Student Projects Seminar “Living Maps: Cartographies of More-Than-Human Lifeworlds”

The seminar Living Maps: Cartographies of More-Than-Human Lifeworlds was led by Associate Professor Dr. Carsten Wergin and introduced students to contemporary research on climate change, planetary health, and global well-being in anthropology and transcultural studies. Responding to a growing call for more care-full engagements with the environment, the course explored theoretical and methodological approaches that foreground multispecies relations, ecological entanglements, and more-than-human forms of agency.

Inspired by Anna Tsing’s concept of the “arts of noticing” (The Mushroom at the End of the World, 2015), students conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Heidelberg region, attending to the co-production of lifeworlds by actors as diverse as plants and soils, birds and insects, pollen, walls, and urban infrastructures. These encounters were translated into Living Maps—experimental cartographic narratives that make multispecies relations visible and invite new ways of thinking about pressing global challenges.

All projects were developed using ArcGIS StoryMaps, a digital platform that combines interactive maps with text, images, and multimedia elements. This format enabled students to integrate spatial analysis with ethnographic storytelling and to present their findings in an accessible and engaging way.