Video of the lecture “Ensouling Hunger” by US anthropologist Naveeda Khan

US anthropologist Naveeda Khan from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore spoke at the Cluster of Excellence about the complex interrelationship between religious traditions, climate change and the experience of hunger. In her lecture in English entitled “Ensouling Hunger”, Khan examined this relationship by looking at how the Muslim population along the South Asian river Jamuna in Bangladesh deals with climate-related crises such as hunger. In addition to the political dimensions of famine, the researcher, herself a native of Bangladesh, also emphasized the metaphysical and spiritual meaning of the everyday use of food and the conscious renunciation of food, such as that which characterizes fasting.  

Naveeda Khan’s research on the relationship between religions, the environment and climate is related to current political attempts to combat global warming internationally. Khan recently participated as an observer of the Bangladesh delegation at the 29th UN Climate Change Conference COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, at which representatives of several poor and island nations left in protest over what they considered to be insufficient commitments from Western industrialized nations towards combating the negative impacts of climate change in their countries.