Brown Bag Seminar with Antoine Acker
Welcome to Planet Earth: History's Final Destination
Time: Wed 2024-05-29 12.00 - 13.00
Location: Big seminar room, Teknikringen 74D, floor 5
Language: English
Participating: Antoine Acker, University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Abstract
What lies behind the steady rise in atmospheric CO2 since 1958? What are the social, cultural, political and economic factors behind the overexploitation of the earth's resources? By revealing long-term chains of causality, history can tell us about the structures that led to the formation of the Anthropocene. To this end, this talk will reflect on a practice of history based on the study of humans within the limits of the planet's ecology, and in their interactions with the other species that make it up.
Bio
Antoine Acker is an environmental historian at the University of Geneva working on global connections in the age of the Anthropocene, with a focus on transatlantic networks spanning between Latin America and Europe. He directs the Eccellenza professorial project AntropoSouth: Latin American Oil Revolution in the Development Century, which explores Latin American energy revolutions from a transnational perspective, and co-directs Lost Cities , a collaborative project funded by the foundation Gerda Henkel, on the legacy of urban utopias in the Amazon region. He is an affiliated researcher of the Centro Maria Sibylla Merian de Estudios Latinoamericanos Avanzados ( CALAS , Guadalajara/Bielefeld/Buenos Aires/Quito/San José ) and of the Rachel Carson Center (RCC, Munich).