❋
Environmental Justice, Land, and Climate Struggles
Facilitator: Nastaran Saremy
The seminar is facilitated by Nastaran Saremy, with guest contributions incorporated where appropriate.
This seminar examines ecological crises as political and social questions, exploring how struggles over land, resources, and climate are shaped by unequal relations of power. Drawing on political ecology, environmental justice, Indigenous knowledge, and ecofeminist perspectives, it considers the connections between environmental destruction, extractivism, inequality, and struggles for social and ecological justice.
With particular attention to Kurdistan and Iran, alongside perspectives from the wider world, the seminar explores how communities confront ecological destruction and develop alternative relationships to land, resources, and collective life.
✳ Language: Persian
The seminar will be taught in Persian, with space for multilingual participation and discussion where possible.
✳ Dates & Duration
November 6 - December 18, 2026
Six-week seminar during Semester One of the 2026–2027 academic year.
✳ Schedule & Format
Fridays, 17:00–19:00
CET / Berlin Time
❋ Online
Registration is required. You will receive a link for online participation and more information after registration.
Meet Your Facilitator
Nastaran Saremy, PhD
Dr. Nastaran Saremy is an interdisciplinary researcher, critic, and instructor specializing in cultural analysis, aesthetics, and media studies. She has a PhD in Philosophy of Art from Iran and currently is a second PhD in Media and Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University. Her research examines mass politics, social change, memory, and the cultural legacies of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, particularly from marginalized perspectives. She has presented internationally and published in academic journals, edited volumes, and exhibition catalogues in English and Farsi.
About the Seminar
Environmental Justice, Land, and Climate Struggles examines ecological crisis through the interconnected questions of power, inequality, land, and collective life. Drawing on political ecology and environmental justice, the seminar introduces students to Indigenous knowledge and ecofeminist perspectives while considering how environmental harms are produced and unevenly experienced.
Particular attention will be given to Kurdistan and Iran, where ecological struggles intersect with questions of land, resources, extractivism, and community survival. These experiences will be placed in conversation with environmental struggles from the wider world, allowing students to consider both the local specificity and global dimensions of contemporary ecological crises.
The seminar also looks beyond environmental destruction to the forms of resistance and political imagination emerging in response to it. Students will examine how communities organize against extractivism, defend land and ecological resources, mobilize different forms of environmental knowledge, and imagine more just and sustainable relationships between people, land, and collective life.
Additional workshops, collaborative educational initiatives, and public lectures will be announced during the semester.
Join the Seminar
Semester One · 2026–2027
November 6 - December 18, 2026
Fridays, 17:00–19:00 CET / Berlin Time
Online · Persian
Participants who successfully complete the seminar will receive a Jîna Academy Certificate of Seminar Completion. The seminar may also count as an elective toward the Jîna Academy Certificate in Humanities.