As part of this year’s Doing IPS Switzerland Symposium, we are delighted to invite you to the talk “Vulnerability in the Anthropocene: Bodies, Infrastructures, and Temporality” by Dr. Alejandro Esguerra, moderated by Professor Michelle Weitzel

We have entered the Anthropocene, a new epoch in which human activity has become a geological force. Climate change is a clear indication of this new situation. Emissions produced by our infrastructures of travel or commerce begin to change the climate with severe implications for humans around the world and especially in the Global South. Vulnerability has become a key term in this debate because it signals the uneven consequences of environmental degradation. However, critical scholarship and activists have pointed to the paternalizing effects of the term vulnerability in global governance. Too often, to declare someone as vulnerable evokes actions of “saving” without listening. This deprives people of their agency. In acknowledging this critique, this talk explores a second notion and practice of vulnerability. Dr. Esguerra investigates vulnerability as a force in practices of climate resistance. Many of the more radical climate activists use the vulnerability of their bodies to protest against the insufficient climate policies of their countries. In this reading, vulnerability turns into an agentic mode of politics embedded in theories and practices of civil disobedience.

This is a hybrid event, and the number of available seats is limited.

 register online             register in-person 

Speaker

Alejandro Esguerra is senior researcher at the Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe), Germany and founding member of the Institute for Studies of Science at Bielefeld University (ISOS). He obtained his PhD in Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin and held international visiting positions at Cornell University, Örebro and Linköping University. Among his latest articles are Objects of Expertise. The Socio-Material Politics of Expert Knowledge in Global Governance (Global Studies Quarterly 2025) and Representing across scales. How do Indigenous youth activists translate claims to international institutions (together with Henrike Knappe and Lukas Ziebell, Globalizations 2025). His book is titled The Politics of Beginning: The Origin of Private Authority in the Process of Translation (University of Michigan Press 2025).

MODERATOR

Michelle Weitzel, Professor, Geneva Graduate Institute. 

The event is hosted by DoingIPS Switzerland with the generous support of the Global Governance Centre, the International Relations / Political Science Department, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).