How Can We Build a Shared World in Times of Crisis? The OFFRES Summer University Sought Answers

The European Summer University “Vers un monde commun ? Déconstruire les conflits, repenser les liens terrestres” was held on 12–19 July 2026 at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, with nearly 70 students, doctorands, and faculty members from a total of 20 European universities in attendance. Organized as part of the international OFFRES network, the event focused on the question of how, in the context of current ecological and social conflicts, we can rethink the premises of a shared and liveable world.

The program combined morning plenary lectures with intensive work in five parallel ateliers. The atelier led by Michel Baudouin explored the possibilities of a politics of nature and the question of how to politically represent interests and actors that transcend human communities. Orgest Azizaj and Momchil Hristov led an atelier on the aesthetic dimension of a shared world and the garden as a space where political, ecological, and aesthetic ways of relating to nature intersect. Clément Lion and Sofia Sorokina, together with the participants, explored the boundary between humans and other animals and the possibilities for rethinking it politically. The Franco-German atelier led by Miriam Teschl and Falk Bretschneider explored the relationship between economics and ecology and the possibilities for economic action that respects ecological limits. The fifth atelier, led by Guillaume de Vaulx and Alexandre Dubreu, focused on agriculture as a fundamental form of the human relationship to the land and on the conflicts associated with its use.

The event was intended primarily for young researchers in the fields of philosophy, social sciences, literary theory, environmental studies, and other humanities disciplines. Participants analysed not only conflicts arising from the use of land, natural resources, and energy sources, environmental justice but also the various views on the relationship between humans and other living beings. The common theme of the individual lectures and workshops was the question of how, despite the plurality of interests and value perspectives, we can engage in dialogue about a shared and sustainable future and about the conditions for the habitability of our planet.

The event highlighted the key role of conflict as a productive mechanism in which proponents of different perspectives are led to consider what they have in common despite their antagonisms. The originality of the collaborative work is well illustrated by the collective final output of the atelier dedicated to agriculture: the participants translated the results of philosophical, anthropological, and sociological debates on agriculture into a distinctive literary form, in which they combined a newly created cosmogonic myth about the relationship between humans, soil, and agriculture with a series of stylized “farmer’s speeches” that polemically responded to the themes of other lectures and workshops.

This collective text is now published on the OFFRES network’s website: L’agriculture, lien vital à la terre.

The summer school was organized with support from, among others, the project “Beyond Security: The Role of Conflict in Resilience Building”, Reg. Nr. CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004595.