UABDivulga - Barcelona recerca i innovació

Description:

With Copernicus, "Europe's eyes on Earth", the European Union has developed and maintained a series on remote and "in situ" infrastructures to turn many dimensions of our environment into data. This programme is based on a long history of developing Earth Observation as a "for-policy" science that emerged together with the first environmental actions plans and research  programmes in the early 1970s. Today, the various services of Copernicus result in very heterogeneous uses within the EU, but its use for direct environmental policy remains less developed.

This presentation will look back on the development of remote sensing within the Commission and question what is often framed as a lack of "user outreach" towards environmental policy-makers.

Dorian Groll is a PhD student (EHESS) working on the development of remote sensing in Europe for environmental policies from a socio-historical perspective. His research is based on archival analysis (mainly from the European Commission and the European Space Agency) as well as ethnographic case studies of the engineers and scientists working on Copernicus, the EU's Earth Observation programme.

Link to join the talk: https://meet.jit.si/moderated/f2c8a5df081394c09276d8dacdf78916fbd3acde25acbac01b6339f5cbc12032

This activity is part of the CLIMASAT ERC-StG project's series of seminars on "Data, satellites and environment".

Place: Online

Date: Monday 1, June de 2026 - 14:30h

Date: Monday 1, June de 2026 - 16:00h

Description:

The Dictatorships and Democracies Research Group (GREDD) of the UAB organises for 2 June at 4:00 p.m. a new session of the GREDD seminar entitled "Thinking in the Trenches: revolutionary intellectuals from 1914 to the Spanish Civil War". The activity will take place at the conference hall of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities and will focus on the analysis of the political and cultural commitment of revolutionary intellectuals in times of war and social transformations.

The seminar will be led by Juan Andrade, lecturer in History at the Complutense University of Madrid. Andrade will reflect on the relationship between revolutionary thought, the experience of war, and the construction of political projects during the period between the First World War and the Spanish Civil War.

Place: Faculty of Arts & Humanities

Date: Tuesday 2, June de 2026 - 16:00h

Description:

This seminar explores the intersections between reproductive politics, networks and production of knowledge from a historical, sociological and science and technology studies (STS) perspective.

Departing from the notion of reproductive politics, the seminar analyzes activist movements, communication and global market networks that have configured reproductive rights, scientific knowledge of reproduction and access to public health resources. On one hand, feminist and activist networks are studied as forms of organizing, circulating knowledge and doing historical research; on the other hand, the role of reproductive markets, the commercialization of fertility and the global circulation of reproductive cells in the transformation of contemporary reproductive biology is examined.

The language will be English, but questions or contributions may be raised in Catalan or Spanish.

Online participation by this Teams link.

Programme:

11:00 a.m. - 11:05 a.m. Introduction (Laia Iturrizaga Zurita)
11:05 a.m. - 11:35 a.m. Oocyte biology networked entanglements in fertility crisis times (Rebecca Close)
11:35 a.m. - 12:05 p.m. Compliance as valorization: Ukrainian donor eggs and the global reproductive bioeconomy (Polina Vlasenko)
12:05 p.m. - 12:15 p.m. Coffee break
12:15 p.m. - 12:45 p.m. Feminist net-working: The work of networks as a critical historical methodology (Lina Chordaki)
12:45 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Discussion

Participants:

Lina Chordaki (National Hellenic Research Foundation)
Rebecca Close (UAB)
Laia Iturrizaga Zurita (UAB)
Polina Vlasenko (ReproMob)

Place: iHC Seminar room + Teams

Date: Wednesday 3, June de 2026 - 11:00h

Date: Wednesday 3, June de 2026 - 13:00h

Description:

In celebration of the UAB Bioconferences Week, the UAB Faculty of Biosciences is organising on 5 June at 12:00 noon a conference entitled “Climate Change and Meteorological Risks”. The event, which will take place in the conference hall of the UAB Faculty of Biosciences, aims to cover the growing impact of climate change on ecosystems, health, the economy, and society as a whole. The session will be given by Javier Martín, professor of physical geography at the University of Barcelona. Professor Martín will reflect on the main current climate challenges from a transversal and interdisciplinary perspective. The closing lecture will be given by Javier Lafuente, rector of the UAB.

Place: Faculty of Biosciences (conference hall)

Date: Friday 5, June de 2026 - 12:00h

Description:

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Event details

•  Start: 10 Jun 2026  13:00
•  End: 10 Jun 2026  14:30
•  iHC Seminar room

In this Work in Progress (WiP) seminar, Hèctor Isern examines ocean monitoring systems in Europe between 1977 and 1992, and the role that satellite data played in this period. More specifically, it analyses the production, distribution, and use of data through the case of ERS-1, the European Space Agency's first major Earth-observation satellite, launched in 1991. More broadly, this work foregrounds the question of how satellite data became a powerful tool in late twentieth-century ocean and climate science, contributing to the production of knowledge that often appeared authoritative and uncontested. By the close of the twentieth century, ocean monitoring systems had become firmly consolidated in Europe, with satellite data forming one of their fundamental components while also providing one of the key rationales for their continued expansion. The dissertation tackles the question of how satellite data came to function as a sine qua non.

In short, Isern's argument is that satellite data co-produced and reproduced old and new data-related practices. The notion of encapsulation helps explain this reciprocal process. Satellite data paved the way for the expansion of ocean monitoring systems because they encapsulated and mobilised a broader constellation of old and new elements. Satellite data concealed the instruments, algorithms, standards, processing chains, labour, institutional arrangements, and political expectations that made them possible. As these data products were distributed, they did not merely depict the ocean; they also co-produced and reproduced the very practices through which ocean monitoring systems expanded. In other words, data never travels alone.

Commentator: Xavier Roqué (UAB)

Hèctor Isern is a PhD student working on the ERC-SG project «CLIMASAT: Remote-sensing satellite data and the making of global climate in Europe, 1980s–2000s». Her academic background includes a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Sciences (UB), a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy (UB), a Master's degree in Environmental Engineering (UPC), and a Master's degree in the History of Science (UAB). Her research interests include the history of Earth observation satellites, the relationship between science and diplomacy, the history of data, the history of technology, and environmental history.

If you are interested in reading the entire text in advance —highly recommended, since the WiP seminar format presupposes prior reading— you can request it from Hector.Isern@uab.cat or Laia.Torres.Casas@uab.cat

Remember that you can bring your lunch on site, as we will have a lunch-seminar format, rigorous and informal at the same time.

Place: iHC Seminar room

Date: Thursday 11, June de 2026 - 13:00h

Date: Thursday 11, June de 2026 - 14:30h

Description:

PerCientEx (Scientific Journalism of Excellence) returns to the CosmoCaixa Science Museum on 11 June at 6:00 p.m. On its tenth anniversary, the PerCientEx project focuses on watchdog science journalism, one of the most necessary aspects of journalism to guarantee the integrity of science.

Registrations open at this link.

The project is coordinated by the Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (ACCC) and the Department of Communication and Education of the UAB, and receives the support of the “laCaixa” Foundation.  

The event will bring together Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, Mexican journalist from Science who has investigated abuses at university; Mira Petrovic, researcher at the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), who alerted about corrupt practices; and Pilar Paneque, director of the National Agency for Quality and Accreditation (ANECA), who is promoting new ways to encourage scientific quality and discourage bad practices.

The speakers will discuss how scientific journalism can contribute to promoting integrity and contrasting bad scientific practices. In addition, during the event, new results and a set of examples of watchdog science journalism in the Ibero-American field will be presented.

More information: The role of scientific journalism against bad practices and in favor of the integrity of science is the focus of the tenth edition of the PerCientEx conference.

Place: CosmoCaixa Science Museum

Date: Thursday 11, June de 2026 - 18:00h