FS 26.110
Transforming Alpine Wilderness
Session status: Accepted
Content last updated: 2026-04-14 21:47:56
Online available since: 2025-12-17 13:08:11
Details
Full Title
Transforming Alpine Wilderness in Environmental Humanities PerspectiveScheduled
TBATBAChair
Neuner-Schatz, NadjaCo-chair(s)
Millesi, TeresaThematic Focus
Anthropology, Culture, HistoryKeywords
Environmental Humanities, Alpine Regions, Rewilding, Wolves (large predators), Coexistence and conflict
Abstract/Description
Alpine regions are currently undergoing profound climatic, demographic, and sociocultural transformations affecting life in the Alps. An Environmental Humanities perspective understands these transformations as a multifaceted and complex interplay between natural environments and human and nonhuman interactions, particularly salient amid climate change and biodiversity loss. Scholars and researchers in this field examine how human activities impact the natural landscape and the multispecies communities that inhabit it, and vice versa.
Building on this framework, the session will focus on the cultural, political, and media debates surrounding the return of large predators—especially wolves—as a decisive and multifaceted form of transformation in the Alpine region. We situate these developments within the paradigm of “rewilding” as a contemporary conservation response to climate collapse and species decline. This agenda is reflected in EU policy initiatives such as the Green Deal (2019) and the Nature Restoration Law (2024), which aim to restore 20% of EU territory by 2030. Accordingly, we address the intense public debates and resistance surrounding wolf recolonization in Alpine regions, the high conflict potential identified for the Alpine region—particularly in relation to farming and tourism—and the entanglement with cultural memory and figures such as the “big bad wolf.”
We invite cultural studies contributions, using empirical or theoretical approaches and contemporary and/or historical perspectives, to examine how meanings, values, and practices are transforming and how Alpine communities shape coexistence and conflict with large predators.
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- On the selected session page, scroll down to get to the section “Submitted abstracts”.
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-> each line shows one abstract - To get to the review section, please click on the “eye” symbol: of the abstract.
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-> additional, the abstract review area appears below the abstract content. - The review area gives you now a new panel to adjust:
FOR CO-CHAIRS
-> dropdown menu to set a review recommendation (you can overwrite this recommendation as often as you want)
-> optional: comments to share with your chair-colleagues and the organizing committee (max. 50 characters, not visible for the authors of the abstract)
INFO: You can change your review (incl. comments) for an abstract as often as you want until the chair makes the final decision. Changes are overwritten and not archived.
FOR CHAIRS
-> checkbox to set your final review (when activated, you confirm your final choice and will close the review process of this abstract)
-> optional: comments to share with your co-chair(s) and the organizing committee (max. 50 characters, not visible for the authors of the abstract)
INFO: You can leave comments without making your final review as often as you want. Changes are overwritten and not archived. When activating the checkbox, you make your final review and close the review process for this abstract. In case of an erroneous review, you can of course contact us via contact form (please provide the abstract number). You can do the review no matter if your co-chair(s) have already submitted a review recommendation or not.
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