Dear all,

Welcome to another semester of Greenhouse activities! We have many exciting things underway at the moment, and as always we will have a full schedule in the fall. 

Note that this is a long-ish newsletter with some more information than usual. This email goes out to the greenhouse-intern email list, but since it’s the first announcement of the semester we’re also sending it to a broader selection of people at UiS. If you are not a subscriber to the list, you will not receive any more emails of this type from us this year, but read on if you want to know how to get updates!

Events

We are continuing our well-established schedule of online book talks most Mondays (16:00 - 17:00), research talks most Wednesdays (14:15 - 15:30), and in-person informal lunches on Thursdays (12:00 - 13:00). The Thursday lunches are followed by either a Shut Up and Read session, a meeting of the Reading Club, or a Works-in-progress seminar. We welcome people who want to participate in all these events!

The research talks start up 27 August, when Anna Grasskamp, Yixin Xu, and Sarah Chen Huang (all UiO) visit us to talk about “Towards an Ecological History of Eurasian Art: Resources, Aesthetics, and Early Modern Practices of Reuse.” See also the monthly overview poster. 

The book talks start up 8 September, when Tina Adcock discusses A Cold Colonialism: Modern Exploration and the Canadian North with us. 

Thursday lunches start next week, 21 August. 

Many Greenhouse people will be at the European Society for Environmental History conference in Uppsala next week. See our overview of all activities here. Note that the Greenhouse is hosting a social event for old and new friends at William’s Pub on Monday 18 August from 19:30. All are welcome to join us there!

On 4 September, The Greenhouse will properly launch the semester by traveling to Kvitsøy for a day of research discussions. A separate email to sign up will come soon – reserve the day if you want to participate. 

You should also reserve 11 September from 16:15 – 18:00, when Ingvil Hellstrand will hold her professor promotion lecture. A sign-up announcement will come soon. 

---

Sprouts – Monthly PhD Sessions in the GH Library

We’re excited to introduce Sprouts, a new monthly meet-up for PhD candidates at the centre, held in the Greenhouse library. Each session offers space to connect, share, and support each other’s PhD research.

Upcoming dates:

• 25 September, 13:00-14:00 – Writing lab (hosted by Suzanne)
• 23 October, 13:00-14:00 – Peer support & Resource exchange (hosted by Johannes)
• 27 November, 13:00-14:00 – Thematic discussion (hosted by Louis)

Each meeting begins with a brief 10-minute check-in, where we share a word, concept, or quick update on what we’re working on. We then move into a focused activity, which includes: research-in-progress discussions, writing labs, thematic conversations, guest researcher visits, or peer feedback on abstracts, CVs, and proposals. We close each session with something social – a walk or coffee at Bokkafeen.

We’re also setting up a Teams group for sharing resources, posting calls/events, and enabling hybrid participation.

This community is welcoming PhD candidates at UiS whose research relates to the environmental humanities and visiting PhD candidates at the Greenhouse. If you’d like to join Sprouts or the Teams group, or if you have other inspiring Sprouting ideas please contact Louis [[email protected]] or Suzanne [[email protected]].

---

Education

This semester, The Greenhouse is offering three online micromodules with the ECIU platform. 

- ECS300: Histories of Energy Transitions (taught by Melina Antonia Buns)

- ECS310: Nature & Nation: An Environmental History of Norway Since 1850 (taught by Finn Arne Jørgensen)

- ECS320: The Sixth Mass Extinction (taught by Dolly Jørgensen)

The three courses are open for applications until 1 September, so please share these with anyone you think might be interested! The courses will be taught from 6 October - 12 December 2025. 

Related, our colleague Magne Drangeid in IGIS is teaching a Norwegian-language micromodule on “Øyer, kyst og hav” that might be of interest. 

In other exciting news, the Greenhouse has submitted an application to start a new MA program in Public Environmental Humanities to the University of Stavanger leadership. We expect a decision later this fall. Stay tuned for updates! 

---

Some practical words

What’s new this semester is that we’ll be setting up a separate email list which will have monthly announcements of activities. This list targets subscribers outside UiS who want to stay up to date on our activities, as well as subscribers internal to UiS who want to get the monthly announcements but not necessarily all the other emails that go on the internal list. 

To sign up to the new monthly newsletter, please visit https://newsletter.page/greenhouse. This is a simple newsletter interface where you can administer your own subscription as well as see an archive of previous newsletters. 

The internal list will remain more or less as it is today. If you no longer want to be subscribed to the greenhouse-intern list, please send [email protected] an email about it and you will be manually removed. The same goes if you want to be added to this list, but keep in mind that the traffic there is mostly targeting active members of the Greenhouse community (and we are very welcoming to people who want to become more active!).

Note that the works-in-progress seminar has a separate mailing list. Contact Charlotte Wrigley if you want to receive updates on this seminar.

Social media and websites

• You can follow The Greenhouse on Bluesky  
• The Greenhouse is no longer active on X/Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram
• Find our UiS webpage here: https://www.uis.no/en/greenhouse
• All our book talks can be found here: https://newnatures.org/greenhouse (this includes both upcoming talks and the archive of the 176 previous talks)
• The book talks are also gradually being added as audio-only podcasts on all the major services – just search for Greenhouse Environmental Humanities Book Talks wherever you get your podcasts. 

Greenhouse Library Catalogue

• All the books in the Greenhouse Library can be found here: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/GreenhouseUiS
• A reminder that the Greenhouse Library is a reading library, which means that the books stay in the Library and should not end up in your offices (it’s ok to take a book over to the copier to scan parts of it, though). 

Zotero

• The Greenhouse has a Zotero Lab account, which means that core Greenhouse members can get unlimited online storage as well as access to the Greenhouse group there. Let Finn Arne know if you are interested. We reserve this for active members. 

Teams

• The Greenhouse has a Teams group, also for core members. Let Finn Arne know if you need access. It is currently mostly used for admin purposes, but has some shared resources that can be useful.

Calendar

• The Greenhouse has a digital calendar that you can subscribe to: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=am11cmw4amdoMTFqc3VtMDFmY3U0Nm1zbmdAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

That should be all. The next newsletter covering September should be sent out on Friday 29 August, but there will also be more frequent weekly newsletters on Fridays on the internal list.