Giulia Rispoli

Giulia Rispoli studied history and philosophy of science at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” where she received her PhD in 2015, and at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. Her research interests include the history and epistemology of systems theory and cybernetics, materialisms, in particular the struggle between Marxist orthodoxy and heresy in early twentieth–century Russia, and biosphere studies.

Recent publications focus on the work of Russian physician Aleksandr Bogdanov and his idea of tektological organization, the biosphere-noosphere theory as an anticipation of the Anthropocene notion, and the history of social study of science. Forthcoming articles include the development of Nuclear Winter research through the lens of environmental diplomacy and genealogies of the Earth system.

Giulia is a postdoctoral fellow in the research group “Knowledge in and of the Anthropocene” where she investigates the antecedents of the Anthropocene notion and the rise of Earth system science. Her current project examines key moments in the interaction of large-scale perspectives where systems theory was integrated with global and planetary ecology and led to the emergence of biosphere studies and ESS. Within this framework, she looks at the establishment of international scientific endeavours such as the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme (MAB) and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

She is currently working on a book manuscript exploring competing views and concepts that encapsulate the idea of human geometabolism in the twentieth century: in particular “the geosphere-biosphere” and the “Earth-system,” and how they have reflected changes in scientific methodologies (from terrestrial ecology to Earth observation system and remote sensing technologies) that in turn can explain different policy strategies in different phases of the post-war debate, the Great Acceleration, and the Cold War.

Giulia has been a visiting scholar at the Moscow State University and the York Center for Complex Systems Analysis of the University of York, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Muséum natural d’Histoire naturelle and the Centre Alexander Koyre in Paris. She has taught at Indiana University, Bloomington and at the Cohn Institute of Tel Aviv University. She will soon be lecturing at the Peter Szondi Institute for Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin.