The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation have funded a Global Humanities Institute (GHI) on “Climate Justice and Problems of Scale” being held at the University of Pretoria (and over virtual platforms) from July 29 through August 7, 2022. This is one of several Global Humanities Institutes supported by CHCI and the Mellon Foundation since 2017.  

The project is an international collaboration among six CHCI members, including the University of Texas Humanities Institute, which is administering the project, the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (University of Pretoria), the Center for American Studies and Research (American University of Beirut), the Humanities Center (Carnegie Mellon University), the Institute for Humanities Research (Arizona State University), and the Sydney Environment Institute (University of Sydney). Several scholars from each participating university are collaborating in organizing the GHI’s activities. Originally planned for 2021, the GHI was delayed and made hybrid in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The 2022 Global Humanities Institute on Climate Justice and Problems of Scale will convene 22 senior scholars and 19 early-career scholars from around the world for an eight-day conference intended to develop a research program and model for inclusive collaborative work in the environmental humanities. Building on a previous project, the Humanities for the Environment Observatories, the GHI will utilize the interdisciplinary scalar turn to generate more nuanced, holistic, and actionable understandings of the relationship between the effects of climate change and the intensification of injustices in the social, cultural, and political spheres.