Linking back to the Winter School 2013 and the theme of posthumanism, I’d like to invite those of you working on human-animal and human-machine relations and intersections between the humanities, medicine and technoscience more broadly, to consider participating in this international conference and doctoral workshop. Further info: link

When: 4-6 June, 2015
Where: Geneva (t.b.c.), Switzerland
Deadline for abstract submission: 30 September, 2014

Guest speakers:
Jeffrey Cohen (Medieval and Early Modern Studies)
Stefan Herbrechter (Cultural Studies, Englit)
Margrit Shildrick (Gender Studies, Bioethics)
Cary Wolfe (Animal Studies, EngLit)

World of Matter is multimedia project providing an open access archive on the global ecologies of resource exploitation and circulation. It comprises visual practitioners and theorists conducting long-term research on material geographies, who engage ideas and practices from art, spatial culture, urbanism, anthropology, art history, cultural theory, photojournalism, activism, publishing, curating and education.
Its main initiator is Swiss artist Ursula Biemann whom some of you know from the conference Art With(out) Borders that Winter School participants Tanja Klankert and Erin Rice organized last year.
Project website: http://www.worldofmatter.net

A shot from the pulpit – watch guest lecturer Rosi Braidotti from Utrecht University answering the question why matter matters

The ethics of Yahya ibn Adi. An ethical debate between Jewish, Muslim and Christian thinkers in Baghdad of the early middle ages? (working title)

Baghdad of the 10^th century – a melting pot of cultures, religions and scientific scholarship, as well as the centre of governance of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Buyid rulers– seem to offer the intellectual platform for some influential philosophers to conceive elementary writings of moral philosophy. The contemporary thought in those days was reflected in a brisk culture of polemics between and within different religious groups. The reception of Hellenistic philosophy among others made up the methodical as well as the topical setting. Thereto pertaining the gnomological collections (moral quotes and anecdotes of the ancients), moral tractates attributed to Galen and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which where translated from Greek and Syriac into Arabic as early as the 9^th and the beginning of the 10^th century. At least since the dissemination of these writings among the dependants of the Arabic speaking community, one can assume a debate in moral philosophy, which reached far beyond the various circles of scholarship. Read more

Companies with international ambitions are increasingly becoming global players. Many of them have decided to fight for their share of the international market, or even for market leadership through such activities as company acquisition or the establishment of joint ventures, as well as by engaging in various other types of cooperation with companies abroad. Such partnerships are now more rapidly attainable than ever before, thanks to modern media of communication and increasing mobility, among other things. Consequently, these global players have a constant need to recreate their corporate culture and identity. Read more