Next Smuts Lecture Series
October 2025: Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty
This Planetary Life, Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty (Chicago) October 2025
Since the nineteenth century, and especially since the Cold War, economic growth and access to cheap energy have created infrastructures for boosting human population, living standards, and longevity. Global ideas about the good life for humans and how best to support these aspirations assume narratives of continuous growth. The same infrastructures, however, have interfered with the long-term earth-system processes that support all forms of life, including that of humans. The three lectures analyse this contradiction that constitutes the climate crisis and highlight the sense of facing a predicament that marks all climate debates - from politics to policy.
Eventbrite links to book onto these events are below
Lecture 1 (23rd October) https://smuts1.eventbrite.com
Lecture 2 (24th October) https://smuts2.eventbrite.com
Lecture 3 (29th October) https://smuts3.eventbrite.com
All three lectures will be held at 5:30pm in The Auditorium, Cripps Court, Magdalene College.