Event | ‘Conversations: Pasts, Presents, and Futures of the Environmental Humanities’ – NICA PhD Council
Date: 29 November 2022
Time: 17:00-19:00
Location: VOX POP. Address: BG 3 – Binnengasthuisstraat 9, ground floor – Amsterdam (UvA) (https://goo.gl/maps/aPAio26S6JyFUjZ28)
Organizers: NICA PhD Council.
Registration: Participants must register by sending an email to a.a.lopeznavarro@uva.nl, adding a question to the participants or a remark/comment on the topic. Please also include your university affiliation in this email.
Credits: 1 ECT ( available for PhD researchers upon registration and submission of discussion question)
The NICA PhD Council invites all NICA members and interested members of the publicto an evening of discussion on the past, present and futures of the Environmental Humanities. If the study of the environment has often been seen as the province of the natural and social sciences, researchers engaged in the Environmental Humanities are bringing vital new perspectives to the study of the Anthropocene by shedding light on the past, current and future relationships between human beings and the environment. The urgency to address these problems, causes and consequences has been felt and examined across a range of disciplines, from literature and the arts to philosophy and history.
As ecological crises intensify and are experienced unevenly around the world, how must the humanities adapt its methods and propose new questions? How do empirical and theoretical challenges vary between disciplines, and where do they meet? What can we learn from natural systems, places, and ecologies, and what are the distinctive contributions that the humanities can make to envisaging alternative futures?
Come join us in taking stock of the state of the Environmental Humanities in the Netherlands and beyond, and addressing pertinent questions with leading scholars from a range of disciplines during an engaging and inspiring evening with discussions, drinks, and snacks.
Confirmed Speakers
Jeff Diamanti is Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities (Cultural Analysis & Philosophy) at the University of Amsterdam. His first book, Climate and Capital in the Age of Petroleum: Locating Terminal Landscapes (Bloomsbury 2021) tracks the political and media ecology of fossil fuels across the extractive and logistical spaces that connect remote territories like Greenland to the economies of North America and Western Europe. His new research, Bloom Ecologies, details the return to natural philosophy in the marine and atmospheric sciences studying the interactive dynamics of the cryosphere and hydrosphere in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. Diamanti has edited a number of book and journal collections including Contemporary Marxist Theory (Bloomsbury 2014); Materialism and the Critique of Energy (MCM’ Press 2018); Energy Culture (West Virginia University Press 2019); Bloomsbury Companion to Marx (2018); and a special issue of Reviews in Cultural Theory on “Energy Humanities.” Forthcoming editorial work includes the Elemental Solarities book collection (Punctum Press) with Cymene Howe and Amelia Moore, and a special issue of Postmodern Culture on “Field Theory.” He co-directs the ASCA Political Ecologies Seminar with Joost de Bloois, and with Amanda Boetzkes, he co-organizes “At the Moraine,” an ongoing research project on the political ecology of glacial retreat in the Arctic. With Fred Carter, he co-directs the FieldARTS residency in Amsterdam, NL.
Patricia Pisters is professor of film at the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam. She is one of the founding editors of the Open Access journal Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies. She was scholar in residence at EYE Filmmuseum Netherlands and research fellow at Cinepoetic at the Freie Universitat Berlin. Publications include The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working with Deleuze in Film Theory (Stanford University Press, 2003); and The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture (Stanford University Press, 2012). Her latest book New Blood in Contemporary Cinema: Women Directors and the Poetics of Horror appeared with Edinburgh University Press in 2020. She writes about the role of film and media in respect to (collective) consciousness. Her current teaching and research focus are on psychedelic aesthetics and on elemental media theory. An edited volume of Deleuze & Guattari Studies on Deleuze and Guattari and the psychedelic renaissance will appear in 2023. See for articles, her blog, audio-visual material and other information also www.patriciapisters.com
Cristobal Bonelli is an Associate Professor of Anthropology (UvA) trained at the intersections of social anthropology, clinical psychology and science and technology studies (STS). He currently holds an ERC Starting Grant for the project ‘Worlds of Lithium: A multi-sited and transnational study of transitions towards post-fossil fuel societies’. The project is an anthropological study of the replacement of fossil fuel transport, with a new fleet of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries. www.worldsoflithium.eu. He teaches courses such as The Politics of Sustainability: Environments, Cultures, Materials and Environments, Alterities and the Anthropological Imagination.
Lisa Doeland is a teacher at both the Radboud University and the University of Amsterdam, teaching courses in ethics and contemporary issues, such as waste, ecology, the Anthropocene and apocalypticism. She has a background in both Literary Studies and Philosophy and has a soft spot for the uncanny, the monstrous, and the figure of the detective. Her research interests are critical theory, psychoanalytic thought, deconstruction, object-oriented theories such as ANT, OOO and new materialism, en (dark) ecophilosophy. In her PhD research, she explores the myriad ways in which we are haunted by these things we call “waste” and in so doing critically reflect on Modernity and its outcasts. In May 2023, her new book Apocalypsofie (Apocalyspohy) will be published in Dutch.
Miriam Sentler is a contemporary artist based in the Netherlands. She graduated cum laude from the University of Amsterdam (r.MA Artistic Research) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht (BFA Fine Arts) and received a certificate in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of Arts London. Sentler showed her work at (amongst others): Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam (NL), Looiersgracht 60 Amsterdam (NL), RADIUS, Centre for Art & Ecology, Delft (NL), LVR Landesmuseum Bonn (DE), Museum Bommel van Dam Venlo (NL), MACRO Museum for Contemporary Art Rome (IT), MKE Barcsay Hall Budapest (HU) and Art Rotterdam (NL). She was artist in residence at USF Verftet Bergen (NO), Knockvologan Studies (UK), RAVI Liége (BE), Exploded View – KNAW/ Parco dell Appia Antica Rome (IT) and Jester (f.k.a. CIAP/FLACC) Genk (BE). Sentler’s work emphasizes the continuous changing of environments, focusing on the cultural and environmental legacy of (fossil fuel) industries and the modern era. In her work, she often deals with questions of belonging. Through residencies and working periods, she looks for fitting mediums and methods to highlight (dis)appearances in changing landscapes, next to collaborating with other artists, scientists, and inhabitants. She founded the interdisciplinary artistic research project Deep Time Agency together with artist Wouter Osterholt in 2020, aiming to bring back a sense of belonging to “erased” (post)industrial landscapes. https://miriamsentler.com/
Pablo Ampuero-Ruiz is a social anthropologist and historian associated with the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Since October 2021, he has been a member of the ERC-funded project ‘Worlds of Lithium’, led by Dr Cristóbal Bonelli, where he focuses on the economic and sociotechnological transformations around the lithium battery industry in China. Dr Ampuero-Ruiz received his PhD in 2021 from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale and the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. Besides his current work on lithium batteries, his research has explored diverse aspects of Chinese society and Sino-Latin American Relations, and he has taught and researched in several South American, Chinese, and European institutions. Dr Ampuero-Ruiz is also a photo-documentalist, with part of his work published by the National Geographic, and hosts the Spanish-language podcast ‘Todo Bajo el Cielo’.