Giulia Rispoli

I studied Philosophy at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” where I received my PhD in 2015, and at the Faculty of Arts of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 2015 and in 2016, I was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre Alexander Koyré and at the Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Over the last three years, I have been Visiting Scholar at the MPIWG (Dept. II), at the Centre for Complex Systems Analysis of the University of York (UK), and at the National University of Science and Technology in Moscow. My work has been mainly focused on the history of systems theories and cybernetics and on their application to the life sciences and ecology. In my MA thesis, published in 2012, I focused on the work of Russian Marxist Alexander A. Bogdanov and examined his General Science of Organization, Tektology (1913–1928). My doctoral thesis, recently published in a co-authored book, brought into focus the development of biogeochemistry in twentieth-century Russia, and the idea of co-evolution between the biosphere and the cosmic environment.

My current research deals with the history of biosphere studies and the emergence of the earth-system conception throughout the course of the twentieth century, and within the historical context of the Cold War. I explore how systems theory and cybernetics have shaped, and have been affected by, the development of global ecology—the discipline that investigates the role of humankind as an agent in the transformation of the planet.