The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture

Every spring, the Research Department invites an international scholar of excellence to give the annual Neale Wheeler Watson lecture.

This years lecture was held may 11 at Svenska Akademiens Börssal, Källargränd 4, Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden:



High-res poster: [pdf]

Bruno Latour, Professor and vice-president for research at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris:

"May Nature Be Recomposed? A Few Questions of Cosmopolitics"

Abstract: “During the modernist period, human and political life was supposed to unfold under a background of nature: while the foreground had to be pacified and composed, the background was supposed to be already unified. With the invasion of ecological crisis, it seems now clear that both society and nature have to be recomposed. Hence the troubling notion of cosmopolitics understood here as the politics of producing a unified cosmos.”

A revised version of the lecture:
An attempt at writing a 'Compositionist Manifesto' [pdf]

The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture 2010 was also filmed:

1. Introduction by Olov Amelin, Director of the Nobel Museum, and Paul Sjöblom, Head of the Nobel Museum Research Department [mp3] :



2. Bruno Latour - "May Nature Be Recomposed? A Few Questions of Cosmopolitics" [mp3] :



3. Bruno Latour in questions and answers session with the audience. [mp3]


More information: forskning@nobel.se


Past lectures:


2008



Professor Elinor Ostrom, Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington: "How Do Institutions for Collective Action Evolve?"

Lecture: [pdf]
High-res poster: [pdf]


2007



Professor Simon Schaffer, Cambridge University: "Is Seeing Believing? Why Public Experiments Often Fail and Sometimes Work"

Lecture: [pdf]
High-res poster: [jpg]


2006 



Professor Ulrich Beck, Ludwig-Maximilian-universitetet, München: "Understanding Real Europe: A Cosmopolitan Perspective"

High-res poster: [jpg]


2005



Professor Rosalind Williams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): "Science and Technology Studies: Future Horizons"

High-res poster: [jpg]


2004



Professor John Harley Warner, medicinhistoriker vid Yale University: "Aesthetics, Identity and the Grounding of Modern Medicine"

High-res poster: [jpg]