[SydPhil] REMINDER: HPS Research Seminar, Monday 2nd March 2026 at 5.30pm

[HPS Admin]

School of History and Philosophy of Science
RESEARCH SEMINAR
[The University of Sydney]
[https://d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20260223/16/66/f0/75/412d1c1f66a3c48a2cc1b8a7_1276x852.jpg]
Planetary Health beyond Spaceship Earth?
Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney)

Dates: Monday, 2/3/2026
Start Time: 5:30pm
Venue: Carslaw Building (F07), Level 2, Room 275
How to register: Free, no registration required
Website: https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/EFNoC4QOPEi9v34QXU3HNI49qCj?domain=t.e2ma.net>

Abstract: For more than ten years, concern about the impacts on human health of degradation of the earth’s life-support systems has been expressed in terms of ‘planetary health’. The current and future effects of climate change on health and well-being thus come under the rubric of planetary health. We realise now that the health of all species depends on ecosystem health, now scaled up to encompass the planet. But what ideas shaped this understanding of our dependence on the planet as a semi-closed feedback system? Many of the concepts of planetary health - including ‘life-support systems’, ‘safe operating systems,’ and even ‘planetary boundaries’ – derive from 1960s systems theories and cybernetics, as developed in the NASA space program. Planetary health is still largely confined by our sense of living on spaceship earth. How might we come to imagine planetary health otherwise, beyond the limits of a closed system?


Bio: Warwick Anderson is Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Discipline of Anthropology and the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. He was formerly an ARC Laureate Fellow in the History Department at Sydney. A co-conspirator in postcolonial studies of science, he has written extensively on science, race, and colonialism; medicine and white masculinity; kuru, cannibalism, and sorcerer scientists; and autoimmunity and tolerance of self. His current research is focused on disease ecology and planetary health. In 2023, he was awarded the John Desmond Bernal Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science, in recognition of lifetime achievement in science and technology studies. In 2025, he received the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize for lifetime achievement in public health history from the American Public Health Association.

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