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Critical and Creative Approaches to Environmental Communication – Storytelling as, and for, Sustainability

  • Event date: March 12-13, 2025
  • Location: Övre Slotts - Event & Studios, Övre Slottsgatan 6, Uppsala

The conference is fully booked and you are no longer able to register. 

Welcome to the Environmental Communication Conference 2025, hosted by the Mistra Environmental Communication research programme! The conference takes place every other year to foster dialogue, collaboration, and engagement around the role of environmental communication in sustainability transformations. The conference is aimed at a broad audience of researchers and actors outside of academia.

The theme of the 2025 conference is Storytelling as, and for, Sustainability.

Conference theme

Storytelling is an important means of communication and meaning-making in sustainability transformations. Storied communication can make human experiences and complex scientific information more intelligible and relatable, facilitating empathy and offering emotional and cultural resonance in a way facts and statistics, while essential to the production of knowledge, often fail to do. Stories can give tangible shape to the experiential impact of devastating environmental degradation. They can form narratives of hope and foster a deeper connection to the natural world, and amplify voices less commonly heard and the experiential knowledge of those communities most vulnerable to a changing environment. But… storytelling can also reproduce dominant power structures. Collective storytelling provides communities with shared narratives, shaping cultural values, collective identities and a common language. Storytelling is uniquely placed to invoke the imagination of more sustainable futures. 

Aim and structure of the conference      

We invite critical as well as creative contributions that explore the multi-faceted role of storytelling as, and for, sustainability. 

  • What potential does storytelling as a form of communication have for sustainability transitions? What are its limits?
  • How can storytelling be enabled and facilitated practically?
  • How can spatial, temporal and emotional practices of storytelling serve to further environmental meaning-making?
  • What are the opportunities and risks of storytelling for sustainability in a post-truth world? How might storytelling be used and abused in the public discourse around sustainability?
  • How can storytelling approaches bring new voices to bear on sustainability thinking and give agency to un- or under-heard individuals and communities?
  • How can storytelling be considered a sustainable practice in and of itself?
  • What role can storytelling play in creating a transdisciplinary space of sustainability thinking?
  • How do we take care of the stories told? How can, and should, we make room for individual and place-based stories to sit next to expert knowledge?

 

We encourage a variety of contributions: 

  • Abstracts for papers, panels and posters
  • Suggestions for roundtables and other forms of exchange
  • Less conventional submissions, such as storytelling cafés, poetry slams, debate sessions, reflections and sharing of experiences, artistic interventions, and storytelling workshops. 

 

Imaginative proposals that push the boundaries of thinking and acting around the role of storytelling and inspire fresh dialogues are especially welcome. 

Both English and Swedish contributions are welcome.

 

Who is this conference for?   

Are you a scholar trying to make sense of storytelling in the context of discourse, narrative or myth? Do you work with environmental governance and management? Are you a stake- or rights holder struggling to shape policy agendas? Do you work as a professional communicator, or as a sustainability officer in the private sector?  Or maybe you are just an ordinary citizen concerned with sustainability and hope for a better future?   

Whatever your role or background, you are warmly welcome to attend the conference and share your experiences, insights and curiosity about storytelling as, and for, sustainability. 

  

Date and time: 

March 12 12.30 until March 13 13.00 

Conference dinner on March 12 at Övre Slotts – Event & Studio

Venue: 

Övre Slotts – Event & Studio, Övre Slottsgatan 6, Uppsala 

The conference will only be held in person.

  

The conference is fully booked and you are no longer able to register. 

 

Contact and questions: conference2025@environmental-communication.org 

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