Giulia Rispoli is an Assistant Professor in History of Science at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), and a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (MPIWG).

Her research interests include the history and epistemology of systems thinking in the 20th century—in particular, Alexander Bogdanov’s Tektology as an alternative to the general systems theory and cybernetics—and their declination and convergence with biosphere theories and Earth System sciences.

Giulia Rispoli’s current research funded by the Rita Levi Montalcini Programme, is titled “Planetary Genealogies, Historicizing the Anthropocene.” It contributes to the study and evaluation of the historical, epistemological and scientific foundations of the Anthropocene, a term that indicates a new geological epoch characterized by the global impact of human activities on the planet. In particular, she studies and reconstructs the genealogies of two notions—the “biosphere-geosphere” and the “Earth system”—and how they help reveal different ways in which our planet was conceived and represented in the twentieth century in relation to human influence, and how visions of the global Earth became an object of global politics.

Before joining Ca’ Foscari, Giulia Rispoli was a Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle and at the Centre Alexander Koyré in Paris, and taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, at the Cohn Institute of Tel Aviv University, and at the Osteuropa-Institute at the Freie Universität Berlin.