Research Seminar December 4th: Giulia Rispoli - Science for the Biosphere: The Emergence of Global Ecology and the Background to the Anthropocene

Over the last years, a plethora of volumes, articles, and essays focused on the Anthropocene–the proposed geological epoch characterized by human impact on Earth–have made evident a growing interest in this topic at the level of the academic community as well as within a more general audience. Despite this wealth of literature, however, current research on the Age of Humankind tends to be Western-centric, lacking inspiration from more various narratives and contexts that would indeed enable us to place this phenomenon in a real global, historical perspective. This talk will approach the conceptual history of the Anthropocene by following the still neglected path of the Russian and Soviet tradition in global ecology: the scientific discipline that investigates humanity as an agent in the transformation of the planet.