This conference inaugurates the second residency within the framework of the Chair "Living through the Lens of Planetary Boundaries." It opens a reflection on habitability conceived from a long-term perspective, combining Earth sciences and anthropology.
Comparisons with research in paleoenvironmental studies and participatory archaeology, notably in the Bolivian Amazon, demonstrate that any reflection on habitability can no longer be separated from the consideration of deep time. Along lakes and rivers, sediments preserve histories in which the trajectories of human collectives and alluvial plains intersect, revealing unexpected forms of continuity between nature and culture (Rostain & Betancourt, 2025). If the futures of human collectives and the Earth are to be thought together, human history thus becomes sedimentary, and the future acquires an ancestral dimension (Futur Ancestral is the title of a work by philosopher Ailton Krenak, published in Brazil in 2022 by Companhia das Letras). How can these dimensions be integrated into a conception of living in the present? This lecture will present ongoing research on participatory science methods that bridge Earth sciences and anthropology, aiming to better understand contemporary habitability.
Verónica Calvo Valenzuela is a member of the GSRL. An anthropologist and political scientist specializing in the Andes, she is the 2025–2026 resident of the Chair "Living through the Lens of Planetary Boundaries," hosted by the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies in partnership with ENSA/NU, AURAN, and SCE KERAN.
from 6.30pm to 8pm
at the école nationale supérieure d'architecture de Nantes - 6 quai François Mitterrand
Inaugural conference of the "Living within planetary limits" chair
Free admission
In French
