The ISST is happy to announce the keynote speakers of the 2026 Conference in Cagliari, Sardinia. Elise Crull and Barbara Adam have accepted our invitation and confirmed giving one keynote speech each.

Barbara Adam (Dept. of Sociology, Cardiff University), Prof. em., has been rewarded with the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize from the British Sociological Association (1991), the JT Fraser Prize from the ISST (1995), and honoured as Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (2009). Publications include:
Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time
Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards

Abstract:

‘The Anthropocene’ as conceptual aid to a time-ecological perspective for a world in turmoil

For almost four decades I have been part of the development of a time-ecological perspective. Through this perspective we recognized that time, space and matter are inseparably entangled. We appreciated that there is not one time but a timescape that encompasses not just space and matter, but time in its multiple forms and expressions. Moreover, we were able to demonstrate that approaches to time were at the root of the emerging environmental problems at the time.

In the presentation, I will identify some of the base principles of this time-ecological perspective as follows: change processes have an irreversible direction. Extremes of time are intricately entangled, as exemplified by the mutual implication of lived time and clock time and of present, past and future, while the socially created singularity of clock-time is enmeshed with the complexity of planetary, world, ecological and social times.

I will suggest that this time-ecological perspective is in urgent need of further development if it is to fully encompass, engage with and enable action in relation to the multiple crises characterising the global present, which are marked by simultaneity of its systemic problems that extend across all levels and scales of existence. It will require a massive expansion of the depth and breadth of time before we can recognize the interdependence of everything that ever existed, while being in the process of becoming and being already foreshadowed as process future.

I focus on ‘the Anthropocene’ not to contribute to the extensive discussions in geology about its existence, but to utilise the focus as an aid to understanding of and engagement with the temporal nature of socio-environmental crises from climate change to globally entangled conflicts, as well as unbounded pollution and species extinctions. Focus on the ideas entailed in ‘the Anthropocene’ helps with the recognition of our inescapable entanglement, from the beginning and to the end of time. Importantly, it foregrounds the systemic nature of the world as process. Thus, temporality rather than time becomes the key category and latency a central feature of past futures and future presents. As such, the use of ‘the Anthropocene’ as conceptual aid allows me to bring together ideas, insight and arguments, developed over my entire career, where I have connected past and present actions with effect domains that reach beyond a couple of decades into open-ended futures of impacts on humans, fellow beings and fossilised past life forms. By showing our implication in the processes, the focus allows me to open windows of opportunity that bring into reach the  possibility of connecting emotionally with an unknown world in whose existence we are ineradicably entangled.

Elise Crull (Dept. of Philosophy, City College of New York), PhD, has held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Aberdeen and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, conducting research into the historical and philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics. In addition to history and philosophy of science, Crull frequently ponders (sometimes aloud in front of audiences) philosophical problems associated with quantum theory: the quantum-to-classical transition, quantizing gravity, understanding quantum causal models, the metaphysical nature of entanglement (including temporal entanglement!) and, as of late, interpreting the alternate quantum formalisms used in quantum computing.  Publications include:
The Einstein Paradox: The Debate on Nonlocality and Incompleteness in 1935
Grete Hermann: Between Physics and Philosophy