Holberg Prize Talks

On 5 June 2024 Holberg Laureate Achille Mbembe held his Holberg Lecture: "The Earthly Community" in the University Aula in Bergen. How should we inhabit anew and share as equitably as possible a planet whose life-support system has been so severely damaged by human activities as to be in dire need of repair? Achille Mbembe is Research Professor of History and Politics at Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand. He is also Director of the Innovation Foundation for Democracy. Photo: Eivind Senneset / The Holberg Prize

Siddharth Sareen is the 2024 Nils Klim Laureate. He receives the prize for his research in environmental social sciences. In this interview, he speaks about his background, his academic journey, his research interests, and the work that lead to his being rewarded the Nils Klim Prize. Sareen is professor of energy and environment at the Department of Media and Social Sciences, University of Stavanger. He is also professor II at the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET), University of Bergen. Interviewer: Professor Håvard Haarstad, Director at CET. The 2024 Holberg Week takes place from 4 -- 6 June in Bergen and Oslo. There Holberg Laureate Achille Mbembe and Nils Klim Laureate Siddharth Sareen will be celebrated with award ceremonies and acedemic events. For more information, see holbergprize.org.

The 2024 Laureate Achille Mbembe in conversation with Hlonipha Mokoena. Achille Mbembe is research professor of history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits). Hlonipha Mokoena is professor and acting Co-Director at WiSER, Wits University. The interview was conducted at Wits University, on 13 March, 2024. Achille Mbembe receives the 2024 Holberg Prize for his pioneering research in African history, postcolonial studies, humanities, and social science over four decades

The 2023 Holberg Prize was awarded to Catalan scholar Joan Martinez-Alier for his groundbreaking research in ecological economics, political ecology and environmental justice. Martinez-Alier is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). In this interview, he talks about his academic scholarship and activism. Interviewer: Professor Håvard Haarstad, Department of Geography, University of Bergen. For more information see the Holberg Prize website: https://holbergprize.org/en. Photo: Eivind Senneset

Joining the discussion are Anil Seth, a neuroscientist passionate about consciousness, anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann, and biologist Rupert Sheldrake, known for his unorthodox ideas. They explore whether consciousness stems solely from the brain or transcends it. The conversation delves into personal experiences versus cultural influences on perception and delves into fascinating topics like tulpamancy, the concept of the extended mind, and the historical evolution of consciousness. Together, they challenge conventional views and inspire new ways of understanding our minds.

On Wednesday, 7 June, the 2023 Holberg Prize Laureate Joan Martinez-Alier held the lecture: "Land, Water, Air and Freedom" in the University Aula in Bergen. Mapping geographies of resistance at the frontiers of commodity extraction and waste disposal in a world counter-movement for environmental justice. As the industrial economy grows, there is also growth and changes in the Social Metabolism. The economy is not circular, it is entropic. There are thousands of “ecological distribution conflicts” at the frontiers of commodity extractions and waste disposal. Their protagonists display many different valuation languages and repertoires of action. “Land, Water, Air and Freedom” seems a good slogan and also a short description of the aims of the world movements for environmental justice. Photo: Joan Vidal / The Holberg Prize

The 2022 Holberg Debate: "Will Fear Keep Us Safe?" How will the war in Ukraine and other geopolitical crises impact the global security order, and what do they mean for the power of deterrence ? Panel: John J. Mearsheimer and Carl Bildt Moderator: Cecilie Hellestveit Organizer: The Holberg Prize John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point (1970), has a PhD in political science from Cornell University (1981), and has written extensively about security issues and international politics. Among Mearsheimer’s six books, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001, 2014) won the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize; and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (with Stephen M. Walt, 2007), made the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into twenty-five languages. His latest book is The Great Delusion: Liberal Ideals and International Realities (2018), which won the 2019 Best Book of the Year Award from the Valdai Discussion Conference, Moscow. In addition, Mearsheimer has a forthcoming book (with Sebastian Rosato), Homo Theoreticus: Rationality in International Politics. He has also written numerous articles and op-eds that have appeared in International Security, London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. In 2003, Mearsheimer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2020, he won the James Madison Award, which is given once every three years by the American Political Science Association to “an American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science.” Carl Bildt is Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and contributing columnist to The Washington Post, as well as columnist for Project Syndicate. He serves as Senior Advisor to the Wallenberg Foundations in Sweden and is on the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation in the US. Bildt has served as both Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden. In March 2021, Bildt was appointed WHO Special Envoy for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-Accelerator). Subsequently he served in international functions with the EU and UN, primarily related to the conflicts in the Balkans. Bildt was Co-Chairman of the Dayton peace talks on Bosnia and become the first High Representative in the country. Later, he was the Special Envoy of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to the region. Cecilie Hellestveit (moderator) is a lawyer and social scientist with a PhD in international humanitarian law (IHL) from the University of Oslo. She has been associated with a number of research institutes in Norway and abroad. Hellestveit researches and teaches in the field of international law, use of force, and armed conflicts. holbergprize.org

"Expertise, Democracy and the Politics of Trust" 2022 Holberg Laureate Sheila Jasanoff in conversation with Professor Cathrine Holst. Phenomena such as climate skepticism and vaccine refusal indicate a loss of trust in relations between experts and publics in modern democracies. Comparisons of expert decision-making across democratic societies suggest that reliance on particular forms of evidence-making and public reason differ across political cultures. Trust in expertise emerges as a political achievement that cannot be short-circuited by scientific authority alone. The remedy for breakdowns in trust lies in persuading publics that what experts know does indeed support official policies and regulatory actions. This often calls for better politics, not more science. Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in the social sciences, she explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. Jasanoff founded and directs the STS Program at Harvard University. Her books include The Fifth Branch (1990), Science at the Bar (1995), Designs on Nature (2005), The Ethics of Invention (2016), and Can Science Make Sense of Life? (2019). Cathrine Holst is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo. She has chaired several research projects on the role of experts in democracies. In 2020/2021, she chaired a multidisciplinary research group at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) in Oslo, and the project "What is a good policy? Political morality, feasibility and democracy". In 2022/2033, Holst is a visiting researcher at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. This event is a part of the 2022 Holberg Week, which took place 7—10 June.

The Holberg Lecture by Sheila Jasanoff was held on 8 June 2022 in Bergen, as part of the 2022 Holberg Week Programme. Science and technology are so commonly seen as drivers of progress that their role in forming the horizons of individual and collective self-understanding often passes unnoticed in political theory and practice. STS corrects this imbalance by revealing what we know and how we apply our knowledge to be thoroughly political projects. By unsettling the parameters of social order, science and technology also trouble—and perhaps expand—how we exercise political agency and enact life’s purposes. Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in her field, she has authored more than 130 articles and chapters and is author or editor of more than 15 books, including "The Fifth Branch" (1990), "Science at the Bar" (1995), "Designs on Nature" (2005), "The Ethics of Invention" (2016), and "Can Science Make Sense of Life?" (2019). Her work explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies.

The 2021 Holberg Debate: "Identity Politics and Culture Wars" Does identity politics as it is currently manifesting itself offer a suitable avenue towards social justice, or has it become a recipe for cultural antagonism, political polarization, and new forms of injustice? Panel: Judith Butler, Cornel West, Glenn Greenwald. Moderator: Simon Critchley The event was recorded on 4 December 2021, at SA Studios in New York.