UABDivulga - Barcelona recerca i innovació

Description:

In this talk, iHC researcher Carlos Tabernero offers a historical analysis of a series of film and television narratives in which the notions of sustainability form part of the central theme, more or less explicitly, or are in some way essential, as contextual elements, for the development of the plot. These narratives are historically linked to confluences of social, political, academic, and activist imaginaries, as well as to specific historical concepts in film and television production, which have shaped our conceptualizations (past, present, and future) of nature and the environment over the last century.

Tabernero draws a critical map of the contemporary processes of constructing visual sociocultural spaces for the notions of sustainability and their influence on our conceptualizations and debates about nature and the environment.

Presents: Álvaro Girón Sierra (IMF-CSIC).

Further information

Place: Milà and Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities (CSIC)

Date: Wednesday 29, April de 2026 - 12:00h

Description:

On 5 May, Judith Butler, professor of the University of California, Berkeley, and recipient of an honorary doctorate from the UAB, and Chiara Bottici, distinguished Serra Húnter lecturer in the Department of Philosophy of the UAB, will be participating in a round table entitled "Words, Bodies, Images: Rethinking Identity in Times of Resistance". The event will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the UAB Casa Convalescència in Barcelona, and is organised jointly by the Fira Literal and the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the UAB. Lupe Romero, lecturer in Translation and Interpreting will moderate the debate.

Place: UAB Casa Convalescènc, Barcelona (Carrer Sant Antoni Maria Claret 171)

Date: Tuesday 5, May de 2026 - 18:30h

Description:

The Institute for European Studies and the Faculty of Law of the UAB will be holding on 8 May at 12 noon a conference entitled "The role of the EU Court of Justice in a changing international context". The event will be held in commemoration of Europe Day at the Aula Magna of the UAB Faculty of Law. 

The talk will be given by José Martín, judge and advocate general of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Martín will analyse the key role played by the CJEU in a context of international change, marked by political, legal and geostrategic changes that test the functioning and projection of European law.

Place: Faculty of Law (Aula Magna)

Date: Friday 8, May de 2026 - 12:00h

Description:

This talk brings together emergent ideas and scholarship about planetary concepts and climate change with selected studies of various instances of radiocommunication: the human uses of radio waves in the electromagnetic spectrum.

The historical focus herein is meteorology, radio astronomy and global radio spectrum management during the Cold War. The rise of radio astronomy in the 1930s and 1940s raised recognition of the significance of the radio spectrum in planet-wide and extraplanetary research and awareness. The initial ITU assignments of radio frequencies crucial to radio astronomy in the 1950s (and in the 1960s, weather satellites) protected spectrum and “radio silence” for extraplanetary radio frequencies, crucial to space missions and satellites; yet such protective efforts were and still are often undermined by corporate interests eager to access and control as much radio spectrum as possible, particularly in a 21st century world where radio spectrum is now seen as a scarce resource.

The case study used in this talk is 24 GHz, a crucial bandwidth formerly protected for passive data collection tomeasure atmospheric levels of planetary water vapor that is now licensed for commercial services by government radio spectrum auctions, thus introducing contamination into the data.

James Schwoch is professor at Northwestern University, with appointments in the Department of Communication Studies, the Program in Science and Human Culture, the Ph. D. Programs in Media, Technology, and Society and in Technology and Social Behavior, and the Ph. D. cluster in Environment, Culture, and Society. He is also a related faculty in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, the Program in Environmental Policy and Culture, and a faculty affiliate at the Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy and at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern. Schwoch conducts research and teaching in areas related to global media, media history, outer space, planetary boundaries, and media-communication-environment. He has published seven books and many articles, and his most recent book is Wired Into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier (University of Illinois Press, 2018). He is a Contributing Member with the International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference.

Link to join the talk: https://meet.jit.si/Climasat_Schwoch_11May

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

Place: Online

Date: Monday 11, May de 2026 - 12:30h

Date: Monday 11, May de 2026 - 16:00h

Description:

From 12 to 15 May the UAB organises The Apocalypse Is Not Coming (TANC), an international conference in which to reflect on apocalyptic imaginaries and their implications in the context of contemporary ecological, technological and geopolitical crises. The Faculty of Arts  & Humanities will host academic debates, workshops and theatrical performances that question the discourse of the end of the world and propose alternative futures based on research, critical analysis and collective participation.

Apocalyptic imaginaries shape perceptions of fear and influence both thought and action, as well as the effectiveness of certain political discourses that construct distressing and fatalistic future scenarios. TANC aims to question end-of-time ideologies and propose alternatives to contemporary apocalyptic thinking from sociology to ecofeminism and artificial intelligence.

The programme combines academic exchange, artistic practice and collaborative experimentation in two master lectures, nine round tables, ten workshops, four theatrical performances, an audiovisual session and two experimental activities.

The two keynote lectures will be given by Marco Armiero, renowned expert in environmental history, with "Ghosts of the Apocalypse: Capitalist Imaginaries and Silenced Stories", and Malcom Ferdinand, expert in political ecology, environmental justice and decolonial thinking from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), who will close the event. Armiero will be accompanied in the post-conference debate by Mar Griera, professor of Sociology at the UAB and director of the Research in Sociology of Religion (ISOR) centre, and by Sergio Ruiz Cayuela, postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (BCNUEJ) of the ICTA-UAB. Ana Fernández-Aballí, Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Religion, Conflict and Globalization at the University of Groningen, and Ione Avila-Palencia, senior researcher at the Centro de Innovación en Tecnología para el Desarrollo (itdUPM) at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, will participate in the debate with Ferdinand.

The round tables will revolve around narratives of permanent crisis; the relationships between ecology, power and coloniality; the social, technological and cultural transformations linked to the end of time, and the possibilities of generating alternative collective responses to these imaginaries.

The workshops will explore alternative ways of thinking, feeling and inhabiting the crisis, combining arts, sciences, humanities and collective practices. They will address the culture of prepping, dominant climate models and audiovisual imaginaries of the end of the world, among other issues.

Finally, four plays developed within the framework of the "Viable Unknowns" project will be performed by the companies Cantieri Meticci (Italy), Voice Lab (Poland), La Xixa Teatre (Spain) and Gruppe Tag (Germany).

The event is the culmination of “Viable Unknowns” and “Ontological Diversity in Environmental Education” (ODEEN), Creative Europe and Horizon Europe projects, respectively, which have brought together social sciences, environmental sciences and participatory theatre methodologies to imagine and promote sustainable and inclusive urban futures. The projects have been carried out over the past year by the UAB and the University of Groningen, together with a transdisciplinary consortium.

Researchers from different UAB centres will be participating in the conference: from Research in Sociology of Religion (ISOR), the Institute of Environmental Science and Technonlogy (ICTA), the Institut d’Història de la Ciència (iHC), the Institut de Govern i Polítiques Públiques (IGOP), and from the departments of Sociology, Journalism and Communication Studies, Art and Musicology, and Business. Experts from the University of Groningen, the Roma Tre University, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, the BC3 Basque Center for Climate Change, the University of Barcelona, and the Global Health Institute of Barcelona (ISGlobal) will also be participating. In addition, numerous artists and professionals from cultural groups will also collaborate.

The organising committe of TANC is formed by members of ISOR, the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Science and Technology (BCNUEJ) at ICTA-UAB, and the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization at the University of Groningen, as well as a broad range of external collaborators. The conference receives the support of the Communities Oriented to Strategic Challenges (CORE) of the UAB.

The conference is free and open to all those interested, but prior registration is necessary.

All information on TANC is available here:

https://webs.uab.cat/apocalypse-conf/

Place: UAB Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Date: Tuesday 12, May de 2026 - 09:30h

Date: Friday 15, May de 2026 - 19:30h

Promotor: UAB

Description:

Carme Casablancas, lecturer in the Department of Business of the UAB, has participated in the research project Study of Economic Fakes, promoted by the Marketing, Communication and Business Projection Commission of the Association of Economists of Catalonia. The study, which will be presented on 12 May at the institution's headquarters, aims to analyse the current context in which economic lies and scams using social networks and other channels are increasing exponentially. The presentation will feature interventions by the authors of the project and other prominent economists, as well as by Javier Quesada, head of the Central Unit for Scams and Means of Payment of the Catalan police force.

Place: Association of Economists of Catalonia, Barcelona (Plaça Gal·la Placídia 32)

Date: Tuesday 12, May de 2026 - 18:00h