The Green Zone series: Extinction Remains: The challenge of displaying contemporary mass extinction
Seminar
Date: Thursday 6 November 2025
Time: 15.00 – 17.00
Location: Accelerator
We are living through an unprecedented extinction crisis, where human activity drives species loss at a pace faster than the dinosaurs’ demise. What traces do extinct species leave behind—and how can museums engage audiences with both their physical remains and their lingering stories?
The presenter at this seminar is Dolly Jørgensen - Professor of History, University of Stavanger, Norway specializing in environmental history and environmental humanities.
Abstract
We are currently living through a major extinction event with vast numbers of species across the planet rapidly becoming extinct because of human actions, from climate change to habitat conversion to pollution. At least 322 vertebrates are known to have become extinct since 1500, and many more invertebrates and plants. The high number of species either recently extinct or facing imminent extinction and the great speed at which extermination is happening even exceeds the most well-studied extinction event—the dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period. What remains after a species has become extinct and how can museums engage with those remains?
Because museums and galleries are one of the primary sites of public engagement in many types of environmental issues, including extinction, we need critical reflection on how they can be used to cultivate thinking about non-human species. In this talk I will discuss two types of remains of the extinct: the tangible bodily remains and the intangible stories that remain. Drawing on examples of extinct species on display at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and other examples in my new book Ghosts Behind Glass, I will discuss the challenges of curating both kinds of remains. Extinction remains have the potential to raise awareness of the connections between humans and nonhumans over time, and how they affect our culture.
About Dolly Jørgensen
Dolly Jørgensens current research agenda focuses on cultural histories of animals. She has published three monographs: Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums (University of Chicago Press, 2025), The Medieval Pig (Boydell, 2024) and Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging (MIT Press, 2019). She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Humanities and co-directs The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at UiS. She won the prestigious Gad Rausings prize for outstanding contribution to the humanities within the Nordic countries from the Swedish Royal Academy for Letters, History, and Antiquities in 2025.
The Green Zone Seminar Series Autumn 2025 at Accelerator Art Hall
Welcome to the higher seminar in Environmental Humanities at Stockholm University.
23/10 kl. 15.00 - 17.00 The Green Zone seminar series: Figuring Nämforsen: Image, Friction and Relationality along the Ångerman River
6/11 kl. 15.00 - 17.00 The Green Zone seminar series: Extinction Remains: The challenge of displaying contemporary mass extinction
27/11 kl. 15.00 - 17.00 The Green Zone seminar series: Narrating Transhumance and the more-than-human: Folklore and Sustainability
Christina Fredengren, Lotten Gustafsson-Reinius, Lars Kaijser and Karin Dirke.
Join the Environmental Humanities and Speculative Fiction Reading Group
The reading group will explore places where environmental humanities, archaeology and speculative fiction overlap. During the meetings, the group will read and discuss a range of texts - academic and fictional - and may write their own texts about possible futures. The reading group is open to everyone who would like to join.
Environmental Humanities and Speculative Fiction Reading Group
Last updated: September 23, 2025
Source: Områdeskansliet för humanvetenskap