Grounding Value in the Anthropocene: Online roundtable with organizers and authors

October 31 (Monday) 15.30-16.30 (Helsinki) 14.30-15.30 (CET), online

Moderation: Simone Schleper (Maastricht University)

Participants:

Iva Pesa (University of Groningen), Dan Finch-Race (University of Bologna), Nicola Thomas (Lancaster University), Leo Steeds (University of Warwick), Anna Costantino (University of Greenwich), Somayyeh Amiri (Shahid Beheshti University), Alice Cunningham (Artist, Bristol)

For ZOOM Link Register HERE the day before the event. You will receive the zoom link an hour before the program begins.


The concept of the Anthropocene confronts us with many questions of value related to the central role of humanity in shaping the planet. It is important to pay attention to what is valued, how, and by whom. However, practices of valuing are not consistent within societies or between them, and different values can even complicate cooperation when it comes to solving environmental and social challenges.

The proposed roundtable brings together authors and organizers of the recently launched website and interdisciplinary, open access educational resource www.groundingvalue.org.

The website presents research on value making in the age of the Anthropocene from around the world for the benefit of students from a range of subject areas. Its aim is to introduce questions of value in the Anthropocene through a series of ‘object lessons’, presented through texts and visuals. Each lesson addresses a distinctive set of value-making practices through engagement with a real or imagined object.

The material on the website was workshopped in November 2021 and shaped by the visual artist Alice Cunningham, thanks to funding from the British Academy and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

We would like to use the roundtable to reflect on the creative process underlying the website’s content (two online workshops with pre- and post-submissions, including ‘object lessons’, multisensory representation exercises guided by Alice Cunningham, and group discussions), as well its potential uses in undergraduate teaching.

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