The Problem of Heat on an Unequal Planet

The premise of this two-day workshop was that understanding heat and its effects requires a radically multiscalar, multidisciplinary, and even interdisciplinary approach, one that sutures together concepts, theories, methods, and styles of thinking from various fields while simultaneously developing new ways of doing things and new ways of describing things. Over the two days, the workshop fostered a robust conversation across scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, history, literature, architecture, economics, material science and engineering, public health, medicine, evolutionary biology, political science, public policy, urban planning, law, computer science, and climate science. In bringing together humanists and scientists of various stripes, the ambition of this workshop was to create space for the development of new critical concepts for understanding heat and its effects. The aim was not simply to develop narrow policy recommendations or diagnose shortcomings, but rather to think capaciously and creatively alongside people who approach heat from very different perspectives.

Participants debated keywords submitted by scholars – such as “After Comfort” from Daniel A. Barber, a Professor and Head of School Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney, and “Thermal Governance” from Jiat-Hwee Chang of National University of Singapore – putting them in new configurations, seeking connections and resonances, with the goal of creating combinations of concepts that generate novel frames and ideas.

At the close of the workshop, participants left with walls between disciplines shattered and preconceptions of relationships from the practical to the political as it relates to issues of inequality, heat, and planetarity scrambled. Multiple new ideas for collaborative work with other participants were generated and forthcoming articles, collections of terms, and future workshops are forthcoming.