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Natural sciences
  • Natural sciences
  • Essays

Senne Starckx

In Search of Lost Worlds

English November 2024

Eske Willerslev returns to his first research interest: ancient environmental DNA. In his words, «That’s where the new frontier lies in our field». The research not only tells something about the distant past, but it might also help steer our future.

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Philosophy and Letters
  • Philosophy and Letters
  • Interviews
English October 2024

Skinner reflects on his intellectual path over the past twenty years, from theorizing a third concept of freedom, to reconstructing the concept of State and defending it in our normative discourse against oversimplifying theorizers of the «death of the State», to the crisis of contemporary democracies.

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Natural sciences
  • Natural sciences
  • Essays

Marco Ferrari

Intelligent Trees

English October 2024

Recent assumptions about the nature and physiology of plants could revolutionise our perspective on the world of plants. But orthodoxy is not easy to change. The first of this two-part article deals with plant neurobiology.

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Social sciences
  • Social sciences
  • Essays
English September 2024

During the COVID-19 pandemic, divergent as well as convergent narratives cried out for attention. Strathern discusses them through the anthropological response and its reception in the UK while questioning individual responsibility and the usefulness of “common humanity” as a universal concept.

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History
  • History
  • Interviews
English September 2024

Susannah Gold interviews Peter Brown and his Balzan research project leader, David Michelson, about the process of “reconceiving the historical reference work” with the online historical reference for Syriac studies, syriaca.org, the cornerstone of Figures in a Landscape.

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History of sciences and ideas
  • History of sciences and ideas
  • Essays
English August 2024

In presenting the work of Jean-Jacques Hublin, 2023 Balzan Prize for the Evolution of Humankind: Paleoanthropology, Francesco Ranci traces a ‘genealogy’ of Balzan Prizewinners who have done research in or related to the field.

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Philosophy and Letters
  • Philosophy and Letters
  • Events
English August 2024

The authors reflect on philosophical historian Bronisław Baczko’s research project (2011 Balzan Prize), Dictionnaire critique de l’utopie au temps des Lumières, an embodiment of his conception of utopia and a complex view of the socio-political and literary culture of the era of the Philosophes.

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History of sciences and ideas
  • History of sciences and ideas
  • Essays

Paolo Rossi Monti

La scienza e la sua storia

Italian July 2024

In discussing the work of the historian of science, with “La scienza e la sua storia” Paolo Rossi Monti provides an interesting overview of long-forgotten objects, theories, methodologies, formulations of problems, career paths. The essay comes with a profile of Paolo Rossi Monti where Nicolette Mout outlines his contribution to the history of science as […]

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Mathematics, physics, and technology
  • Mathematics, physics, and technology
  • Interviews

Khalid Barkaoui

Looking for New Worlds

English July 2024

Science journalist Senne Starckx interviews astrophysicist Khalid Barkaoui from the SPECULOOS project, led by Michaël Gillon (2017 Balzan Prizewinner for The Sun’s Planetary System and Exoplanets). The project, involving six universities, uses robotic telescopes in Chile, Tenerife and Mexico to find Earth-like planets around red dwarf stars using the transit method.

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Natural sciences
  • Natural sciences
  • Events
English May 2024

2022 Prizewinner Hans Oerlemans reports on Balzan excursions he led in Upper Engadine, where participants were able to experience first-hand how glaciers shape the landscape and learn about his research on glaciers, in particular, the MortAlive project.

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Medicine
  • Medicine
  • Essays
English May 2024

Despite decades of research, scientists are only beginning to unravel the complexities of the brain’s functions, which surpass high-performance computers. Reinhard Jahn focuses on understanding synaptic transmission and neurotransmitter release, shedding light on this intricate system.

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History
  • History
  • Essays
English May 2024

Osterhammel surveys global history’s evolution, noting its establishment in academe while highlighting its fragility. He calls for methodological awareness and pluralism in an approach balancing movement-building and the field’s transformative potential.

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