Teaching

The Sustainable Agroecosystems Group is contributing to the undergraduate and graduate curriculum of Agricultural and environmental Sciences at ETHZ. The aim of our teaching process is to convey a comprehensive understanding of agricultural ecosystems. To achieve this, we address multiple scales from biogeochemical processes to farm, regional, national and global levels and take ecological, economical and societal perspectives. We aim at an interactive lecture style including class room discussions and hands-​on activities. We like to challenge students to tackle scientific and societal relevant issues in agriculture. Some of this teaching is happening in the SAE Greenhouse, that offers the perfect space for students to test, experiment and learn about agriculture.

The practices and knowledge around sustainable agroecosystems and agroecology are meant to be shared and explored in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary contexts. Along these lines, we’ve been animating workshops and intervening for several classes with art and architecture students. The occasion to exchange on Agroecology, political ecologies, the research of the SAE group and the activities within the Greenhouse.

Sustainable Agroecosystems 1

This lecture with integrated exercises introduces the biophysical factors, processes and interactions that control the functioning of temperate and tropical agroecosystems. Students are guided to critically examine agricultural practices and management strategies to increase resource use efficiency, while minimizing negative impacts on the environment and ensuring socio-economic viability. The integrated exercises allow students to put their knowledge on agroecosystems into practice in a greenhouse experiment, the “Complex vegetable system challenge”.

Agroecologists without Borders

In the class ‚Agroecologists without borders’ students apply their knowledge on sustainable agriculture, tropical soils and land use to a case study related to a current research project from the Sustainable Agroecosystems group. The seminar offers interactions with researchers and extension specialists working in the context of agricultural development. Students analyze concrete examples of agricultural development projects in tropical agroecosystems, broaden their understanding of environmental and socio-economic challenges of smallholder farmers and learn to articulate complexity and challenges in agricultural development interventions. During the class project, students develop their science communication skills by producing science communication materials in the context of the given case study.

Interventions in other teaching programs

Reading Earth

Presentation –  ALIMENTO with Tara Ladsrado, Adriana Dominguez, Paloma Ayala for the F+F Design and Art School Summer School curated by Coalmine “Beloved, utilised, contaminated soil. An exploration” (2024)

Jury

Reviewing – with the 1st year program of the Master in Fine Arts – TRANS – in Socially Engaged Art Practices, HEAD Geneva (2024)

A Greenhouse is a Greenhouse is a Class Room – Critical Questions around Eco-Literacy Feminisms and Design

Workshop – with Tara Lasrado from arvae, for the Co-create Program session of Mayar ElBakry – Fhnw Basel (2024)

Food system Resilience & Agroecology – A tomato story

Guest speaker for Funky/fresh: Sound & Food with Dr. Jamie Allen – Fhnw Basel (2023)

Urban agro-ecology, islands of resistance & regeneration

Workshop – MAPS Symposium : A Foodculture Day – EDHEA Sierre (2023)

Art & Science

Guest speaker – Art & Ecology with Anne-Laure Franchette, Franklin University Lugano (2023)

Plant – Water – Soil

Guest speaker – Visualizing Foodways: Art + Food from Hemispheric Perspectives with Dr. Zoë Heyn-Jones , Western University Canada (2023)

Decolonizing Nature. Knowledges, Practices and Questions

Seminar – with Jose Cáceres Mardones – MAPS in Theory and practice, EDHEA, The Valais School of Arts, Sierre (2021)

MAS in Urban and Territorial Design – Final critics and Showcase

Hosting & reviewing – Master of Advanced Studies at the ETH Zürich and EPFL presented their projects on “The Fabric of Agroecology – A Vision for the Territory of Zürich” in the SAE Greenhouse in June 2022, 23 and 24. The studio aims to research and outline potentials and projects for an agroecological fabric extending across the metropolitan region of Zürich. For more information here.