Defenses de tesi

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, May2026 - 09:30h

End date: Friday 15, May2026 - 19:30h

Organiser: UAB

Description:

The UAB Political Studies, Identities, Institutions and Corruption Research Group, in collaboration with the Termcat Terminology Centre, the Citizen Observatory for Corruption, and the UAB Languages Service, organises the presentation of the online dictionary “Terminology of Corruption and Transparency”. The conference will take place on 13 May at 11:00 a.m., in the entrance hall of the UAB Social Sciences Library. The activity will revolve around the explanation and understanding of the concepts of corruption and transparency, as well as the terminological criteria used in the development of the dictionary and in the analysis of these phenomena.

The session will be moderated by Lluís Ferran Toledano, lecturer in Modern History and member of the GREPIIC research group at the UAB. Participating will be: Olga Cano, head of the UAB Social Sciences Library; Laura Santamaría, vice-rector for Culture and Language Policy of the UAB; Elisabeth Casademont, member of the TERMCAT; Marta Estella, head of the UAB Languages Service; Itziar Gonzalez, member of the Citizen Observatory for Corruption; Gemma Rubí, coordinator of GREPIIC; and Joan Lluís Pérez, professor in Constitutional Law and member of the GREPIIC research group at the UAB.

Place: Social Sciences Library (entrance hall)

Date: Wednesday 13, May2026 - 11:00h

Description:

During the Cold War, the tropical rainforests of Latin America—the Darién, the Amazon, the Chocó, the Orinoco plains—were surveyed by aircraft equipped with a radargrammetric technology called SLAR (Side Looking Airborne Radar). This technology could "see" the terrain through the clouds and thick vegetation, which for decades had prevented the creation of maps based on conventional aerial photography. What began as a radar system designed to locate enemy targets ("targeting") ended up producing the first detailed maps of vast tropical regions that until then had appeared "blank" in official atlases.

In this Work in Progress (WiP) seminar, Sebastián Díaz tells the still little-studied history of SLAR. It explores the pioneering projects developed between the 1960s and 1970s in Panama, Colombia, and Brazil, in which Latin American governments, the U.S. military, private companies, and cartographic institutes collaborated to “conquer the jungle” and make it legible. Radargrammetric projects were used to plan new infrastructure, open colonisation roads, inventory minerals and timber, monitor borders, pursue guerrilla groups, and, later, track illicit crops and monitor deforestation.

The central idea of ​​this talk is simple: radar technology never fully transitioned from military to civilian or environmental use. From the outset, SLAR was used simultaneously for warfare, development, resource extraction, and conservation.

And here a final paradox emerges: while from the air these technologies erased people from the landscape, on the ground they demanded enormous verification campaigns—geologists, soil scientists, forestry engineers, biologists, and, at times, anthropologists traversing the jungle for years—which ultimately transformed the paradigms with which the social and environmental sciences understood the tropics. What did not change, however, were the extractive, developmental, and surveillance functions that had given rise to remote sensing, and which have continued to accompany it to this day.

Commentator: Jaume Valentines (UAB)

Sebastián Díaz Ángel is a post-doctoral researcher working on the ERC-SG project "CLIMASAT: Remote-sensing satellite data and the making of global climate in Europe, 1980s–2000s". With a B.A. in Political Science, a B.A. in History, an M.A. in Geography and a Ph.D. in History, Díaz combines environmental history, science and technology studies, and geopolitics, with particular focus on historical geography and the history of cartography. His current research analyzes the politics of remote sensing and satellite data infrastructures in the Americas.

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 Sebastian.Diaz@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: Wednesday 13, May2026 - 12:00h

End date: Wednesday 13, May2026 - 13:30h

Description:

The UAB will be hosting the 8th Teaching Innovation Conference on 14 and 15 May at the conference hall of the Rectorat building. For the first time, the conference will last two days, a change that reflects the growth in teaching innovation initiatives and an institutional will to provide a space for the contributions of lecturers. This year's programme, presented in an expanded and renewed format, will include a variety of activities. The conference will officially begin at 9:00 a.m. with an opening speech by José Luís Muñoz, vice-rector for Training and Teaching Innovation, and Carme Ruiz, academic coordinator of Training and Teaching Innovation at the UAB.

Following the opening speech, the conference "How to incorporate artificial intelligence into university teaching" will take place. The session will be given by Mariona Grané, lecturer of audiovisual communication and education at the University of Barcelona, ​​and presented by Fran Gerez, head of the UAB Training Unit. There will also be a conversation about the new teaching challenges in higher education, with the participation of Mercè Gisbert, director of the Quality Agency of the University System of Catalonia, and Joan Subirats, former minister for Universities. In addition, there will be a round table that will discuss the improvement of teaching and learning processes. The speakers will be: Maria Rosa Buxarrais, professor of education at the UB; Toni Portell, lecturer of paedagogy at the University of Vic; and Mar Carrió, lecturer of optics and optometry at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC). The session will be moderated by Edelmira Badillo, director of the Institute of Educational Studies at the UAB. In the afternoon, a series of round tables will take place at the UAB Faculty of Economics and Business Studies, focused on innovation projects and teaching quality. To confirm attendance, you must complete the pre-registration, open until 8 May, through the Training Portal.

Place: Rectorat building (conference hall)

Date: Thursday 14, May2026 - 08:45h

Description:

The UAB Equality and Diversity Service in collaboration with UAB Culture and the Faculty of Law, has organised the exhibition "20 Years After Equal Marriage: Memory, activism, and future challenges for the LGTBIQ+ community". The exhibition, which forms part of the activities of the International Day Against LGBTIQ+phobia, will be inaugurated in the entrance hall of the Faculty of Law on Thursday 14 May at 1:30 p.m.

The exhibition has been prepared by the Spanish Ministry for Equality and translated by the Department of Equality and Feminism and commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the approval of Law 13/2005, by which Spain fully legalised civil marriage and adoption for same-sex couples. Through photographs, posters and historical documents, the exhibition traces the journey of the LGBTIQ+ movement from the end of the Franco era to the present day, highlighting how collective action has made a profound social and legislative transformation possible. The inauguration will be attended by UAB Secretary General Esther Zapater; Head of Equality Policies at the Faculty of Law Montserrat Pi; and Dean of the Faculty of Law Ricardo Esteban.

Place: Faculty of Law (entrance hall)

Date: Thursday 14, May2026 - 13:30h

Description:

On 15 May, starting at 9:00 a.m., the UAB organises the second day of the Eighth Teaching Innovation Conference, which will be held at the conference hall of the UAB Rectorat building. The day's programme with different activities will begin with an institutional inauguration by Neus Fitó, head of the Area of Technical, Management and Service Administration Staff (PTGAS). Following the inauguration of the second day, the first activity will be held from 9:15 to 10:15 a.m., entitled "Round table of educative research and teaching innovation projects". Participating in the round table will be Judith Gifreu, lecturer in public law and legal history studies at the UAB, who will speak on AI-based challenges; Ana Belén Barajas, lecturer in clinical and health psychology at the UAB; Antoni Navío, lecturer in applied pedagogy at the UAB; Víctor López, lecturer in computer science and artificial intelligence; and Georgeta Ion, lecturer in applied pedagogy at the UAB. 

Then, from 10:15 to 11:15 a.m., a group table on teaching innovation will be held. Participants will include Asier González, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the UAB; Marta Martín, professor of cell biology, physiology and immunology at the UAB; Eva Castells, coordinator of the toxicology unit at the UAB; Sònia Casillas, professor of genetics and microbiology at the UAB; Aleix Barrera, professor of applied pedagogy at the UAB; and Silvia Blanch, professor of basic, evolutionary and educational psychology at the UAB. The session will be moderated by Marta Rebull, member of the UAB Training Unit. There will also be a space dedicated to support resources for university teaching with the participation of various UAB services, in the lobby of the Rectorate. And Miguel Ángel Santos, professor of didactics at the University of Malaga, will give the conference “The value of university teaching: teachers as the engine of pedagogical transformation”, which will be presented by José Luís Muñoz, vice-rector for Teacher Training and Innovation at the UAB. Finally, the day will conclude with the ceremony of the 8th UAB Teaching Excellence Awards, from 12:45 to 2:15 p.m., with the participation of UAB Rector Javier Lafuente, Vice-Rector José Luís Muñoz and Montserrat López, president of the Academic Commission of the UAB Social Council. To confirm attendance, you must complete the prior registration, open until 8 May, through the Training Portal.

Place: Rectorat building (conference hall)

Date: Friday 15, May2026 - 09:00h