Seminar: Homage to Bruno Latour – Tim Lenton, Adam Izdebski

25 03 2023

On March 23, an online seminar was held under the title ‘Bruno Latour’s theoretical framework and human-climate interactions’. The speakers were two eminent researchers: Professor Tim Lenton – the Director of the Global Systems Institute and Chair in Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter and Dr. Adam Izdebski – Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. The seminar was moderated by Professor Marek Konarzewski – President of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The seminar was dedicated to the discussion on Bruno Latour’s legacy as a bridge between natural and human sciences, with a special focus on the methodological implications of his Actor Network Theory for climate research. The influential work of Bruno Latour, who died in October 2022, offers several potentially important lessons about how to ferry scientific knowledge between researchers form distant scientific disciplines, such as atmospheric science, geology, sociology and history.

During the seminar, Professor Tim Lenton presented a talk titled ‘Gaia as seen from within. Homage to Bruno Latour’. Dr hab. Adam Izdebski gave a talk titled ‘Bruno Latours theoretical framework and human-climate interactions. A view from history.’

After the speeches there was a very interesting discussion, the participants had a lot of questions for the speakers.

Our seminar was the fourth a series of events ‘UAM-UW-UJ_Promujemy badania transdziedzinowe’ jointly organized by Adam Mickiewicz University, University of Warsaw and Jagiellonian University to foster multidisciplinary research and education.

The recording of the seminar can be viewed on the YouTube channel of the Centre for Systemic Risk Analysis.