Agenda

Planetary Modelling: From Historical Epistemologies to Political Ecologies 

Adam Wickberg and Thomas Turnbull present Historical Epistemologies of Planetary Modelling (HEPM), a project between the KTH Centre of Excellence for Anthropocene History, Stockholm, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. The project collates and advances the history of Earth Systems Science (ESS). ESS involves computational, model-derived analyses of the planet’s future. In this event, the project’s leaders will discuss their work with Ca’ Foscari-based collaborators Giulia Rispoli, Matteo Pasquinelli, and Pietro Omodeo. 

It is often claimed that ESS provides essential knowledge that can inform environmental policy and behavior change, but as yet, the relationship between evidence and action has been unanalyzed. Society’s lack of progress in responding to the environmental crisis over the past decades happened while ESS has become the dominant discipline informing these responses. ESS has a distinct politics, which more often seeks to sustain rather than transform extant ways of life, as the socioeconomic goals embedded within integrated assessment models demonstrate. Science largely emerges from the world’s wealthiest nations and can be a means to maintain their geopolitical supremacy. Seeking to advance a critical ecological epistemology of ESS, HEPM is concerned with ESS’s relation to state power, surveillance technologies, and political relations. 

BIO:

Thomas Turnbull completed a PhD in geography at the University of Oxford and has since worked at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. He has published in the Journal of Historical Geography, History & Technology, Contemporary European History, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Environmental History, and Environmental Humanities. 

Adam Wickberg is a docent in History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He is the co-director of the  Excellence Centre for Anthropocene History and the deputy director of the KTH Environmental humanities lab. Between 2021-2023 he was a visiting research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science.