About the Conference

The ‘Great Acceleration’ of the Anthropocene has laid bare the extraordinary destruction and radical ruinations that the world has witnessed in the modern age. The monumental losses and ruinations of this age go well beyond the biosphere that is the very ground of all life on our planet. They now manifestly encompass the ruination of polities, economies, ethics, religions, and traditions.

The unprecedented modern processes of acceleration and ruination that have brought us to this conjuncture, include not just global capitalism, but the racist phenomena of colonialism and nationalism. Together, they have inaugurated a global form of life in which universal competition and enmity is the real motor of ‘Progress’ as well as both social and ecological destruction.

The stakes could not possibly be higher. The current pandemic has only brought into greater relief the tremendous injustice and suffering that are endemic to our global form of life everywhere – even as there is now nowhere to hide from the Anthropocene, as ecological catastrophe becomes a feature of the quotidian global news cycle.

Reparations are in order. The phrase ‘reparative futures’ indicated in our title includes both the therapeutic, or healing sense of ‘repairing’, as well as the ethical and juridical sense of making amends and compensation.

The fourth PHEC conference will be a reflection on truth and reparations today: to speak the truth of our condition and its causes and to reflect on how our anomic world may be repaired for a future of possibilities rather than dead-ends.

Conference Chair: Nauman Naqvi Read More about PHEC
Conference Chair: Nauman Naqvi Read More about PHEC


Agenda

Date Time Program

Mar 22nd

9:00 PM – 10:30 PM (PST)


12:00 PM – 1:30 PM (EST)

Repairing the Biosphere

The modern global emergence of colonial and racial capitalism, historically followed by the formation of an apartheid system of competitive nation-states, has severely damaged the Earth’s biosphere. Our panelists analyze the key causes and features of this accelerating ruination, and offer visions of healing this rift between the Earth and modern humanity.

Speakers

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (CNRS, Paris)

George Weiblen (University of Minnesota)

Chair: Shah Jamal Alam

Mar 23rd

9:00 PM – 10:30 PM (PST)


12:00 PM – 1:30 PM (EST)

Repairing Politics

The formation of modern nation-states is deeply implicated in both colonialism and racism, accounting for some of the intractable problems of contemporary polities, both in the North and in the South. Our visionary panelists offer striking accounts of modern politics, and offer reparative visions forward.

Speakers

Mahmood Mamdani (Columbia University)

Nandita Sharma (University of Hawaii)

Chair: Massimo Ramaioli
Discussant: Nauman Naqvi

Mar 24th

9:00 PM – 10:30 PM (PST)


12:00 PM – 1:30 PM (EST)

Repairing Economies

Despite the generation of unprecedented ‘wealth’, current economies are prone to incessant crisis and uncertainty, as well as socially disastrous inequalities, ruthless competition, and generalized immiseration in various forms. Our panel of expert economists offers reparative economic visions for the future.

Speakers

Sanjay Reddy (New School for Social Research)

Giorgios Kallis (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Chair: Aqdas Afzal

Discussant: Nauman Naqvi

Mar 25th

9:00 PM – 10:30 PM (PST)


12:00 PM – 1:30 PM (EST)

Repairing Religions

The emergence of nationalism and racism has dramatically transformed the religions of the world, a process that has torn apart societies globally in the modern period, from the Reformation in Europe to the Partition of the Subcontinent, including its terrible and still unfolding aftermath. Our panelists illuminate the modern framings of ‘religion’, and how the modern ruin of our faiths may be healed.

Speakers

Arvind-Pal Mandair (University of Michigan)

Nur Sobers-Khan (MIT)


Chair: Najeeb Jan

Discussant: Nauman Naqvi

Mar 27th

9:00 PM – 10:30 PM (PST)


12:00 PM – 1:30 PM (EST)

Reparative Ends

The accelerating ruination of the Earth and the human world in the modern period is closely related to the emergence and proliferation of a world of pure means – means without ends. Our panelists reflect on the significance and nature of ends for reparative futures.

Speakers

Sajjad Rizvi (University of Exeter)

Nauman Naqvi (Habib University)


Chair: Wasif Rizvi

Speakers

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

Historian of science, technology and the environment,
based at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris


Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is an historian of science, technology and the environment, based at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. He is the author of several books : L'Apocalypse Joyeuse. Une histoire du risque technologique, Paris, Le Seuil, 2012, The Shock of the Anthropocene, Verso, 2016 (with C. Bonneuil) and Les révoltes du ciel. Une histoire du changement climatique XVe-XXe siècles, Paris, Le Seuil, 2020 (with Fabien Locher).

George Weiblen

George Weiblen

Science Director,
Bell Museum,
University of Minnesota
Distinguished McKnight University Professor


Dr. George Weiblen is the Science Director of the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota. As a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, he holds tenure in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and teaches in the College of Biological Sciences. He attended public school less than a kilometer from the location of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police. He earned a Bachelor's Degree from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and Masters and PhD degrees from Harvard University. He has studied the biological and cultural diversity of Papua New Guinea for more than 25 years and is fluent in Melanesian Pidgin. He and his collaborators manage the largest long-term forest plot in Oceania as part of the Forest Global Earth Observatories network. ForestGEO monitors how thousands of species and millions of trees are responding to global change. Professor Weiblen was recognized in 2017 as the University of Minnesota President's Community Engaged Scholar for his efforts in public engagement and science communication. He is also a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer and a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

Nandita Sharma

Nandita Sharma

Professor,
University of Hawai’i


Nandita Sharma is a Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. Her work examines racism, nationalism, international migration, and postcolonial social relations. Nandita is active in No Borders movements and those struggling for the planetary commons. She is the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020).

Mahmood Mamdani

Mahmood Mamdani

Professor,
Columbia University


Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University and Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala. He is the author of Neither Settler nor Native, Citizen and Subject, and When Victims Become Killers.

Georgios Kallis

Georgios Kallis

Professor,
Institute of Environmental
Science and Technology


Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist, political ecologist, and Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Barcelona. He is the author of 'Limits' (Stanford University Press) and 'The case for Degrowth' (Polity Press, 2020). His research is motivated by a quest to cross conceptual divides between the social and the natural domains, with particular focus on the political-economic roots of environmental degradation and its uneven distribution along lines of power, income, and class. His current work explores the hypothesis of sustainable degrowth as a solution to the dual economic and ecological crisis. He was previously a Marie Curie Fellow at the Energy and Resources group at UC Berkeley, and he holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from the University of the Aegean, an MSc in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and an MSc in Environmental Engineering and a Bachelors in Chemistry from Imperial College, London.

Sanjay Reddy

Sanjay Reddy

Associate Professor of Economics
The New School for Social Research


He is also an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Politics Department of the New School for Social Research and was previously Co-Academic Director of the India China Institute at the New School. He has also taught in various international academic summer schools or advanced training courses, and has been a visitor at diverse academic institutions around the world. He has been widely published in academic and non-academic venues. He has been quoted or interviewed, his work has been cited, and his opinion articles have been published by international news media such as Barron’s, the Boston Globe, the Economist, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Hindu, The Nation, the National Post, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Project Syndicate and die Zeit. His work has been translated into languages including Catalan, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, and Spanish. He was elected a Fellow of the Human Development and Capabilities Association. He is or has been a member of various editorial advisory boards including of the American Review of Political Economy, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Development, Ethics & International Affairs, the European Journal of Development Research, Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric, Humanity, the Journal of Globalization and Development, the Review of Agrarian Studies, and the Review of Income and Wealth, and was Associate Editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. He was a lead author of the International Panel on Social Progress. He is one of the co-founders and team leaders of the Global Consumption and Income Project.

Arvind Pal Mandair

Arvind Pal Mandair

Professor,
University of Michigan


Arvind-Pal S. Mandair teaches at the University of Michigan where he has held the S.B.S.C. Endowed Chair in Sikh Studies. He holds doctoral degrees in the fields of Chemistry and Philosophy. In the mid-1990's he left a promising career in the sciences to retrain in the humanities, specifically in the study of philosophy and religion. He has held previous positions at Hofstra University, New York, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). His research crosses a wide range of academic disciplines. While his earlier work focused on the politics of secularism, religion-making, and cultural translation in colonial and postcolonial South Asia, his recent research has shifted towards understanding the nature of cross-cultural philosophy (or World Philosophies) in relation to decolonial praxis and diasporic modalities of self and knowing. He also dabbles in consciousness studies, and the theoretical study of spirituality and religion. Arvind-pal Mandair's earlier book publications include Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality and the Politics of Translation (Columbia University Press, 2009); Secularism and Religion-Making (with Markus Dressler, Oxford 2011); ); Sikhism: A Guide For the Perplexed (Bloomsbury 2013); Teachings of the Sikh Gurus (with C. Shackle, Routledge 2005). He is Editor of Sikhism: Vol. 8 of the Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. He has also published numerous articles in leading journals and book chapters.In addition, Arvind Mandair is founding editor of the Routledge journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory and the co-editor of two new book series: Routledge Studies in Religion and Translation, and Routledge Critical Sikh Studies. He also serves on the editorial board of journals such as Culture and Religion, and Religions of South Asia. His forthcoming books include: Logics of Violence and Non-Violence in Sikhism (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and two other major monographs: Sikh Philosophy (for Bloomsbury Academic) and Geophilosophical Encounters: Decolonial Praxis, Diasporic Logics & Sikh Philosophy. For details visit his personal website at: https://www.arvindpalmandair.com/

Nur Sobers Khan

Nur Sobers Khan

Director of the Aga Khan Documentation Center,
MIT


Nur Sobers-Khan is currently the director of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, an archive of Islamic art, visual culture, urbanism and architecture. She was previously the Lead Curator for South Asia Collections at the British Library and Curator at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. Her research interests cover the early modern Islamic world, the history and continued life of Islamic dream interpretation practices, and how to turn these into AI oracles.

Sajjad Rizvi

Sajjad Rizvi

Associate Professor,
University of Exeter


Sajjad Rizvi is Associate Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the University of Exeter where he has taught since 2004. He is an intellectual historian who specialises in the history of philosophy, mysticism, and theology in Islam, on which subjects he also runs a blog entitled Hikmat. Currently he is completing projects on the philosophy of time in Islam as well as a new consideration of the 18th century in the Islamic East. His new projects include a large study of philosophy in the contemporary Muslim world and contributions that further the decolonial reading of Islam in our world.

Nauman Naqvi

Nauman Naqvi

Associate Professor, Comparative Humanities, Habib University


Nauman Naqvi is Associate Professor in the Program in Comparative Humanities at Habib University. He was the founding Dean of the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, as well as the founding Director of the Habib Liberal Core Curriculum, and has also taught at Columbia University, Brown University's Department of Comparative Literature, the Center for International Studies & the Liberal Arts at Connecticut College, and Colorado College. Prof Naqvi's work cuts across the humanities, traversing questions of modernity and inheritance in literature, philosophy and the arts.

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Past Conferences

3rd Postcolonial Higher Education Conference 2017

Event Details


2nd Annual Postcolonial Higher Education Conference

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1st Postcolonial Higher Education Conference

Event Details


Contact info

Habib University
Contact: +92 21 111 042242; Ext: 4205
Email: phec@habib.edu.pk