Giulia Rispoli, PhD., Associate professor
Main Focus
Her research investigates the historical development of systems thinking across different intellectual traditions and its role in shaping modern planetary knowledge. She examines how diverse epistemic cultures — including Russian and Eastern European systemic traditions — contributed to the conceptualization of the Earth as an integrated and evolving system.
More broadly, her work focuses on the historical and epistemological formation of planetary knowledge — understood as the ensemble of ideas, practices, models, infrastructures, and political imaginaries that have enabled the Earth to become an object of global governance.
Her research mainly explores: The genealogy of Earth System thinking between biosphere science and contemporary planetary modelling; The epistemic and political conditions underpinning the emergence of the Anthropocene; The role of Russian and Eastern European systems traditions in shaping systemic and morphogenetic approaches to the Earth; Cold War science, science diplomacy, and the formation of global environmental governance; The history of ecology and biological thought.
Curriculum Vitae
Giulia Rispoli is Associate Professor in History of Science and Technology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she teaches Environmental Humanities, Environment, Science and Global Politics, and History of Environmental and Biological Thought. She is affiliated with NICHE – The New Institute Centre for Environmental Humanities, where she founded and coordinates the research cluster Histories of the Earth-System: Understanding the Anthropocene between Planetary Knowledge and Political Epistemologies.
Trained in philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome (PhD 2015), her academic trajectory has developed across Rome, York (UK), Moscow, Paris, Berlin, and Venice. She was Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2016–2022), where she contributed to the conceptual groundwork of the Anthropocene formation cluster. She held positions as a visiting lecturer at Indiana University Bloomington, University of Tel Aviv and Free University in Berlin.
In 2022, she was awarded the Rita Levi Montalcini Prize (2022), Italy’s most competitive early-career national award, marking her transition to research independence and tenure-track professorship.
Selected Achievements
Pioneering archival research on Russian and Soviet biosphere science, significantly reframing the genealogy of Earth System thinking and its epistemological foundations.
Author of Antropocene: Storia di una idea (Carocci, 2025), with a preface by Jürgen Renn; the book reconstructs the scientific, philosophical, and political genealogies of the Anthropocene and advances planetary knowledge as a key analytical category.
Invited commentary in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2020) on the genealogies of Earth System thinking, published alongside the landmark article by Steffen et al. (2020), bringing historical-epistemological analysis into a leading Earth sciences journal.
Co-lead of the international project Anthropogenic Markers (MPIWG / Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin), coordinating interdisciplinary collaboration among geologists, historians, philosophers, and artists in dialogue with the Anthropocene Working Group.
Recent international invited appointments and engagements, include the Harriman Institute (Columbia University, New York); the Center for Anthropocene Studies (KAIST, Daejeon); participation in Crossing Boundaries 2024: The Anthropocene – Addressing its Challenges for Humanity (Leopoldina Academy and Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology); and the workshop series Historical Epistemologies of Planetary Modelling at the Centre of Excellence for Anthropocene History, KTH Stockholm.