Welcome to Tvergastein Journal!

Vision & Mission Statement 

The inhabitants of this planet face an urgent threat: an environmental crisis in a rapidly changing world. This crisis has no quick fix and is fundamentally tied to how a large swath of humanity lives their life from one day to another. We, therefore, need arenas that provide room for reflection about the changes we as humans, collectively and individually, can and should engage with to maximize our contribution to mitigating and adapting to the current environmental crisis.

Tvergastein aims to be such an arena—a platform that creates a network of actors that focus on the human side of climate change and other complex environmental crises. We want to be a space for learning not only how we can overcome the environmental crisis, but also for creating new healthy structures and patterns of interaction to build our societies upon.

Tvergastein journal aims to contribute to a cultural and political shift, exploring paths to a kinder world that prioritizes the well-being of sentient beings over economic growth and private profits. We aim to be a part of this shift from competitive to cooperative structures that regard all humans as equal, recognize the right to life for all beings, and speak out for justice. It is a platform where alternative futures in harmony with the web of life can be sketched out and the means of reaching an equilibrium with the natural world is assessed and reflected upon. All of this culminates into beautiful printed issues of the journal as well as launch events that are a chance for coming together and connecting. We believe the messages and knowledge generated in this platform can reach large audiences and plant ideas that can have a pivotal impact.

We acknowledge the natural abundance of life on earth, its vast connectedness, and its interdependence. We see that environmental problems are not a disciplinary issue but a challenge we face collectively, interrelated with other global development issues. Careful and thoughtful examinations of current global challenges faced by the environment and humans are the basis of our work. We encourage collective inquiry into our priorities, self-reflection, and examination of what we value most in life, and explore the virtues of resisting the hedonistic treadmill. We set out to be a space for discovering and sharing new pathways, inspiring change in individual lives, and, as is so desperately needed, planting seeds for new societal structures at large.

We are a platform that encourages critical thinkers to share their insights, analyses, and stories on current global circumstances and their ideas for solutions. We reach out to readers across the world, and our members and writers come from a variety of countries. We value diversity of cultural, academic, and societal perspectives, as diversity is a necessity element for successful co-being and a prerequisite for understanding sustainable change. We want powerful voices to be heard that remain silent in the current system of power. We are open for submissions of excellent academic work, critical opinion pieces, personal storytelling, and creative and artistic work.

Within our organization, we strive to be a space of nourishment for our members, working to both enhance our skills and provide a supportive community. We see our work as an ongoing learning process carried out with trust and mutual support built on common principles. We see outer and inner change as entangled and believe that societal shifts require shifts in single people as well as the collective consciousness. We challenge each other to try out new competencies and teach each other to master new skills. We experiment with hierarchy-free structures emphasizing self-responsibility and transparency.

We welcome master’s students of any discipline at the University of Oslo to join us at any point in time. If you are interested in joining, contact us here.