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 session of the Chair Dialogues, open to the public, invites participants to reflect on a key question: how can we think of a Earth that is both inhabited and habitable?
Drawing on the concept of the “critical zone”—this fragile layer where soil, water, air, and living organisms interact—anthropologist Verónica Calvo Valenzuela and geochemist Jérôme Gaillardet will bring their perspectives into dialogue to renew our understanding of 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
Thinking the Earth through the Critical Zone
As part of the Chair Dialogues Inhabiting through the Prism of Planetary Boundaries, this second event proposes to explore the notion of the “critical zone,” understood as the thin layer of the Earth where the conditions for life unfold.
At the intersection of Earth sciences and the humanities and social sciences, this concept invites us to rethink territories not as abstract surfaces, but as complex, dynamic, and interdependent environments. It thus calls for a transformation in the ways we perceive, describe, and inhabit the world.
Moderated by Caroline Lanciaux, coordinator of the Chair at the Institute, the discussion will bring together anthropologist Verónica Calvo Valenzuela, resident of the Chair Inhabiting through the Prism of Planetary Boundaries, and geochemist Jérôme Gaillardet, specialist in biogeochemical cycles at the Institut de physique du globe de Paris. Together, they will cross their perspectives to shed light on the material, political, and sensitive dimensions of the critical zone, and to open up new ways of thinking about a durably habitable Earth.
PROGRAMME (details to come)
2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
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 coordinates 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.
