The Staff

• Rural communities in climate crisis
• Urban and spatial sociology
• Social movement studies
• Political ecology
• Planetary rural geographies
• Greece
• Qualitative methods of social research, especially ethnography

Working Title: Architectures of Staying in the Transapokalypse

In the summer of 2021, severe forest fires raged throughout Greece. Almost a quarter of the island of Evia, east of the Attic mainland, went up in flames. A year later, storm Daniel flooded the burnt island and again caused immense damage. It is raining less and less and seasons are in turmoil. Climate change is directly affecting life in Evia, and the future is more than uncertain. But many people remain in the villages, which are dominated by agriculture, struggling for their livelihoods. Somehow, life goes on. But how exactly? In an ethnographic research, I pose the following questions: How do people in these areas affected by climate change cope with the already difficult present? How are the uncertain prospects for the future reflected in their plans, individually and collectively, (how) do they find confidence? Assuming we are on the threshold towards a permanently discontinuous future – how will living together and inhabiting this threshold be organized socially, structurally and politically, especially by those who live and work close to nature and its forces? Can architectures of staying be identified here – and within them social structures, ecologies, infrastructures, and structural adaptations – of those who stay, as well as architectures that make staying possible?