The previous date for the event has been updated. Please refer to the information below. It is accurate.
Date: Tuesday, 1 February 2022
Time: 15:30hrs CET
Venue: Online, Zoom
Please register below to receive a zoom link shortly.
We are excited to announce our second lecture in the series with Dr. Dagomar Degroot.
The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope promises to open new frontiers in the search for intelligent life beyond Earth. Yet there is nothing new about this search. In the nineteenth century it even seemed as though the search had culminated in the discovery of alien life on a world neighbouring our own: Mars. Scientists thought they had uncovered canals crisscrossing the planet that revealed a civilisation struggling for water in a changing climate. It was a sensational idea – one that fascinated millions, and would have been impossible without changes in environments on Earth and Mars. These changes, which have not been considered before, reveal the extent to which our search for life beyond Earth is shaped by how we understand ourselves, on Earth.
About Dagomar Degroot: Dr. Degroot is an associate professor of environmental history at Georgetown University. His first book, The Frigid Golden Age, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018 and named by the Financial Times as one of the ten best history books of that year. His next book, Ripples in the Cosmic Ocean, is under contract with Harvard University Press and Viking. He publishes equally in historical and scientific journals, most recently for Nature, Climate of the Past, Environmental History, and Environment and History. He is co-director of the Climate History Network and HistoricalClimatology.com, co-host of the popular podcast Climate History, and he writes for a popular audience in for example the Washington Post, Aeon Magazine, and The Conversation.
Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam 