Events

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

O Theory Where Art Thou? The Changing Role of Theory in Theoretical Biology in the 20th Century and Beyond

Jan Baedke (Ruhr University Bochum)

Event Details

Cameron Hu
KLI Colloquia
Scenario Planning and the Anticipatory Epistemologies of Planetary Governance
Cameron HU (University of Chicago)
2020-10-27 16:00 - 2020-10-27 17:00
KLI
Organized by KLi

Topic description / abstract:

My project examines a major epistemic and imaginative technique through which North Atlantic
institutions now perceive and govern the turbulent globe as a totality: “scenario planning.” Scenario
planning is a central method of post-statistical futurology, premised on imaginative narrative rather than
the extrapolation of probable trends. Developed by multinational oil companies during the energy crises
of the 1970s, and later adopted as a tool for the governance of the planetary environment amidst global
warming, scenario planning is today a central method of foreknowledge through which North Atlantic
states, corporations, and institutions of international governance systematically envision the plausible
futures of the planet, and the possibilities and consequences of their own actions within those futures.
Beginning from the anthropological premise that such techniques of anticipatory knowledge are not
value-neutral tools but historically and culturally specific genres for envisioning and ordering collective
existence, my project asks how scenario planning enframes the politics of planetary sustainability today.
My research will explore the logic of global-scale scenario planning through examination of two critical
cases: (1) its cultivation at Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s, under the influence of cybernetic theory and
global decolonization, and (2) its contemporary deployment in the making of the Assessment Reports of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By examining the work of scenario planners through
archival and ethnographic research, I mean to elucidate the political significance of the epistemological
and imaginative techniques that underpin global sustainability governance in a warming and unequal
world.

 

Biographical note:

Cameron Hu holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His research explores the political-economic and techno-scientific logics that shape the global frontier in "unconventional" oil extraction.