Im Rahmen der Vorlesung von Prof. Simone M. Müller wird es Gastvorträge von Dr. Harrison Croft (24.11.2025, Public Climate School) und Dr. J. Uluwehi Hopkins (15.12.2025) geben. Die Vorträge finden jeweils Montag von 10:00-11:30 in Hörsaal 2107 im Gebäude D statt. Interessenten sind herzlich eingeladen.

Der Vortrag von Dr. Harrison Croft (Humboldt Research Fellow) “All the King’s Horses – Local Resistances to Environmental Degradation and Imperialism in the Long 19^th Century” handelt von lokalen Widerstandsbewegungen in den Kolonien gegenüber dem britischen Imperialismus.

The imperialism that defined Britain’s relationship with its colonies throughout the nineteenth century was so often characterised by environmental degradation, extractivism, and exploitation. Commodities were removed from their social and ecological contexts in India, Canada, and Australia, and used to increase the riches in the metropole. Plants and animals were deliberately and sometimes accidentally relocated; and minerals and other valuable commodities were removed from the global south at the same time as noxious and other unsavoury industries were established there. And this period of imperial violence also heralded a climate now changed by human actions. But these aggressive actions were not without opposition, and this lecture draws attention to the many local resistances complicating the settler colonial project on the ground.

Dr. J. Uluwehi Hopkins (Humboldt Research Fellow) spricht in ihrem Vortrag „Hawai’i and America – From Communal Abundance to Commodity“ über ihre Heimat Hawaii und über dessen erzwungene Wandlung von Selbstversorger-Communities zum Import-Abhängigen Tourismus-Hotspot.

Waikīkī, mythologized today as every tourist’s dream destination, was once a well-watered agricultural landscape capable of sustaining thousands. The Moana Hotel, featured in this photograph, was first built in 1901, and its presence ushered in the slow but sure destruction of the many taro patches seen in the background. Today, the residents of Hawai’i rely heavily on imported food while their main economy is tourism. This talk will focus on this destructive transition that turned Hawai’i away from self-sustaining communities to becoming a commodity of the exotic imagination.