwick Universities and a wide range of practitioners, from public authorities and private companies to creative communities. Reciprocal interaction and collaborative processes, rather than linear forms of dissemination and communication is at the heart of CLIMAGINARIES transdisciplinary endeavour.
We will provide new knowledge on how stories of climate futures circulate, translate and resonate. We aim to leave participants with a new sense of the features that make climate change matter socially and culturally.