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Bronislaw Szerszynski

Bronislaw Szerszynski is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Lancaster University.  His research seeks to situate social life in the longer perspective of human and planetary history, drawing on the social and natural sciences, arts and humanities.  He is co-author with Nigel Clark of Planetary Social Thought (2021), author of Nature, Technology and the Sacred (2005), and co-editor of Risk, Environment and Modernity (1996), Re-Ordering Nature (2003), Nature Performed (2003) and Technofutures (2015).  As well as academic publications, his outputs also include performances, creative writing, art-science exhibitions and events, and experimental participatory workshops.  His ongoing ‘speculative astrophysics’ project on self-organisation in planetary rings is at http://ringmind.org. He was co-organiser of the public art–science events Between Nature: Explorations in Ecology and Performance (Lancaster, 2000), Experimentality (Lancaster/Manchester/London, 2009-10), and Anthropocene Monument, with Bruno Latour and Olivier Michelon (Toulouse, 2014-2015). 

Publications relevant to the Planetary

Book 

Book chapters

  • Clark, N. and Szerszynski, B.: Knowledge at the Threshold: Interdisciplinarity, Earth Sciences and the Anthropocene, in Machin, A., Wissenburg, M. (eds.): Handbook of Environmental Political Theory in the Anthropocene. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. [forthcoming]
  • Clark, N. and Szerszynski, B.: Planetary Thought and the Much-More-Than-Human, in Franklin, A. (ed.): The Routledge International Handbook of More-Than-Human Studies. London: Routledge, 2024.
  • Clark, N. and Szerszynski, B.: Planetary Technics, Earthly Spirits, in Bergmann, S., Rigby, K., & Scott, P. (eds.): Religion, Materialism and Ecology. London: Routledge, pp. 48-65, 2023. http://doi.org/10.4324/9781003320722-4.
  • Clark, N. and Szerszynski, B.: Elemental Computation: From Nonhuman Media to More-Than-Digital Information Systems, in Travis, C., Dixon, D. P., Bergmann, L., Legg, R., & Crampsie, A. (eds.): Routledge Handbook of the Digital Environmental Humanities. London: Routledge, pp. 516-27, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003082798-40.
  • Clark, N. and Szerszynski, B.: Planetary Multiplicity, Earthly Multitudes: Interscalar Practices for a Volatile Planet, in Dürbeck, G., Hüpkes, P. (eds.): Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene: Imagining Human Responsibility in an Age of Scalar Complexity. New York: Routledge, pp. 75-93, 2021. http://doi.org/10.4324/9781003136989-7. 
  • Szerszynski, B.: Planetary Alterity, Solar Cosmopolitics and the Parliament of Planets, in Bonelli, C., & Walford, A. (eds.): Environmental Alterities. Manchester: Mattering Press, pp. 204-26, 2021. http://doi.org/10.28938/9781912729142.
  • Szerszynski, B.: The Opening of Climate, in Loenhardt, K. K. (ed.): Breathe: Investigations into our Atmospherically Entangled Future. Basel: Burkhäuser, pp. 155-61, 2021.    German translation Szerszynski, B.: Die Öffnung des Klimas, in Leonhardt, K. K. (ed.): Breathe: Erkundungen unserer atmosphärisch verflochtenen Zukunft. Basel: Burkhäuser, 2021. 
  • Szerszynski, B.: The Grammar of Action in the Critical Zone, in Latour, B., & Weibel, P. (eds.): Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 344-349, 2020. 
  • Szerszynski, B.: How to Dismantle a Bus: Planetary Mobilities as Method, in Büscher, M., Freudendal-Pedersen, M., Kesselring, S., & Kristensen, N. G. (eds.): Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Mobilities. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 398-409, 2020.
  • Szerszynski, B.: Epilogue: Indigenous Worlds and Planetary Futures, in Bold, R. (ed.): Indigenous Perceptions of the End of the World: Creating a Cosmopolitics of Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 203-209, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13860-8_10.
  • Szerszynski, B.: Von den Werkzeugen zur Technosphäre [From Tools to Technosphere], in Klingan, K., & Rosol, C. (eds.): Technosphäre. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, pp. 48-63, 2019.
  • Szerszynski, B.: A Planetary Turn for the Social Sciences?, in Jensen, O. B., Kesselring, S., & Sheller, M. (eds.): Mobilities and Complexities. London: Routledge, pp. 223–227, 2019.
  • Szerszynski, B.: How the Earth Remembers and Forgets, in Bobbette, A., & Donovan, A. (eds.): in Political Geology: Active Stratigraphies and the Making of Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 219-36, 2019. http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98189-5_8.
  • Szerszynski, B.: From the Anthropocene Epoch to a New Axial Age: Using Theory Fictions to Explore Geo-spiritual Futures, in Deane-Drummond, C., Bergmann, S., & Vogt, M. (eds.): Religion in the Anthropocene. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, pp. 35-52, 2017.
  • Szerszynski, B.: Coloring Climates: Imagining a Geoengineered World, in Heise, U. K., Christensen J., & Niemann, M. (eds.): The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities. London: Routledge, 82–90, 2017.
  • Szerszynski, B.: The Martian Book of the Dead, in Oppermann, S., & Iovino, S. (eds.): Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene. London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 325-30, 2016.
  • Szerszynski, B.: Out of the Metazoic? Animals as a Transitional Form in Planetary Evolution, in Tønnessen, M., Armstrong Oma, K., & Rattasepp, S. (eds.): Thinking about Animals in the Age of the Anthropocene. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, pp. 163–179, 2016.
  • Szerszynski, B.: The Onomatophore of the Anthropocene: Commission on Planetary Ages Decision CC87966424/49, in Hamilton, C., Gemenne, F., & Bonneuil, C. (eds.): The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. London: Routledge, pp. 177-83, 2015. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781315743424-19. 
  • Szerszynski, B: Liberation through Hearing in the Planetary Transition: Funerary Practices in Twenty-Second-Century Mangalayana Buddhism’, in Klingan, K., Sepahvand, A., Rosol, C., & Scherer B. M. (eds.): Grain Vapor Ray: Textures of the Anthropocene. Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, pp. 149-164, 2014.
  • Galarraga, M. & Szerszynski, B.: Making Climates: Solar Radiation Management and the Ethics of Fabrication, in Preston, C. (ed.): Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management. Massachusetts: Lexington, pp 221-35, 2012.

Journal articles