Junior-Professor for "Political Struggles in the Global South" is looking for a new student assistant from 1 June 2025 to support the project “Re-Staging Climate Assemblies” (April 2025-March 2027) in collaboration with Sheffield University, UK.

​​Re-Staging Climate Assemblies is an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of arts, humanities and social science perspectives on climate change and innovations in deliberative democracy. Through ‘re-stagings’ of citizen climate assemblies co-designed with youth diaspora communities in Sheffield, UK and Tübingen, Germany, it will collectively assemble a body of stories, tools and resources for more inclusive and just climate politics. The project will address engagement with underrepresented citizens within climate assemblies, acknowledging diverse ways of knowing and modes of deliberation. It will explore the potential of participatory arts-based approaches, notably scenario-making, for innovating within democratic processes and catalyzing transformative climate action.

We are looking for a student assistant with excellent organizational skills to support us in conducting literature research and building a contextual review, organizing and administering workshops, and communicating with the UK team. The interest in writing a BA or MA thesis on topics close to the project is encouraged.

Workload: 20 h/ month; Salary: 13,98 €/h (without degree), 14,87 €/h (with BA)

Tasks:

• Literature search and administration of literature
• Organization of events and workshops
• Administration and writing of blog/website

Requirements:

• B.A. or M.A. student, not necessarily in Political Science
• Self-organized, responsible and structured work skills
• Excellent communication skills
• Excellent command of German and English

Please send your application with a brief 1-2 page CV and certificates by 30 April 2025 to: [email protected].
Interviews are planned for 7 and 8 May 2025.
Severely disabled applicants with equal qualifications will be given particular consideration.
​For any questions, do not hesitate to contact me via Email.

I look forward to receiving your application!

On 23 and 24 January 2025, artists, activists and researchers came together at the University of Tübingen for the Knowledge Lab "The Transformative Potential of Rights of Nature? Perspectives and Synergies in Arts, Activism, and Academia.” This experimental thinking event, hosted by Riccarda Flemmer (University of Tübingen), Annette Mehlhorn (MPI Halle) and Cecilia Oliveira (RIFS Potsdam), engaged voices from the Global South and North to think about and discuss Rights of Nature (RoN).
After an introduction to the Knowledge Lab by Riccarda, which highlighted the broad potential but also the challenges of RoN, participants explored RoN as a transformative force from their respective fields and perspectives. The talks took us through forest exhibitions and dance performances, river initiatives, buen vivir activism, the crime of the Brumadinho Dam, as well as struggles against extractivism and RoN in Bolivia. After the talks, a discussion emerged around questions of human-nature relations and colonialism emphasising the need for decolonial perspectives, and transdisciplinary alliances.
The first day of dialogues finished with the ScienceArt performance “The Power of Imagination. Performing Rights of Nature” open to the general public. The event was conducted by Elisabeth Weydt (journalist), and the performance duo Jakob&Jakob (Jakob Schall, cello & Jakob Jautz, dance). Elisabeth read from her book "Die Natur hat Recht", 2023) in English showing music and images from the Ecuadorian Intag Valley and its struggle against mining extraction. In an interactive dance and musical improvisation performance of landscape memories by the audience, the performers Jakob&Jakob then guided the audience on a journey through the power of imagination, in which memories and stories about human-nature relations were explored. Volunteers from the audience shared remembrances about their experiences with nature, which were in turn interpreted and performed by the artists. To finalise, the journalist Elisabeth Weydt invited the public to reflect upon some of the challenges of our time and the power of Rights of Nature.

Escrito por: Jun.-Prof. Dra. Riccarda Flemmer
Con la colaboración de:
Lilian Eichorst - Asistente de investigación
Zahid Zamudio - Asistente de investigación
Micha Bröckling - Estudiante de doctorado y asistente de investigación

Los días 23 y 24 de enero de 2025, artistas, activistas e investigadores se reunieron en la Universidad de Tübingen para el Knowledge Lab "¿El Potencial Transformador de los Derechos de la Naturaleza? Perspectivas y Sinergias en las Artes, el Activismo y la Academia." Este evento experimental de reflexión, organizado por Riccarda Flemmer (Universidad de Tübingen), Annette Mehlhorn (MPI Halle) y Cecilia Oliveira (RIFS Potsdam), reunió voces del Sur y el Norte Global para reflexionar y debatir sobre los Derechos de la Naturaleza.
Tras una introducción al Knowledge Lab por parte de Riccarda, quien destacó tanto el amplio potencial como los desafíos de los Derechos de la Naturaleza, los participantes exploraron esta figura como una fuerza transformadora desde sus respectivos campos y perspectivas. Las presentaciones nos llevaron a través de exposiciones en bosques y actuaciones de danza, iniciativas en torno a los ríos, activismo por el buen vivir, el crimen del colapso de la represa de Brumadinho, así como las luchas contra el extractivismo y la aplicación de los Derechos de la Naturaleza en Bolivia. Después de las exposiciones, surgió un debate en torno a las relaciones entre humanos y naturaleza y el colonialismo, subrayando la necesidad de perspectivas decoloniales y alianzas transdisciplinarias.
El primer día de diálogos concluyó con la presentación artística-científica “El Poder de la Imaginación. Interpretando los Derechos de la Naturaleza”, abierta al público en general. El evento fue dirigido por Elisabeth Weydt (periodista) y el dúo de performance Jakob&Jakob (Jakob Schall, violonchelo & Jakob Jautz, danza). Elisabeth leyó fragmentos de su libro “Die Natur hat Recht” (2023) en inglés, acompañados de música e imágenes del valle de Intag en Ecuador y su lucha contra la extracción minera. En una improvisación interactiva de danza y música basada en memorias paisajísticas del público, los artistas Jakob&Jakob guiaron a los asistentes en un viaje a través del poder de la imaginación, explorando recuerdos e historias sobre las relaciones entre los seres humanos y la naturaleza. Algunos voluntarios del público compartieron sus experiencias con la naturaleza, las cuales fueron luego interpretadas y representadas por los artistas. Para finalizar, la periodista Elisabeth Weydt invitó al público a reflexionar sobre algunos de los desafíos de nuestro tiempo y el poder de los Derechos de la Naturaleza.

The Event
On 19 October 2023, we co-organised the book launch of the German edition of "Pluriverse - A Post-development Dictionary" which brought together political and academic voices from the Global South and North with musical performances and artistic video projections. This interplay between music, projections and political impulses allowed the pluriversal message to be experienced through all senses. 

The launch was embedded into Grupo Sal’s Tour Program "PLURIVERSUM- DISCOURSES FOR A JUST WORLD" which created an immersive event. The sextet with singer Fernando Dias Costa carried the audience through the event with Latin American rhythm, poetry, and playful musicality. 

The event was moderated by Alberto Acosta, former President of the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly, together with journalist and ex-diplomat Sandra Weiss who led through the event with the virtual presence of guest activists from all over the world.
Video-mapping projections from artist Johannes Keitel transformed the stage into a visual pluriverse. The projections included - always thematically contextualizing -  performances, portraits, videos, photos, graphics, and quotes.
​
The Book 
In "PLURIVERSUM - Ein Lexikon des Guten Lebens für alle" (link to free PDF and for book orders), more than 120 authors present diverse economic, socio-political, cultural and ecological concepts, worldviews, and practices from around the world. "Post-Development" questions the prevailing Western development model and presents alternatives that protect and respect life on Earth: A Pluriverse of Many Possible Worlds, encompassing a variety of system critiques and ways of living.

This encyclopedia aims to re-politicise the ongoing debate on socio-ecological transformation by highlighting its multi-layered nature. The first English edition was published in India and has already been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, with other languages to follow. For the first time, the German edition makes this diversity of alternative lifestyles accessible to German-speaking readers as well. 

The book is an encyclopedia with short articles on key concepts. It can be used for teaching and research, to educate activists, academics and practitioners, to inspire the curious to take action - and can inspire those in power to new ideas.

This book was made possible by the commitment and unpaid collaboration of many as initiators, translators, proofreaders and proofreaders. Furthermore, thanks to a dedicated fundraising campaign to finance a large part of the production costs, this book can be distributed at a reasonable price.

The Knowledge Dialogues between Latin America and Europe in the summer term 2023 aim to bring together activists, indigenous peoples, practitioners, and scientists in a critical dialogue between the advocates and adversaries of Rights of Nature (RoN). The events will shed light on different topic areas, such as constitutional reforms, forest protection, global political transformation, and moral implications reflecting on the potentials and pitfalls of RoN for sustainable transformations. The series of dialogues is organized by Junior-Pprofessor Dr. Riccarda Flemmer and seeks to create a space for dialogue, mutual learning, and conjoint knowledge-production between the Global North and South.

Biocentric vs. Anthropocentric law-making
In the third knowledge dialogue focus was set on the rights of forests. On 6th July 2023, Riccarda Flemmer opened the event by presenting the “International Rights of Nature Tribunal” as a civil forum where e.g. the rights of Amazonia have been claimed with the goal to put pressure on governments and prosecute violations of the RoN violations. She also outlined the cases listed by the Eco Jurisprudence Monitor about forests. The 17 listed cases are diverse in terms of their geographical location (1 Benin, 1 Canada, 8 Ecuador, 1 India, 1 New Zealand, 1 US, and 3 International) as well as in their biocentric or anthropocentric argumentations. Historically, claims for the legal standing of forests can be traced back to legal writings by US lawyer Christopher Stone’s “Should Trees have standing” and the dissent of Supreme Court Justice Douglas to the ruling Sierra Club v. Morton concerning parts of the Sequoia National Forest in 1972. Beginning in the 2010s, several forests were recognized then as “legal subjects”, e.g. the Te Urewera forest in Aotearoa/New Zealand 2017. In Latin America, the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice in a 2018 case declared the Colombian Amazonia a “legal entity subject to rights” in response to a climate litigation case articulated by young Columbians for their right to have a future. In Europe, the EU decided in the 2020 Resolution on Reversing Deforestation (P9_TA(2020)0285) about the protection of forests in order to restore their biodiversity and articulated that “ancient and primary forests should be considered and protected as global commons and that their ecosystems should be granted a legal status.” Worldwide the highest number of forest rights cases are located in Ecuador. On the one hand, these comprise indigenous claims for the national and international recognition of kawsak sacha (living forest in Kichwa) as a living and conscious entity with rights and intrinsic value. On the other hand, Ecuadorian courts recently ruled in favor of forests and stopped mining projects, for example in the “Los Cedros” case 2021. 

Los Cedros - How could a forest stop a mine?
Elisa Levy from the OMASNE “Observatorio Minero, Ambiental y Social del Norte de Ecuador” (Observatory for mining, environment and social of Northern Ecuador) connected the case of Los Cedros in Ecuador with forests worldwide. She explained that it is necessary to protect forests because they are essential for the planet’s climate and for providing humans with ecosystem services (ESS). For instance, forests serve as water source and guarantee stable rain for the farmers in the Northern regions of Ecuador, who do not have irrigation systems. She summarized, ‘The bigger the forest, the better the ecosystem services it can provide’. Despite Ecuador’s adoption of RoN in their 2008 constitution, there have been guaranteed several mining concessions in or around the country’s highly biodiverse forests. One of the recent campaigns of OMASNE together with communities, scientists and other allies is the Los Cedros case. After five years of sustained protest and litigation, Los Cedros was finally recognized by the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to have legal subjecthood including the right to exist with all its species and the right to maintain its cycles of life, structures, functions, and evolutionary process in 2021. Although the case set an important precedent, the Court does not always decide in favor of RoN in new cases.

Practices of forest-making – what can we learn from Amazonian women and kawsak sacha, the living forest?
Dr. Andrea Sempertegui, Assistant Professor in Politics at Whitman College presented parts of her research on Amazonian women’s practice of forest-making in Ecuador. In October 2013, women from different Amazonian indigenous peoples conducted the “March for life” walking from the lowland rainforest to the country’s capital Quito in the Andes in order to fight for the continuity of their way of life according to the principles of sumak kawsay (good living) and kawsak sacha (living forest). The living forest should be understood as a form of relationship which is not about conservation, but about interrelatedness between humans and non-human beings and highlights the acts of working for the continuation of the existence of nature. It is based on an egalitarian relationship. In this march and in the following protest activities, practices of engaging with the forest, e.g. chants and rituals, were performed in political arenas outside of the communities creating space to make coexistence with the forest known. She warned that despite officially having recognized RoN in its constitution, people and especially indigenous women need to fight for the recognition of understandings of living with nature. Though, it is important to highlight that  all communities have their own terms and framings. They actively decided to combine their struggles using the Kichwa terms not to describe one single way of life but a plurality.

Culture is nature, Science Theater 
Frank Raddatz, director of the "Theatre of the Anthropocene" in Berlin, bridged the gap between theoretical considerations and artistic practice in dealing with RoN and forests. In his plays, he said, everything is different from what we are used to know. A scientist is on the stage to be an actor talking about climate change; trees, rivers, and mountains are brought to life, and the whole audience plays along - to give just a small idea of how a performance can look like. Culture, he says, has a central part in our existence as human beings, and since we humans must see ourselves as part of nature again, culture thus is also something natural. Furthermore, a relation should be built between "hard science" and art. The conditions under which we exist in the age of the Anthropocene can only be understood, if we assume that we can only perceive and grasp nature through our culturally shaped filter. As the Theater of the Anthropocene exemplifies, we need to think in teams and to enter into dialogue between different disciplines. This kind of interactive theater creates a new sensibility, Frank argues, that enables us to imagine the future or alternative futures, in plural. 

Principles over law? Anarchist perspectives on RoN
Ende Gelände Tübingen gave a talk about anarchist perspectives on rights for forests and RoN in general. In their view, responsibility is needed instead of leadership and democracy needs to be understood more radically - as a negotiation of living together without concentrated power but with shared responsibilities. Arguing for responsibility instead of rules, they highlighted that principles would be more important than laws, and that legal proceedings would always be infused and ultimately corrupted by state interests.  They emphasized their main concern is that legislation takes something out of democracy and makes it less accessible and certainly less direct. The fear is that RoN might again only focus on human interests and that including nature into a law only operates as another way of making nature controllable to exploit it for the benefits of a particular elite. However, they support the idea of a forest owning itself and to expropriate nature from private owners. Despite the possible subjecthood, which nature could achieve by legal standing, RoN still operates within the given law system that is based on power hierarchies and exclusion. 

Plenary discussion
In the plenary, the question emerged, how forest-making could be defined and how specifically those practices make the forest come alive while others do not. Andrea explained that “making alive” still entails a subject-object divide between humans and nature. She argued that we need to change our perception towards “doing something” to enable relations and make those tangible. For the anarchist perspective, Ende Gelände was asked, considering their criticism of RoN and legal systems, how their utopia would look and what relationships with forests would this utopia include. The activists explained that they would see RoN based on a biocentric understanding where humans and non-human beings have rights and value. Furthermore, according to their understanding, a system change is necessary because in the current commercial ways of using the earth, there is no space to even think about a future. With the audience, the question was discussed, how to change asymmetric and unjust human-nature relationships. While some emphasized the need to change our way of thinking in order to act differently, others urged that the material reality of economic injustices is the basis for current environmental destruction and climate change, therefore, this would need to change first .

Synergies of knowledge
The speakers agreed that it should be up to those who live in and around a forest to speak for it and make political decisions. The close relation with the forest and sometimes the dependence of human livelihoods would provide experiences on how the future of living with the forest should look. The idea of kawsak sacha would be a helpful tool to understand that forests are living entities and that humans need to know about as well as to acknowledge the flows in ecosystems, lifecycles, and regenerative systems. Humans and forests are connected, we can feel the relation with and the life of the forest if we let ourselves do so. Science can also play a role in knowing more about these relations. This, it will be essential to steer aways from the Global North’s human-centered law and policy making moving towards more respectful human-nature relations .  
​
Further questions to be discussed:

• Who can speak for a forest and why?
• Who is in charge? Should the state provide RoN or do we need more civil society pressure to protect nature and make authorities respect RoN?
• How to create new sensibility in society towards egalitarian relationships between humans and non-human beings?
• How do we achieve shared responsibility?
• What is the role of science to achieve RoN?

For more information about the series: "Knowledge Dialogues between Latin America and Europe about Rights of Nature" click here. 

The Knowledge Dialogues between Latin America and Europe in the summer term 2023 aim to bring together activists, indigenous peoples, practitioners and scientists in a critical dialogue between the advocates and adversaries of Rights of Nature (RoN). The events will shed light on different topic areas, such as constitutional reforms, forest protection, global political transformation, and moral implications reflecting on the potentials and pitfalls of RoN for sustainable transformations. The series of dialogues is organized by Juniorprofessor Dr. Riccarda Flemmer and seeks to create a space for dialogue, mutual learning, and conjoint knowledge-production between the Global North and South.

Thinking like a mountain?
The second event in the Knowledge Dialogues series about Rights of Nature explored the rights of mountains. On 15th June 2023, Riccarda Flemmer opened the event with Aldo Leopold’s (1949: 129) phrase “thinking like a mountain” and reflections about deep ecology. The thinking of deep ecology highlights that everything – human and non-human – is connected and does not distinguish between “life” and “lifeless” nature. Referring to the EcoJurisprudence Monitor, Riccarda showed the three listed cases relating to mountains. The milestone RoN case is Mount Taranaki in Aotearoa, New Zealand, who was given “legal personality” in the process of treaty settlements and reconciliation in 2017. In contrast, in 2022, a stewardship authority was established for mountain Manua Kea in Hawaii but this is not a RoN case, because Manua Kea is not recognized to have its own rights but is protected as a sacred place for humans. Neither a RoN case – yet – is the struggle of the Indigenous U’wa people in Colombia, who fight to protect their ancestral territory including the sacred Montaña Zizuma from extractive industries and bad state practices. Drawing on these insights from Indigenous struggles, questions emerge how far a similar approach can be transferred and thinkable in Europe e.g. assigning legal personhood to the Alps.

Indigenous conceptualization for a human-nature relationship of respect
Tata Leo, authority of the original communities of the Yampara Nation, Bolivia, and funding member of the Fundación Cultural Ayllu Tarabucomanta (Foundation for our future - for our planet) shared the kausayninchej, nuestra Vida or our life, from an Andean cosmology. He shared his prevailing shock of traveling to Machu Picchu, an Inca site in the Peruvian Andes, as an Indigenous person and being denied access because of his traditional clothing. Drawing on this experience, he explained that his main preoccupation for the future is the lack of respect for nature in Western society and academic knowledge production. As an alternative, he supports Indigenous concepts such as “pachamama”. However, at the same time, he alerted us that the translation of Indigenous concepts into Western discourses and legal language changes the meaning and understandings get lost in Western thinking patterns. According to him, pachamama is often wrongly or narrowly translated to “mother nature” while in the original Andean cosmology it means the connectedness of all beings, that all is “one”. He concluded that specific rights for nature are not necessary, because all beings are one.

Philosopher Matthias Kramm from Wageningen University and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México conducts research on RoN and Indigenous ontologies. He emphasized that he is not Indigenous himself but has learned from his engagement with Indigenous communities in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Mexico. He compared the Andean and Māori ontologies and explained how the struggle of the Māori led to the recognition of legal personhood for the Whanganui river, Te Urewera forest, and the Taranaki nature in 2017. He also highlighted the fusion of Indigenous and Western thought leading to notions of pachamama and buen vivir in the constitutions and laws of Ecuador and Bolivia. He criticized that not all relevant aspects of Indigenous ontologies can be captured by legal personhood, such as spirits. The notion of personhood itself is human-centered and biased building on the colonial history of rights-based conceptions and notions of property. Further, one single ecocentric paradigm cannot capture the diversity of Indigenous ontologies. The process of abstraction might lead to the opposite, creating a single dominant discourse instead of emancipating the plurality of ontologies.

Photographer and movie director Rodrigo Otero Heraud from Peru, who is currently showing his exhibition “Apu- Retratos de Montañas Sagradas del Perú“ in the Schloss Hohentübingen until the end of September, explained his relation and engagement with nature during the process of taking pictures. Coming from a deep love for nature, it is essential for him to communicate with the mountains. He does not differentiate between him as a subject going into nature but describes his hikes as an equal encounter with the mountains. They observe him as much as he observes them. Thus, he actively asks for allowance to take photos. Rodrigo sees his communication with the mountains as a mental state of “guaca”. Guaca means a place not in geographical terms, but as a mental position, often used to describe places of worship. Lastly, he warned us about the destructive impacts of mining and other industrial activities, which are harming the mountains and promoted a relationship of mutual respect.

Plenary discussion
In the discussion, on the one hand participants raised the idea that RoN would not be necessary if humans encounter nature with respect and maturity. On the other hand, emphasis was set that RoN are necessary for humans to learn respect, particularly in Global North countries, such as Germany. Law would keep us humans accountable for not destroying nature and our future. Referring to the kind of RoN needed, participants emphasized that nature would need the right to an uninterrupted evolution. Connecting the rights of mountains with the idea of individual freedoms and their limitations in German or EU law, this would mean that each human would need to limit destructive behavior and respect the mountain's freedom to uninterrupted natural processes.

Synergies of knowledge
Leo and Rodrigo both argued for a relationship between human and non-human nature based on respect. All speakers agreed that the contextualization of RoN is essential and to shed light on power asymmetries as well as the plurality of voices behind RoN. The controversy, especially regarding the potential danger of circumventing Indigenous rights when implementing RoN and the twist of turning RoN into another weapon of Western legality against Indigenous peoples, is dangerous. The crucial role of Indigenous knowledges in re-thinking Western anthropocentric human-nature relationships remains an ongoing challenge.

Further questions to be discussed:

• If a mountain has the right to undisturbed natural processes, what would this mean in practice?
• Which human representatives should be allowed to speak for mountains, and which should not? Humans need to protect mountains from destruction by humans, especially mining projects.
• Some knowledge and connections get lost in translation. How can concepts, ideas, connections travel?
• How do we deal with competitions between Rights of Nature vs. Rights for Indigenous Communities?
• How can we think of non-human entities, especially "lifeless" nature, in RoN?

​

For more information about the series: "Knowledge Dialogues between Latin America and Europe about Rights of Nature" click here. 

We had two days of an amazing workshop with fantastic and highly committed scholars from different disciplinary, geographic and academic career backgrounds.

The longstanding critique of white, European savior complex and of ethnographies colonial roots was acknowledged as a heavy burden.

Thinking about the question, what emancipatory research means, resulted in discussions about the multiple types of power asymmetries that our research wants to address, but that also shape our research in its structure, relations and results. While we came to the conclusion that engaging in progressive politics requires researchers' humbleness and good ethical practices in order to open spaces for imagination.

Therefore, engaging in emancipatory research is a constant struggle with not reproducing power asymmetries but to help transform those asymmetries on a personal, academic and societal level.

It has been a wonderful experience of mutual learning! Thank you!