KLI Colloquia are invited research talks of about an hour followed by 30 min discussion. The talks are held in English, open to the public, and offered in hybrid format.
Fall-Winter 2025-2026 KLI Colloquium Series
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5881861923?omn=85945744831
Meeting ID: 588 186 1923
25 Sept 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
A Dynamic Canvas Model of Butterfly and Moth Color Patterns
Richard Gawne (Nevada State Museum)
14 Oct 2025 (Tues) 3-4:30 PM CET
Vienna, the Laboratory of Modernity
Richard Cockett (The Economist)
23 Oct 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
How Darwinian is Darwinian Enough? The Case of Evolution and the Origins of Life
Ludo Schoenmakers (KLI)
6 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Common Knowledge Considered as Cause and Effect of Behavioral Modernity
Ronald Planer (University of Wollongong)
20 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Rates of Evolution, Time Scaling, and the Decoupling of Micro- and Macroevolution
Thomas Hansen (University of Oslo)
4 Dec (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Chance, Necessity, and the Evolution of Evolvability
Cristina Villegas (KLI)
8 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Embodied Rationality: Normative and Evolutionary Foundations
Enrico Petracca (KLI)
15 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty
Patricia Beldade (Lisbon University)
29 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET
Jan Baedke (Ruhr University Bochum)
Event Details
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https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAqcu2vqDgrEtaoLohyQ2QVw3BZJUPXWB5S
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Topic description / abstract:
Dehumanization (i.e. regarding certain people as not human or as less human) and essentialism are clearly connected, in everyday cognition as well as in the history of those sciences that study humans, and that have, as part of that, often naturalize(d) social inequalities. In the talk, I want to deepen the understanding of how essentialism and dehumanization generally connect (independent of sciences), in order to discuss with the KLI community – on the basis of the talk - how sciences (past and present) stabilize dehumanization.
Biographical note:
Maria Kronfeldner works in the philosophy of the life sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences and has published widely in these areas. She has been awarded The Karl Popper Essay Prize of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and The Philosophical Quarterly International Essay Prize. From 2010-2014 she was Junior Professor at Bielefeld University. Earlier she held several fellowships, among them at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin; at the Fishbein Center for History of Science and Medicine of the University of Chicago; at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh; and at the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science of the University of Sydney. She earned her PhD at the University of Regensburg in 2006.
