Climate Action Days: MOOC Anthropocene in Venice

The Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, in collaboration with NICHE / the UNESCO Chair “Water Heritage and Sustainable Development”, offers a new MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) devoted to Venice as an emblematic case of the climate crisis and the Anthropocene.

The MOOC Anthropocene in Venice, coordinated by Professor Pietro Daniel Omodeo and developed by an interdisciplinary team of 15 scholars, investigates the relationship between environment and society through the lens of the Environmental Humanities, providing critical tools to interpret the transformations of Venice’s aquatic landscapes.

The course builds on earlier initiatives, notably the Anthropocene Campus Venice (2021), an international forum on water politics and the challenges of the Anthropocene hosted by Ca’ Foscari, and part of a broader network of campuses organized by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute. In parallel, a long-standing research unit on Waterscapes, based at NICHE and connected to the UNESCO Chair, has developed sustained research on these themes.

The volume The Anthropocene Waterscapes of Venice (Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2025) synthesizes this body of work and serves as the core textbook of the MOOC, which is structured into four thematic units. Introduction: Venice is a symbol of climate change and the global environmental crisis. Venetians observe the tides surrounding them with growing concern. 15 interdisciplinary scholars take Venice as their case study to reflect on the historical unfolding of its human-natural nexus.

The explorations stress the complexity of the problem as well as the possibility to gain knowledge through integrated approaches, offering an insight on the many challenges of the Anthropocene both as a concept and as a reality.

Category: Human Sciences

Training Hours: 42

Level: Basic Course

Mode: Tutoring

Language: English

Duration: 4 Weeks

Type: Online