The Fourth Padova Summer School on Philosophy and Cultural Studies of Technology invites advanced MA students, PhD candidates, and postdocs from philosophy, STS, art history, cultural and animal studies, and related fields.  If you are interested to contribute to our discussions, please describe your motivation and interest (no more than 3 pages) and send it along with a CV by June 5 to Andrea Gentili - andrea.gentili.2@phd.unipd.it – he will answer any queries as well.

One of the first chapters in the history of technology concerns the domestication and breeding of animals, their technological deployment in agriculture, transport, mining, sacrificial rituals. At the same time, for hunters and gatherers, miners and urban dwellers alike, animals structured their technical practices and daily routines. Still today animal nature is harnessed, controlled, and transformed through technology, still today many human practices are shaped by our interactions with animals, and especially today we become aware of our co-dependency.

Genome editing offers strategies to enhance animal performance, biorobotics exploits animal behavior, One Health research fuses human and veterinary medicine with the environmental sciences. Technological devices have taken the place of pets, animals for use are monitored, fed, even stimulated and entertained by phone apps and virtual reality games.

A wide range of phenomena gives rise to several cross-cutting questions:
Kinship, moral community and their technological transformation - conceived as cooperation, cohabitation, coproduction, or codependency.

• Technology games, human and animal forms of life - conceived as interface, intersection, in-formation, inclusion, or integration.
• Analog and digital intelligence - limits and possibilities of communication, mutual recognition, perception, processing and sharing of information.
• Anthropocene, Chthulucene, Technocene - eco-historical positioning for planetary survival.

The summer school faculty includes Natascha Adamowsky, Daria Bylieva, Arianna Ferrari, Fabio Grigenti, Natalia Nikiforova, Alfred Nordmann, Telmo Pievani, Oliver Schlaudt, Astrid Schwarz, and Marco Tamborini. The Summer School is free of charge, accommodations will be provided, participants are expected to cover the cost for travel. For further information see https://www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/media/institut_fuer_philosophie/mitarbeiter_innen/nordmann_1/Animal_Technologies.pdf

Deadline for applications is June 5, 2023.