The Anthropocene as Rupture

Australian academic Professor Clive Hamilton will be discussing how over the last two decades the new discipline of Earth System science has taught us to think of the Earth in an entirely new way during the latest Geography Research Seminar, taking place on Wednesday 24 May.

Essential to this new thinking is an understanding of the arrival of the Anthropocene as a rupture in Earth history. The dominant and opposing conceptions of the Earth – as passive resource for economic progress and as victim of exploitation – are both rendered redundant.

For the social sciences and humanities the arrival of the new geological epoch means a rupture in human history, one that calls on us to rethink everything.

Clive Hamilton is an Australian academic and author. His books include Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change and Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering.

He was the founder and executive director of the Australia Institute, the nation’s leading progressive think tank. In 2008 he was appointed Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Stuart University in Canberra. He has held various visiting academic positions, including at Yale University, the University of Oxford and Sciences Po in Paris. 

The seminar, ‘The Anthropocene as Rupture’, takes place on Wednesday 24 May at 1pm - 2pm in Bennett LT10.