29.11.2019

Lena Schlegel received the Sustainability Award (LINK) of the University

At the 27th of November, Lena Schlegel received the Sustainability Award (LINK) of the University of Tübingen for her Master´s thesis titled “„Decarbonising the Human – a posthumanist epistemic critique and more-than-human ethics for low-carbon-transitions”

In her interdisciplinary work, she deconstructed the EU´s energy policy which falls short behind its self-declared goals of decarbonisation and commitment to climate protection from a critical posthumanist theoretical perspective. Lena Schlegel argues in her work, that a problematic ontological distinction of the human from nature is underlying the efforts to transform energy systems, thereby hindering deep transformation and reinforcing institutional path dependencies and prevailing power relations. She therefore suggests a re-conceptualisation of the human-nature-technology nexus as relational and co-constitutive network of relations of “care”. The principles of such an “ethics of care” provide implications for moral relations in the Anthtropocene which include the “more-than-human” and enable a radical transformation of the relationship between humans, or human societies, and the resources that power them. The sustainability prize honours dissertations which engage with topics of sustainable development in an extraordinary way and is awarded within the Sustainability Lecture (LINK) which this year was held by Shia and Hanno Su about their “zero waste” lifestyle.