27.05.2010
“Knowledge on the Move” and “Climate Engineering” in Heidelberg
“Knowledge on the Move” and "Climate Engineering” are the topics of two interesting summer schools for which up-and-coming scholars are invited to apply by 31 May 2010.
The summer school at the Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies from 25 to 29 July 2010 will explore the different ways in which knowledge has been historically transformed as it has moved through different regions, cultures and polities. “The global sharing of knowledge is far from being a purely modern, let alone post-modern, phenomenon,” explains the organiser of the summer school, Prof. Dr. Joachim Kurtz. “Knowledge has a long history of moving from one part of the globe to another and has always played a key role in the emergence of cultures of knowledge all around the world." The summer school lecturers, seminar and workshop leaders come from a wide array of different countries, including Israel, India and the USA. One particularly interesting component offered as part of the summer school is the course on “digital storytelling in scientific and intellectual history” which explores new methods of presenting science and philosophy with the aid of digital narrative techniques, such as podcasts and short films. The organiser is the “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” cluster of excellence at the University of Heidelberg.
The Marsilius College at the University of Heidelberg is collaborating with the University of Calgary (Canada) and the Carnegie Mellon University (USA) on the summer school entitled “Governing climate engineering” which, from 12 to 16 July 2010, will discuss the opportunities and risks implicit in systematic attempts to engineer climate changes. “Not even a drastic reduction in greenhouse gases will now be able to neutralise the impact of climate change and all the risks which such developments imply. The best we can hope for is to limit the scale of change,” emphasises Prof. Dr. Ulrich Platt from the Institute of Environmental Physics at the University of Heidelberg. Professor Platt is one of the coordinators of the research group at the Marsilius College at which scientists from various disciplines have been studying “climate engineering” technologies, policy strategies and legal instruments since mid 2009. The interdisciplinary event will be held at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg.
