This year, the Chair Inhabiting through the Prism of Planetary Boundaries welcomes anthropologist Verónica Calvo Valenzuela in residence. Her work notably builds on the Où atterrir ? workshops, which she co-developed at the Collège des Bernardins in dialogue with Bruno Latour. Through two events, on March 30 and June 1st, she proposes to explore how this approach enables territorial stakeholders—urban planners, architects, developers, and institutions—to identify their interdependencies—social, affective, economic, and biogeochemical—with the environments they inhabit and transform.
On June 1, 2026, this second edition of the Chair Dialogues – Inhabiting Within Planetary Boundaries, open to the public, invites participants to rethink a fundamental question: how can we conceive of an Earth that is both inhabited and habitable? Drawing on the notion of the “critical zone” — this fragile space where soil, water, air, and living beings interact — anthropologist Verónica Calvo Valenzuela and geochemist Jérôme Gaillardet will bring their perspectives into dialogue to profoundly renew the way we understand territories.
Registration required : https://forms.gle/3rf9iZBH2Q3ScXsK9
2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Nantes
6 Quai François Mitterrand, 44200 Nantes
Registration required : https://forms.gle/3rf9iZBH2Q3ScXsK9
This event brings together two disciplines that have historically turned away from one another — anthropology and geochemistry — yet which the Anthropocene now compels us to reconnect. As the grounds of both globalization and locality seem to give way beneath our feet, unable to absorb today’s social, environmental, and political challenges, researchers, institutions, and stakeholders are faced with the task of defining a new ground: one that is biogeochemical, anthropological, and political, capable of articulating these intertwined issues.
Drawing on two different ways of conceiving habitability — one rooted in anthropological fieldwork conducted in the Bolivian Andes, the other in Earth sciences research on the “Critical Zone” — this dialogue seeks to identify points of convergence between these approaches in order to better grasp the contemporary challenges of habitability.
As both a concept, a scientific practice, and a long-term observational framework, the Critical Zone also opens up broader reflections on the conditions for such interdisciplinary dialogue in identifying and addressing issues of habitability within the Nantes territory.
PROGRAMME
2:00–2:15 pm – Welcome
2:15–3:45 pm – How can we rethink the ways our disciplines help us conceive habitability from and through our territories?
A dialogue between Jérôme Gaillardet (geochemist) and Verónica Calvo Valenzuela (anthropologist), moderated by Caroline Lanciaux, followed by a discussion with the audience.
3:45–4:00 pm – Break
4:00–5:00 pm – How can we rethink the Nantes territory through our tools for observing and describing our attachments to place?
A dialogue with local stakeholders and partners of the Chair, followed by a discussion with the audience.
5:00–6:00 pm – Continued informal discussion over drinks
Jérôme GAILLARDET
A geochemist and professor of Earth sciences at the Institut de physique du globe de Paris (IPGP), and a member of the Institut universitaire de France, his research focuses on biogeochemical cycles and the chemical composition of rivers. He is particularly interested in the role of chemical weathering and material fluxes in the functioning of the critical zone, the thin layer of the Earth where rocks, water, air, and living organisms interact.
His work notably relies on isotopic geochemistry to analyze natural processes and transformations linked to human activities, from the scale of drainage basins to the global scale.
He coordinated the national research infrastructure OZCAR (Critical Zone Observatories) and contributes to the development of international observation networks, helping to structure a science of the Earth attentive to the interactions between environments and societies.
Author of The Habitable Earth, or the Epic of the Critical Zone (La Découverte, 2023), he also contributes to renewing the ways we think about and describe the Earth in the context of contemporary environmental transformations.
Verónica CALVO VALENZUELA
“The Last House. Integrating Anthropology and Earth Sciences to Understand Habitability in the Urban Critical Zone”
This project explores the relationships between the biophysical dynamics of the Earth and the ways humans inhabit the world. Drawing on critical zone sciences—which study the thin layer of life at the Earth’s surface—Verónica Calvo Valenzuela brings in an anthropological perspective, attentive to the multiple forms of interdependence that shape territories, particularly in urban critical zones.
Her approach builds on the method of “territorial self-description” developed in the Où atterrir? workshops, co-developed at the Collège des Bernardins with Bruno Latour. As part of her residency within the Chair Inhabiting through the Prism of Planetary Boundaries, she invites territorial stakeholders—urban planners, architects, developers, and institutions—to identify their social, affective, economic, and ecological interdependencies with the environments they inhabit and transform.
The project aims to test a transversal and holistic method with these practitioners, in order to develop tools capable of addressing the complexity of contemporary territorial challenges. In dialogue with research conducted at the Nantes Observatory of Urban Environments (ONEVU), it ultimately seeks to rethink what constitutes a territory within a broader reflection on the habitability of the Earth.
