Events 2023-24

Upcoming Events, Autumn 2023

28 September. CEREMONY & LECTURE
An Event in Honour of the New Pro Futura Scientia Fellows.
By invitation only.

3 October, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Arthur Asseraf, Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor of History, University of Cambridge
When Race Cannot Be Said: Social Scientists and Rumors in Postwar France
Zoom Webinar: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/62430992444
ABSTRACT:
Most people agree that racism exists, but nobody wants to be called a racist. This is a fairly new
understanding of how racism works: when did this ‘racism without racists’ emerge? This seminar
will trace this process through one conflict of interpretation over a racist incident in 1960s France.
By looking at the events and analysis of the ‘rumor of Orléans’ in 1969, we will see how understand-
ings of race changed, and made race into something fundamentally diffuse that remains with us today,
something like a ‘rumor’. By drawing on French examples, we will see how anonymous citizens, state
actors and social scientists analyzed an ambiguous series of events to coproduce a new understanding
of racism as fundamentally diffuse that remains with us today. 

5-6 October. SYMPOSIUM
Tools, Trades, and Technologies - Exploring Prehistory through Archaeolinguistics
ABSTRACT:
With the symposium Tools, Trades, and Technologies – Exploring Prehistory through Archaeolinguistics,
we aim to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue, providing a deeper understanding of prehistory through
the lens of archaeolinguistics. Topics range from wealth acquisition and trade emergence in early Indo-
European societies to Tocharian agricultural tools, and Anatolian writing terminology. By intertwining
linguistic and archaeological evidence, we seek to learn more about the Indo-European speakers and
their material culture.

Download the programme >> (PDF)
Pre-registration is required for the event by 2 October 2023 at the latest.
Register here >>

This is an event of the research programme LAMP – Languages and Myths of Prehistory and
the Centre for Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture at Stockholm University, in
collaboration with SCAS.

10 October, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Desiree Fields, Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Digital Experiments with Landed Property: Robots, Race, and Rent
Zoom Webinar: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/62430992444
ABSTRACT:
“Robot landlords are buying up houses”. Headlines like this one are not unusual these days. What are we
to make of digital experiments with landed property? We should not mistake the technological novelty of
such digital experiments for a break with the geographic and historical specificities of property and infor-
mation politics. The yoking of property to modernity and civilization makes technological progress a fun-
damental part of how relationships to land are constituted and reconstituted, and in whose interests,
throughout global capitalism. In this seminar, I situate 21st century housing market technologies within
sedimented relations of landed property in the United States. I first show that the history of property inno-
vation in the US is also a history of racialized wealth accumulation and dispossession. Second, I interpret
current anxieties about “robot landlords” as anxieties about how the shifting landscape of property owner-
ship appears to threaten the unearned economic benefits associated with racial dominance. Despite claims
of disrupting and revolutionizing the housing market, digital experiments with landed property are insepa-
rable from the role technological progress has historically played in organizing relationships with land that
serve dominant interests.

11-12 October. SYMPOSIUM
Writing Transcultural Literary History in a Globalized World
By invitation only.

17 October, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Mikiya Koyagi, Barbro Klein Fellow, SCAS.
Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
The Oneness of Asian Religions: Shinto, Buddhism, and Islam in Imperial Japan
Zoom Webinar: TBC
ABSTRACT: -

26 October. SCAS Schedule for "A WEEK ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM" - HYBRID EVENT
10:15–12:00
The VUIAS Initiative – A Joint Effort in Founding an Institute for Advanced Study for Ukraine
Daniel Schönpflug, Head of Academic Programs, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Professor of History,
Freie Universität Berlin. Co-Chair, Virtual Ukraine Institute for Advanced Study (VUIAS)
~
16:30–18:00
On Academic Integrity
Sverker Sörlin, Non-resident Long-term Fellow for Programmes on Environmental Humanities, SCAS.
Professor of Environmental History, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

Zoom Webinar: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/63453675775 (both events)

"A Week on Academic Freedom" is organized in collaboration with Democracy and Higher Education
and HERO. To view the full programme (23-27 Oct), see A Week on Academic Freedom website, or
download the programme here (PDF)

7 November, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Ester Oras, Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor of Archaeology and Analytical Chemistry, University of Tartu
Introduction of Farming in the Eastern Baltic: Parallel Worlds and Mixed Economies
Zoom Webinar: TBC
ABSTRACT: -

9-10 November. WORKSHOP
Global Perspectives on Timber Colonialism
More information will follow.

14 November, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Jerome de Groot, Fellow, SCAS.
Professor of Literature and Culture, University of Manchester
Race, Genetics, History
Zoom Webinar: TBC
ABSTRACT: -

21 November, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Gunnel Ekroth, Fellow, SCAS.
Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University
Eating with the Gods? Preparation and Consumption of Food and the Use of Greek
Sanctuary Space
Zoom Webinar: TBC
ABSTRACT: -

28 November, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
John Stinchcombe, Natural Sciences Fellow, SCAS.
Distinguished Professor of Ecological Genetics, University of Toronto
Understanding Natural Selection: Challenges and Prospects
Zoom Webinar: TBC
ABSTRACT: -

5 December, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Hannah Field, Fellow, SCAS.
Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature, University of Sussex
Rejected and Uncollected: Legal Deposit, Negative Bibliography, and Cultural
Value in Nineteenth-Century England
Zoom Webinar: TBC
ABSTRACT: -

12 December, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Jonathan Kimmelman, Fellow, SCAS.
James McGill Professor of Biomedical Ethics, McGill University
The Moral Economy of Drug Development
Zoom Webinar: TBC
ABSTRACT: -

The programme is subject to change.
The programme for the spring of 2024 will be available in due course.

Previous Events, Autumn 2023

26 September, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Dieter Plehwe, Senior Global Horizons Fellow, SCAS.
Senior Research Fellow, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
Privatdozent, University of Kassel
Transnational “Strategy Mobility”: The Role of Think Tanks and Their Constituencies in
Climate Policy Controversies
Zoom Webinar: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/62430992444
ABSTRACT:
With the time left for decarbonization getting short before catastrophic levels of global warming
for many species become reality, political conflict with regard to ambitious climate change mitigation
has become more intense rather than less. How can we explain this paradox? Beyond most common
explanations focusing on nation states, which divides countries in leaders and laggards in global
climate policy negotiations, private sector interest groups and their allies within and across borders
as well as transnational circuits and strategies of climate policy obstruction need to be brought into
the picture more strongly. Focusing on the global Atlas network of neoliberal and conservative think
tanks and their corporate and academic constituencies, the paper examines proposals and controver-
sies at the intersection of energy and labor market policy. Early in the new millennium, the shift from
fossil to renewable sources of electricity generation in a number of countries was additionally support-
ed with arguments related to positive labor market effects of energy transition suggesting a double
dividend– ecological and social. Efforts to add momentum to international renewables’ policy transfer
ran into intense opposition around the time of the great financial crisis, however, when additional public
investment became available for economic stimulus programs, some of which earmarked for the pro-
motion of renewable energy. As a consequence of internationally orchestrated campaigns, successful
programs have been aborted in a few countries. Technocratic perspectives of policy learning and policy
mobility fail to take coordinated action across borders in opposition to policy transfer into account,
which turns international policy mobility into global policy conflict. The evidence gathered on the multi-
country origins, strategies and arenas of campaigns directed against “green jobs” supports the need to
add the category of “strategy mobility” and “strategy learning” to the roaster of concepts required to
properly address the global climate policy conflict constellation, and similar patterns and developments
in a number of other policy areas.

19 September, 10:15 a.m. SEMINAR - HYBRID EVENT
Anat Biegon, Natural Sciences Fellow, SCAS.
Professor of Radiology and Neurology, Renaissance School of Medicine, Stony Brook University
The Long Road to Equity for Women in Medicine
Zoom Webinar: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/62430992444
ABSTRACT:
Women have been receiving inferior medical treatment relative to men from the dawn of modern
medicine. This is reflected in higher proportion of late or missed diagnosis leading to worse outcome,
in higher rates of adverse effects resulting  from medical treatment and in frequent dismissal of
women’s complaints. The reasons for this are complex, involving physiological as well as social
factors. The talk will examine these reasons in some detail and provide support for the idea that
the end of  long road to equity for women in medicine can be reached through education of the
next generations of medical practitioners on the specific factors impacting women’s health.

24 August. SYMPOSIUM
Forum for the Future of Neuroscience: What Will the Next 10 Years of Neuroscience
Look Like?
By invitation only.