We are looking into a wetter, more violent and bluer future, where our coastal practices – residence, recreation, occupation, and coexistence with nature and wildlife – are particularly challenged by climate change. According to the latest IPCC report, global average sea levels will rise between 43 and 84 centimeters, perhaps as much as 2 meters, during the 21st century, and weather phenomena such as storm surges, hurricanes, and cloudbursts will occur more frequently and generally be of greater intensity than in the past. Life-friendly land-sea interaction is based on this Anthropocene premise, and we work from the hypothesis that literary history contains genuine practical knowledge of past and future coastal practices that either work or don’t work in human encounters with the vagaries of the sea – practical knowledge that is either historically recorded or speculatively imagined for the future, and that we can and should learn from today, as the world is, as mentioned, getting bluer and wetter. This practical dimension is supplemented by a more philosophical level in the literary works, where we expect to be able to extract a number of perceptions of nature and social organization models that can either serve as positive inspiration or deterrence for us today, where a more sustainable society cannot only be ensured through the invention of new technologies, but where behavioral changes and not least a new mindset are crucial prerequisites for a successful societal transformation.

In addition to the temporal axis outlined above – coastal literature that is either past- or future-oriented at the time of publication – the project participants work within a historical framework from c. 1800 to the present, and geographically, we work with coastal literature from both the Global North and the Global South.

There are three researchers associated with Life-friendly land-sea interaction. Professor Søren Frank and PhD fellow Tanushree Ghosh are funded by the DFF-FP1 project “The Coastal Anthropocene: Literary Visions of Past and Future Shorelines,” whose official start date is January 1, 2024. Postdoc Karl Emil Rosenbæk is funded by CUHRE, and his project begins September 1, 2023.

If you are interested in the project, please contact project manager Søren Frank s.frank@sdu.dk, postdoc Karl Emil Rosenbæk karlemil@sdu.dk, or CUHRE-PI Michael Paulsen mpaulsen@sdu.dk.