Open Lecture: 'The Political Ecology of Matter: Marbles, Volcanoes and Humans'

Next Generation Visiting Professor Dewey Hall will discuss the confluence of material objects during the 1810s, especially when Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in 1815 spewing ash into the stratosphere, and when Thomas Bruce (1766–1841), the 7th Earl of Elgin, sold the Parthenon marbles to the British Parliament for £35,000 in 1816. While these two events were continents apart geographically, they are interconnected materially and politically. Marble rock, ash, and potato, an assemblage of disparate objects, mark the tumultuous 1810s as a decade in which matter matters significantly to humanity.

Audience: Bristol academic community, Centre for Environmental Humanities, School of Geographical Sciences, School of Humanities

Professor Hall's web profile page