Environmental History IV symposium: Learning from the Unknown

Amita Baviskar is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at Ashoka University. Currently, she is working on food and changing agrarian environments in Central India and studying the social experience of air pollution and heat in Delhi.

Laurens Bekemans is an architect and co-founder of Brussels-based BC architects & studies—an architectural practice and non-profit research entity and materials laboratory—and most recently, BC materials—an urban mining company that repurposes construction site waste. BC BC is BC architects, studies and materials. BC stands for Brussels Cooperation and points to how BC grew – embedded within place and people. Started in 2012 as a hybrid office, BC is manoeuvring the boundaries of architecture in a doers manner. With three different legal entities, the team engages in a variety of experimental projects through which it designs bioregional and circular architecture, researches educational and construction processes and produces new building materials using local waste streams such as excavated earth.

Matthieu Duperrex is a philosopher and associate professor at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Marseille. In his publications and artistic practices, he explores the minerality of Modernity, conducting inquiries into altered landscapes at the forefront of anthropogenic change and the resurgence of the wild. His books include Voyages en sol incertain. Enquête dans les deltas du Rhône et du Mississippi (Wildproject, 2019 - republished 2024) and La rivière et le bulldozer (Premier Parallèle, 2022).

Magdalena Grüner is a scholar of the entanglements of art and ocean science in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 2024, she submitted her thesis entitled “Abyssal Visions: The Science/Fictions of the Bermuda Oceanographic Expeditions (1929-1940)” at the University of Hamburg, under the supervision of Prof. Margit Kern and Prof. Rachael DeLue. She was predoctoral fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2023-2024 and a Scholar in Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 2025. She will begin her postdoctoral appointment at the University of Southern California's Society of Fellows in the Humanities in August 2025.

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are filmmakers and artists. They question the fabrication of images and representations, the construction of the imaginary, and the writing of history. Their works create thematic and formal links between photography, video, performance, installation, sculpture, and cinema, whether documentary or fictional. Their major works include Memory Box (2021), Ismyrna (2016), The Lebanese Rocket Society (2012), Je Veux Voir (2008), and A Perfect Day (2005). They have had solo exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, Haus der Kunst in Munich, MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Guggenheim in New York, among others. They have participated in numerous biennials, including Taipei, Venice, Istanbul, Lyon, Sharjah, Kochi, Gwangju, and the Paris Triennale.

Éric Daniel-Lacombe is an architect and Professor of the “Nouvelles urbanités face aux risques naturels: des abris ouverts” chair. He is co-designer of the French pavilion for the 19th Venice Biennale, for a project entitled Vivre avec / Living with. He won first prize at the Cemex Building Award in 2007 for a house in a flood-prone area in Paris, and the Grand Prix for development in flood-prone areas in 2015 for the Matra district in Romorantin. He is the author of Vers une architecture pour la santé du vivant (2023), a book that defends architecture as an art form, driven by a desire for solidarity between humans and non-humans.

Christophe Leclercq is a teacher, critic, and researcher in contemporary art history. His research primarily focuses on the design and study of archives related to contemporary creation (Experiments in Art and Technology Datascape). He also headed the ERC AIME project (“Une enquête sur les modes d'existence”), directed by Bruno Latour from 2011 to 2015, before co-curating and co-editing the exhibition and catalog Reset Modernity! (2016, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe / MIT Press) with him.

Dr. Eleni "Lenio" Myrivili is the Global Chief Heat Officer for the Atlantic Council and UN-Habitat, dedicated to advancing heat resilience in cities worldwide. Recognized among Nature’s 10 people who helped shape science in 2023, today she’s on the BoD of EU Mission Adaptation and WEF’s Global Risk Assessment, and an advisor to GCoM on adaptation and Resilience.

Former Deputy Mayor of Athens, she led the city’s Urban Resilience Plan, securing €55M in EIB funding. A Perry World House Fellow at UPenn and former Loeb Fellow at Harvard, she holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University.

Grégory Quenet is one of the pioneers of environmental history and humanities in France. Since 2012, he has been, and still is, the first and only professor in environmental history in France, at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Paris-Saclay). Founder of the French Environmental Humanities Platform, he organized the 8th Congress of the European Society for Environmental History in Versailles in 2015.

Paul-André Rosental is a Professor at Sciences Po, where he heads the History Center. His research covers the entire field of “biopolitics,” focusing on the history of social, demographic, and health policies. He is notably the author of Destins de l'eugénisme (Seuil, 2016) [Eugenics Destiny] and Les Sentiers Invisibles. Familles et migrations dans la France du XIXe siècle (2024) [Invisible Pathways. Families and Migrations in 19th Century France].

Bas Smets, born in 1975 in Belgium, is a landscape architect with a multidisciplinary background that has shaped his unique approach to creating innovative and sustainable urban spaces. He founded his firm in 2007 in Brussels which has since built over 50 international projects, including the LUMA Parc des Ateliers in Arles, the Thurn & Taxis Park in Brussels, the Sunken Garden in London, and the Himara Waterfront in Albania. In 2022, Smets won the prestigious international competition to redesign the public space surrounding Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. 

Smets' approach is characterized by his concept of "Augmented Landscapes," which utilizes natural processes to create new microclimates. He often collaborates with artists and scientists, reflecting his commitment to interdisciplinary innovation.

2023, Smets was appointed Professor in Practice at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University, where he continues to explore inventive ways to transform urban environments into ecological systems capable of mitigating climate change. His visionary approach to landscape architecture offers a promising path forward for making cities more resilient to the challenges of the climate crisis.

Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (est. 2012). Together with curator and dramaturg Florian Malzacher, he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (est. 2018), and with human rights lawyer Jan Fermon, he initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook (begun 2020). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza, Staal founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (est. 2021), and with artist Laure Prouvost, he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union. Exhibition projects include Art of the Stateless State, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 2015; After Europe, State of Concept, Athens, 2016; The Scottish-European Parliament, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 2018; and Museum as Parliament (with the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2018–. His projects have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, as well as the 7th Berlin Biennale, 31st Bienal de São Paulo, and 12th Taipei Biennial. Publications include Nosso Lar, Brasília (Jap Sam Books, 2014), Stateless Democracy (co-edited with Dilar Dirik and Renée In der Maur, BAK, 2015), Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective (Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2018), and Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2019). Staal completed his PhD research on propaganda art within the PhDArts program of Leiden University, the Netherlands.

David Wengrow is Professor of Comparative Archaeology at University College London. His research explores fundamental questions in human history and culture, including the dynamics of social change and the roots of inequality. He is the co-author of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), which was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for political writing and winner of the 20th Wenjin Book Award.