Ecology of Love: An Online Course

About the course#

Ecosystems are love stories. Our most profound ways to relate and to feel, to exchange and to be touched, are ecological forms of gifting life, of loving. When we rediscover ecology as a vibrant love story, we can unlearn the violent habits of our civilisation. Over six weeks we’ll explore this story with biophilosopher, writer, and marine biologist Dr Andreas Weber, diving deep into a world of mutual belonging.

We’ll unravel separatist myths and reweave the beauty of biology back into the fabric of ecological wisdom, inquiring into a diverse ecosystem of themes such as erotic ecology, animism, queer ecology, death, enlivenment and more. Supported by a background in marine biology, cultural studies and philosophy, Andreas will help us integrate science, mysticism and environmental thinking so that we can perceive the world anew through an ‘ecology of love’, an ecology which understands systems of living relationships as bearing both the practical and spiritual principles of a living cosmos.

Course format#

A 6-week live online course held via Zoom organised by advaya and curated and hosted by Dr Andreas Weber, from 16th November - 21st December 2022, each Wednesday at 6 - 8pm GMT. A 2-hour session per week with lectures, breakouts and Q&A. (Participants are welcome to join course late as sessions will be recorded.) Includes a course pack to guide you through the course with weekly readings, resources and activities. Participants are encouraged to share insights with one another via a dedicated Discord forum.

Online via Zoom and Discord. Links will be sent out prior to the course start date.

Session dates#

Sessions happen every Wednesday from 6-8pm GMT on the following dates.

• Week 1. A Cosmos of Mutual Attraction (16th November)
• Week 2. Erotic Entanglements: Living through Eros & Touch (23rd November)
• Week 3. Romantic Mythologies: Learning to Love Again (30th November)
• Week 4. Queering Ecology: Erotic Transformation & Identity (7th December)
• Week 5. Death: Becoming Edible as an Act of Love (14th December)
• Week 6. Towards an Ecology of Love (21st December)

About Dr Andreas Weber#

Dr Andreas Weber is a Berlin based book and magazine writer and independent scholar. He has degrees in Marine Biology and Cultural Studies, having collaborated with theoretical biologist Francisco Varela in Paris.

Andreas’ work focuses on a re-evaluation of our understanding of the living. He proposes to understand organisms as subjects and hence the biosphere as a meaning-creating and poetic reality. Accordingly, Andreas holds that an economy inspired by nature should not be designed as a mechanistic optimisation machine, but rather as an ecosystem which transforms the mutual sharing of matter and energy into deeper meaning.

Andreas has contributed extensively to developing the concept of enlivenment in recent years, notably through his essay Enlivenment: Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics (Berlin 2013, published in expanded and rewritten form as Enlivenment: Toward a Poetics for the Anthropocene, MIT Press, 2019).

Andreas has put forth his ideas in several major magazines and journals, such as GEO, National Geographic, Die Zeit and Greenpeace Magazine. He teaches at Leuphana University and at the University of Fine Arts, Berlin. His books include Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology, The Biology of Wonder; Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science, and Biopoetics: Towards an Existential Ecology.

Andreas is part of the staff of und.Institute for Art, Culture and Sustainability, Berlin, which is devoted to linking the fields of art and culture with sustainability, and developing exemplary models of productive exchange. Andreas has been named as the 2016 Jonathan Rowe Commons Fellow, Mesa Refuge, Point Reyes, CA, USA.