Mathias Thaler (Incoming Fellow 2024-25)

Chair of Political Theory, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh

During his time at SCAS as a Fellow in the Fall of 2024, Mathias Thaler will work on the project Other
Ends of the World are Possible: Exploring the Arts and Politics of Environmental Breakdown. The
escalating ecological crisis makes it imperative not only to picture positive alternatives to the status quo,
but also to ponder the real possibility of systemic failure and collapse. Against the view of catastrophist
thinking as inherently defeatist, this interdisciplinary project examines the potential of various depictions
and narrations of climate disaster across different art forms to beneficially inform political responses to
anthropogenic climate change. Methodologically, the project brings into a conversation three academic
disciplines that grapple with the broad topic of systemic failure and collapse in the context of the Anthro-
pocene: eco-theology, political theory and the environmental humanities.