On April 11th to 13th 2016, the RLC Lund and the LUCSUS (Centre for Sustainability Studies) held a PhD course revolving around the various theories of nature, focusing on the areas of evolution, ecology, geomorphology and soils as well as agriculture.

Following themes were covered:

• Evolutionary theories: From Darwin to Synthetic biology.
• Ecological theories: From ”balance of nature” to resilience and ”coupled social ecological systems”.
• Theories of the geosphere: From Davis’ and Penck’s theories of geomorphology to “Humanity as a geological force”
• Theoretical challenges of agriculture: From annual monocultures to perennial polycultures

During the three-day workshop, the participants had the opportunity to discuss the concept of the Anthropocene, the proposed epoch marked by humanity’s impact on the earth starting around 1950, as well as seminal papers with several senior scholars. Contributions in form of lectures and presentations came from, for instance, Dr. Tim Crews of The Land Institute in the USA and Prof. Johannes Persson of the Lund University.