2020 Assailing the Anthropocene Workshop

Assailing the Anthropocene: the ethics of disruptive innovations for surviving our climate-changed world

The workshop will examine ethical and sociopolitical concerns raised by “disruptive innovations” being developed to respond to impacts of the unprecedented environmental changes that mark the onset of the Anthropocene.  “Disruptive innovations” are broadly conceived to include novel initiatives for sustainable adaptation and social change, civil and ecological engineering strategies, applications of technologies for environmental protection and damage mitigation, geoengineering strategies, and bioengineering strategies (e.g. gene editing).  The workshop will bring together scholars working on projects on the ethical and more broadly normative aspects of such innovations.  The workshop will produce an edited volume containing essays that can inform debates, and policy and legal decision-making, about urgent issues like mitigating climate change damages, climate refugee justice, global urbanization, biodiversity banking, sustainable city design, and sociopolitical adaptation.

Keynote speakers: Sheila Jasanoff (Harvard) and Andrew Light (World Resources Institute; George Mason)

Invited speakers: Anne Barnhill (Johns Hopkins) and Zachary Piso (Dayton)

Papers from the workshop will be included in a proposal for an edited collection to be submitted to a major academic press. Past workshops have led to volumes published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Palgrave, and Routledge.

Registration is free and open to all.  Please register by October 30th, by sending your name affiliation and email address to: [email protected]

The event(s) will be held on Zoom on November 6th and 21st.  Connection information will be sent to registered participants.

The schedule of talks can be found here: 

https://www.bgsu.edu/arts-and-sciences/philosophy/workshops-and-conferences.html