Claudia Keller

Prof. Dr. phil. in Environmental Humanities, Assistent Professor

photo

 claudia.keller@unifr.ch
 +41 26 300 8930
 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3734-8636

I focus on the cultural perception of biodiversity from both historical and contemporary perspectives. I examine how narratives about environmental challenges shape societal solutions as well as individual actions: which ethical, aesthetic, and affective values are attributed to biodiversity through different narratives? To what extent do cultural narratives also shape the negative values ascribed to biodiversity, for example in relation to so-called “invasive” species or wetlands? The aim of my work is to apply insights into narratives in order to foster effective biodiversity communication.

Biography

More information about me: www.claudia-keller.ch

In 2015, I completed my PhD at the University of Zurich with a dissertation on the cultural theory of Weimar Classicism. During a postdoctoral appointment at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar (2015-2017), I co-curated an exhibition on Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his political, anthropological, and aesthetic impact on modernity. From 2017 to 2025, I served as a senior researcher (wissenschaftliche Oberassistentin) at the Department of German Studies at the University of Zurich, and from 2024 to 2025 as suppléante chargée de cours in the German Section at the University of Geneva. My research focus on biodiversity narratives developed, among other contexts, through my affiliation with the URPP Global Change and Biodiversity at the University of Zurich (2021–2024), as well as through my roles as a member of the Plenary Assembly (since 2021) and the Board of Trustees (since 2023) of the Swiss Biodiversity Forum at SCNAT.

I am currently working on two research projects:

In my SNSF-funded Starting Grant project “Narrating Variety. Biodiversity as a Paradigm of Transformation” (2026–2030), I conduct the first systematic analysis of how biodiversity is narrated, represented, and legitimized in science, politics, and culture—particularly in literature. The project focuses on how the paradigm of “biodiversity,” originating in the Anglo-American context, became established in German-speaking regions, and especially in Switzerland, and on the narratives that shape this discourse. In a second step, the project derives insights for future biodiversity communication.

In a subproject of NRP 82 “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” entitled “Promoting Biodiversity by Addressing Environmental Disvalue Narratives,” my colleagues Dr. Anna Deplazes-Zemp (UZH), Prof. Dr. Joëlle Salomon-Cavin (UniL), Anna Billeter (WWF), Thomas Wirth (WWF) and me investigate how people respond to conflicts surrounding biodiversity conservation in wetlands, such as mosquito outbreaks, flooding, or damage caused by beavers. My subproject examines long-standing cultural narratives that attribute negative values to these areas and explores emerging narrative forms that seek to transform these perceptions. The aim is to foster a constructive dialogue about the opportunities and challenges of biodiversity.

Research and publications

  • Publications
    35 publications

    Natur/Kultur , in Hermann Hesse-Handbuch
    Claudia Keller (2025), ISBN: 9783476060075 | Book chapter

    Gegen die Stille. Affektpoetiken im Zeitalter des Insektensterbens
    Claudia Keller, Insektenpoesie. Ansätze zu einer literarischen Entomologie: (2025) | Conference

  • Research projects

    Promoting Biodiversity by Addressing Environmental Disvalue Narratives
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.01.2026
    End 31.12.2029
    Funding SNSF 

    Projektleitung

    • Dr. Anna Deplazes Zemp, Universität Zürich

    • Prof. Dr. Claudia Keller, Universität Freiburg

    • Prof. Dr. Joëlle Salomon Cavin, Universität Lausanne

    • Anna Billeter, WWF Schweiz

    • Thomas Wirth, WWF Schweiz

    Ziel

    Dieses Projekt kombiniert literarische Forschung, Sozialwissenschaften und ethische Wertanalyse, um zu untersuchen, wie Menschen auf die unangenehmen Aspekte der Biodiversität reagieren. Feuchtgebiete dienen dabei als Fallstudie. Diese Ökosysteme sind reich an Biodiversität, werden jedoch oft mit negativen Szenarien wie unfruchtbarem Land, Überschwemmungen, Nebel oder Mücken in Verbindung gebracht. Sie haben eine kulturelle Konnotation von Gefahr, Düsternis oder Melancholie. Selbst der Biber, der einst gefeiert wurde, ist in Siedlungsgebieten umstritten.

    Das Projektteam wird Geschichten über Feuchtgebiete aus Medien, Literatur und Interviews mit Stakeholdern sammeln und analysieren, wie diese Erzählungen die mit Biodiversität verbundenen Herausforderungen darstellen. Diese Analyse wird es ermöglichen, die negativen Bewertungen der Biodiversität (instrumentelle, relationale, intrinsische) systematisch zu untersuchen und praktische Instrumente zu entwickeln, die einen konstruktiven Diskurs über Biodiversität unterstützen. 

    Bedeutung

    Naturschutzstrategien betonen oft die positiven Werte der Biodiversität. Die Förderung einer biodiversitätsfreundlichen Zukunft erfordert aber auch ein Verständnis unseres Umgangs mit ihren negativen Aspekten. Wichtig ist zu verstehen, mit welchen negativen Bewertungen und Gefühlen Menschen auf den Schutz der Biodiversität reagieren. Das Projekt soll damit die Debatte zum Naturschutz, das Engagement von Interessengruppen und die politische Diskussion bereichern. Das Projekt wird narrative Instrumente wie Geschichten-Sammlungen, Rollenspiele und unterschiedliche Endszenarien entwickeln. Dieser Ansatz soll dazu beitragen, eine offene und differenzierte Diskussion anzuregen und unterschiedliche Perspektiven zu fördern.

    Transdisziplinärer Ansatz

    Dieses Projekt bringt Forscher:innen mit dem WWF Schweiz zusammen. Der WWF bringt seine eigenen Erfahrungen mit den praktischen Herausforderungen der Bewirtschaftung von Feuchtgebieten und den Perspektiven verschiedener Interessengruppen ein. Die Forscher:innen und der WWF gestalten gemeinsam Interviews und Diskussionen und stellen so sicher, dass unterschiedliche Sichtweisen berücksichtigt werden. In späteren Phasen fliessen die Ergebnisse in breitere Naturschutzdebatten ein und werden mit bestehenden Strategien in Verbindung gebracht.

    Die Entwicklung der Instrumente erfolgt in enger Zusammenarbeit: Ein:e Postdoktorand:in der Universität Zürich wird am Hauptsitz des WWF tätig sein und kann damit auf das Fachwissen der Organisation in den Bereichen Freiwilligenarbeit und Politikberatung zurückgreifen. Die narrativen Instrumente, die von Workshop-Materialien bis hin zu Ressourcen für Politik und Kommunikation reichen, werden gemeinsam mit dem WWF entwickelt, um in der Praxis direkt einsetzbar zu sein. Schliesslich werden die Instrumente in WWF-Workshops und Treffen mit Interessengruppen aus dem Bereich Feuchtgebiete getestet und anschliessend anhand von Rückmeldungen verfeinert, um ihre Wirksamkeit zu erhöhen.

    Narrating Variety: Biodiversity as Paradigm of Transformation in Science and Literature
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.01.2025
    End 31.12.2029
    Funding SNSF  Open project sheet
    Background: The biodiversity crisis is one of the main environmental challenges facing our planet today. Preserving the variety of life requires not only political action but also a comprehensive sociocultural change to address indirect drivers of biodiversity loss such as values and worldviews deeply rooted in our society. Because narratives are viewed as a potent tool for shaping these values, stakeholders from science and communication have articulated the need for biodiversity stories that bridge the gap between knowledge and action. However, this claim is made without insights into how biodiversity is narrated. Research gap: In contrast to the interdisciplinary research on climate change and environment, cultural and literary studies are insufficiently integrated into biodiversity research. Consequently, their methodological knowledge is not used. No analysis has yet examined how biodiversity is represented, how its conservation is justified in narration and how various forms of narration can contribute to advancing biodiversity communication. Hypothesis: Neither scientific nor theoretical knowledge of ecosystem services or abstract ethical justification is sufficient for raising awareness of biodiversity without the value that biodiversity gains through narration. Narratives that are suitable for achieving this are specific to biodiversity, create ethical, aesthetic, and affective types of value equally, address representation and justification congruently, and suit local and sociocultural contexts. Methods and Objectives: The project is situated within the environmental humanities and literary studies and has a focus on the German-speaking, especially Swiss context. It is structured as three subprojects: Valuing Biodiversity is conducted by the principal investigator (PI); Representing Biodiversity and Justifying Biodiversity are each worked on by a PhD student. The project pursues three objectives: (1) It applies a literary perspective to the biodiversity discourse by advancing insights from the interdisciplinary field of narratology, especially those within the environmental humanities and ecocriticism. (2) The main task of the two PhD projects is an analysis of how biodiversity gains value through narration. The analysis uses two heuristic distinctions: PhD 1 examines how biodiversity is represented, and PhD 2 investigates how biodiversity and its conservation are justified. Both projects explore the ethical, aesthetic, and affective types of value that biodiversity gains through narration, first on the Science axis, involving science, policy, and society, and second on the Literature axis, dealing with cultural and literary discourse. The PI contributes to each axis with a comparative case study connecting representation and justification. The results of the analyses are related to scientific and theoretical knowledge of biodiversity values und systemized in an overview. The overview allows an examination of how biodiversity narration differs between the Science and Literature axes and identifies the types of value contributed by cultural discourse through specific forms of storytelling. (3) The third objective is to derive a solid theoretical framework for future biodiversity communication from these findings, to validate them with stakeholders, and to create guidelines to be applied in biodiversity communication in Switzerland. Impact: Objectives 1 and 2 make ground-breaking contributions to biodiversity research. They elucidate the cultural dimensions of biodiversity and its crisis in a discourse shaped primarily by the natural sciences through a pioneering analysis of biodiversity narratives that uncovers the ethical, aesthetic, and affective value that such narratives create. This brings an innovative perspective to the environmental humanities, where biodiversity has not been sufficiently addressed, especially in Switzerland. Objective 3 pursues a high-risk, high-gain approach that untaps the potential of literary and cultural studies to enhance biodiversity communication, thereby contributing to socioecological transformation and addressing the biodiversity crisis.