Thursday, 7 May 2026 | 4.00-7.00 pm | Auerbach Library, MESH (Weyertal 59, third floor)

The humanities encapsulate a diverse range of methods for researching past and present human-environment relations. Each subject area - be it Literary studies, Art, Archaeology, History, Social Anthropology, or Linguistics - contributes valuable yet wildly different methodological tool kits.
Methods are often overlooked or taken for granted in the humanities. This workshop provides an opportunity for researchers to reflect on what they do to produce knowledge. By speaking across various disciplinary backgrounds, we hope to tease out some general themes and challenges in methods across the EH. Through open discussions between the panelists and audience, we aim to open a discussion on the roles of the different, and often complementary methods that together make up the EH. 

In a roundtable format, each of our five panelists will present a brief presentation on the specificities of one method they use in their research. This will be followed by a guided discussion among the panelists and then opened to include comments and discussion with the audience.
The MESH Cross-pollinator Forum will take place in two sessions with a break with refreshments in the middle.

Roundtable speakers:

Dominik Ohrem is a historian and currently a Research Associate at MESH and Postdoctoral Researcher at HESCOR (Cultural Evolution in Changing Climate: Human and Earth System Coupled Research) at the University of Cologne. His presentation will focus on the possibilities and difficulties of tracing historical animal presences and agencies through archival research.

Tanya Gautam is a poet, educator, doctoral researcher in the EcoLit project at MESH and organiser of creative writing workshops. She will explore creative writing and creative reading as methodological practices and reflect on how she integrates them in her work across poetry, education and research.

Daniel Gallano is a philosopher and a.r.t.e.s. doctoral researcher working on wounded urban landscapes focusing on the cases of two mounds in Cologne. He will discuss the use of landscape and map drawings by interview participants as a way to compare different perspectives on urban place.

Louisa Crysmann is an environmental anthropologist and doctoral researcher at MESH working on arctic farming practices. She will focus on her use of ethnographic methods such as participant observation, interviews, and landscape walks to understand farmed fields and their histories.

Ryan Shea works within the Goethean phenomenological approach to ecology, focusing on plants and insects. He will address how he uses drawing and writing practices as a way to craft ecological narratives as a means for growing new organs of perception.