PhD candidate Tatiana Tilly will discuss her paper "Starving and Reading: Climate Fiction as Slow Activism". Drawing on qualitative interviews with participating activists and authors, alongside close readings of performed texts, Tilly argues that the readings became an integral part of the protest itself. Rather than functioning merely as symbolic support, the readings created moments of shared attention, affective intensity, and resonance that participants described as strengthening their sense of purpose, endurance, and collective connection.

The talk contributes to emerging research on literature and activism by offering an empirically grounded account of literature as a situated and embodied social practice within climate activism. In doing so, it demonstrates how literary practices can actively shape collective experience and sustain political engagement from within protest situations.

Dr. Jesse van Amelsvoort has kindly agreed to comment on the paper.

Tatiana Tilly is a PhD candidate at the Syddansk University. She explores how literary fiction is used in climate activism, in particular by young Danish activists. Through qualitative interviews, fieldwork, and close readings, she investigates how literature, in particular climate fiction, sci-fi, and speculative fiction, can contribute to creating cultural change and new visions of more sustainable future societies.

Dr. Jesse van Amelsvoort is a lecturer in modern European literature at the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He was a PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature with University of Groningen / Campus Fryslân. In his dissertation he combined perspectives from world literature, minority studies, and European studies to elaborate a “worldly reading” strategy that is attuned to how these writers negotiate pressures of the national in times of globalisation.