The Marett Memorial Lecture 2026

The Anthropocene, Lost and Found: Towards an Eventful, Situated and Patchy Study of Planetary Disruption

Professor Nils Bubandt (Aarhus University)

Please note the venue change to the Saskatchewan Room, Exeter College, Turl Street, Oxford.

When the proposal to officially declare the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch was rejected in March 2024, it passed largely unnoticed in anthropology and most of the social sciences.  It did so, I will argue, for reasons that were both fully understandable and profoundly mistaken. Excavating the issues of temporality and plurality that are at the heart of the rejection of the Anthropocene as a formal epoch or chronostratigraphic series, I will argue that the disregard blocks us in anthropology and other social sciences from seeing not only the interdisciplinary rapprochement but also the analytical opportunity that the rejection of the term has potentially opened up: namely, the study of the Anthropocene as inherently multiple, eventful, situated, and patchy. Some ethnographic examples from Indonesia and three strands of thought from R.R. Marett will guide this argument.

All welcome!

Followed by a drinks reception in the Rector's Lodgings.