Tribute to Joan Martínez Alier

The Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) is organising a full-day event to pay tribute to Joan Martínez-Alier and his lifework.

The organisers have scheduled a whole day of different activities that will take place both at the ICTA-UAB headquarters and in the Sala de Graus of the Faculty of Science. Some of the activities will be aimed only at the ICTA-UAB community and others will be open to everyone who wants to participate.
 

• The morning session (9 a.m. - 12 p.m.) will consist of a workshop about the Barcelona School of Political Ecology and Ecological Economics, based on the new book by Villamayor and Muradian (eds.). 
   
  • From 9 to 10:30 a.m. at ICTA-UAB there will be a semi-public session (only open to the ICTA community) to brainstorm about the curriculum of a new course on the School. 
     
  • From 11 a.m. to 12 noon, still at ICTA-UAB, there will be a public seminar/webinar about the agenda of the School.
     

• From 12:30 to 2:00  p.m., at the Sala de Graus (Faculty of Science) Joan Martínez-Alier will give an honorary lecture entitled The Making of World Movements for Environmental Justice, followed by a debate with the audience. The session will be moderated by Roldan Muradian, professor at the Faculty of Economics of the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro, and president of the International Society for Ecological Economics.
   
• The afternoon session pays tribute to Joan M. Alier from 3:30 to 6 p.m., at ICTA-UAB. Colleagues and representatives will share their views and memories on the important role he had in their lives, for ICTA-UAB and the broader research community.

Born in Barcelona in 1939, Martinez Alier is Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona since 2010. He was awarded the Balzan Prize 2020.

His main line of research revolves around the relation between ecology and economics, which has allowed him to research into agrarian history, environmental policies, and resource-based social conflicts. He is the current director of the journal Ecología Política, and among his best-known publications are Ecology and Economics (1984), Ecological Economics and Environmental Politics (2001), and Environmentalism of the Poor (2005).