Pluralising Sustainability and Ecological Justice

An Interdisciplinary Roundtable:
With Sandra Gilgan, Kristina Großmann and Lisa Schipper
Moderated by Julia Binter

What would happen if we stepped back from the urge to pin sustainability down to a single definition and instead embraced its plurality through historically, culturally, and ecologically situated practices and visions of the future?

Taking the working paper Plural Sustainabilities (Gilgan et al.) as its starting point, this panel explores how different worldviews, knowledge systems, and values shape understandings of sustainability, recognizing the context-specific and culturally rooted approaches to sustainability found across the globe. Drawing on ethnographic research in Indonesia, the speakers further discuss how extractive industries, governments, workers, and local communities negotiate environmental care, resource use, and sustainable livelihoods. Moving beyond binary distinctions between perpetrators and victims, the discussion considers the significance of historically and culturally informed relationships with the environment and biocultural heritage.

What are the implications of such a pluralised understanding of sustainability for ecological justice? How can competing visions of sustainable futures be negotiated in contexts of unequal power, while taking into account not only human communities but also the more-than-human world?

Where: GHL, Poststr. 26, 53111 Bonn
When: 19 November 2026, 16:00 – 18:00 CET
No registration needed
Hybrid event: Zoom

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Sandra Gilgan is a cultural studies scholar and academic manager at the University of Bonn, specialising in sustainability research and Chinese studies. She co-led the working group Alternative Sustainabilities anchored at the German Committee of Future Earth and is involved in various sustainability-related initiatives.

Kristina Großmann is Professor of Anthropology of Southeast Asia at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on human–environment relationships, sustainability, extractivism, and asymmetrical dependencies in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia.

Lisa Schipper is Professor of Development Geography at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on climate change adaptation, vulnerability, and climate-resilient development, with particular attention to equity and social justice.

Julia Binter is Jun.-Professor for Critical Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on pluralising knowledge creation through museum and university collections, and on heritage ecologies.

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This session of the Global Heritage Lab Seminar Series forms part of the research–exhibition project Knowing Plants: Ecologies of Memory and Practice.