This interdisciplinary workshop brings together a small group of scholars and practitioners interested in questions about labour struggles and the future of work; precarity and livelihoods in changing climates; practices and cultures of speculation; narrative and fiction. The workshop is held in the framework of the Hustling in the Anthropocene project at the University of Basel. This postdoctoral research project investigates how authors and filmmakers convey labour and livelihoods in changing climates by approaching climate fiction as a site for theorising Anthropocene studies. The project’s main research objectives concern how practitioners from different contexts negotiate not only the representational challenges associated with anthropogenic climate change, but also the work of making a living, making a life, and where the two intersect. 

“More Sea than Tar”, a short story by Osahon Ize-Iyamu provides an illustrative example. The story offers readers an articulation of the ‘African Anthropocene’ that is at once speculative and highly plausible. Distinctly Nigerian, but set in an unspecified future time characterised by extreme flooding, the story is narrated by teenager Uti, as his family is swept up in their father’s desperate efforts to hustle a living outside of their safe, but economically stagnant, community. The plot follows the family as they navigate the treacherous rising waters of environments reminiscent of those that have come to represent livelihood precarity and environmental degradation in Lagos: from the infamous Obalende underbridge packed with plastic pollution to Makoko informal settlement where inhabitants live perilously in dwellings built on stilts along the lagoon. Ize-Iyamu directly addresses climate change through the story’s setting, but it is the characters’ struggle to make a living that best demonstrates the importance of placing and peopling the Anthropocene for more nuanced understanding of climate breakdown. The story demonstrates the potential of cli-fi for depicting how anticipated futures can be cut short by inherited pasts, putting to the fore the vulnerability of bodies in hostile environments and capturing the nexus of labour, climate change, speculative ventures and anticipation of the future.

There is however limited theoretical attention to this growing confluence of work and climate change, demonstrating the potential of climate fiction to explore and convey how people in different contexts navigate both physical and economic precarity. This workshop thus aims to approach this inquiry from a wider view, drawing from different disciplinary orientations to amplify and diversify understandings of how the impacts of climate change are both experienced and represented. The programme will also include author readings of recently published climate fiction and a film screening, both followed by discussion.

Rather than presenting full papers or completed work, the workshop is intended as a space for exchange, to open new avenues for investigation. Presentation topics explore the three core concerns of the workshop – labour, speculation, climate fiction – as well as adjacent topics, overlaps and intersections between these three themes. The workshop will also lay the groundwork for further exchange and publication possibilities. 

For a complete description, contact details, and workshop programme, see here. 

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    “More Sea Than Tar” was published both online and in Reckoning 3 (2019), an anthology of environmental creative writing by Reckoning Press. 

Date and time: Monday 16 March at 17h45

Venue: kult.kino, Theaterstrasse 7, 4051 Basel

In Swiss director Jacqueline Zünd’s debut feature film, Dont Let the Sun (2025), the heat keeps rising. People grow distant, in curious kinds of solitude. This is where Jonah (28) provides comfort for strangers. But when he finds himself in the role of the father for 9-year-old Nika, his life starts to unravel. A delicate drama about the fragility of human relations. 

After the screening, a Q&A with the director and invited respondent Christine Lötscher, Professor for Popular Literature and Media at University of Zurich. 

This event forms part of Sindi-Leigh McBride’s postdoctoral project, “Hustling in the Anthropocene” in the Department of English at the University of Basel, funded by the Research Fund for Young Researchers.

There are a select number of free tickets available for interested students, please request a ticket via email s.mcbride@clutterunibas.ch by Thursday 12 March.