Rita Calvário at the ‘Socio-Ecological Transformation in Times of Regression’ Symposium.

Rita Calvário, researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, will join the ‘Socio-Ecological Transformation in Times of Regression’ Symposium, as guest speaker.

The symposium will be hosted by the University of Kassel on December 4^th and 5^th, 2025.

In the context of multiple ecological, political-economic, and social crises, the question of socio-ecological transformation has taken on growing importance in both activist and scholarly debates in recent decades. However, recent global trends towards authoritarianism, nationalism, ultra-neoliberalism, and a renaissance of fossilism pose serious challenges to such transformation in many parts of the world, especially when it aims to be emancipatory, that is, radically democratic and inclusive.

The international symposium addresses these challenges from a multi-scalar and transnational perspective, taking into account multiple interrelated political-economic and socio-ecological reconfigurations. These include the deepening of ecological crises and the crisis of social reproduction; the emergence of a new geopolitical order shaped by intensifying rivalry between the US and China, the resurgence of the BRICS, and expanding global competition over strategic resources and markets in the name of national competitiveness; and a global tendency toward democratic regression and cultural backlash, visible in rising nationalism, anti-feminism, the proliferation of authoritarian orders, and the rise of the far right.

More Info: Individual appointment - International relations with focus on Latin America - FB05 - Uni Kassel