Faculty Fellow Simon Richter

Simon Richter is a professor of German and Dutch literature, film, and culture. Professor Richter’s research deals with cultural aspects of adaptation, resilience, and migration in the context of the climate emergency. He focuses in particular on the role of narrative in imagining and designing optimal responses to future climate scenarios in Germany, Indonesia, The Netherlands, and the United States. He was a member of an international design team for “Water as Leverage” in Semarang, Indonesia (2018) and “Resilience by Design” in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam (2020). He initiated the Penn 1.5* Minute Climate Lectures and co-founded and co-directs Climate Week at Penn. He regularly teaches two popular courses called “Water Worlds: Cultural Responses to Sea Level Rise and Catastrophic Flooding” and “Forest Worlds: Mapping the Arboreal Imaginary.”