Giulia RISPOLI

Giulia Rispoli is Associate Professor of History of Science and Technology at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is affiliated with NICHE (Centre for Environmental Humanities), where she coordinates a research cluster dedicated to the histories of the Earth system and the genealogies of the Anthropocene. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena.

She received her PhD in Philosophy in 2015 from Sapienza University of Rome. She has conducted research at Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, the University of York, and Columbia University in New York, and has held teaching appointments at Tel Aviv University, Indiana University Bloomington, and Freie Universität Berlin. She was also a Research Scholar for several years at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, before returning to Italy through the Italian Ministry's “Rita Levi Montalcini” programme. She has served as Principal Investigator of the research projects Planetary Genealogies: Historicizing the Anthropocene and Nuclear Anthropocene – Nuclear Winter: Biosphere Modeling and International Governance.

Her research lies at the intersection of the history and philosophy of science, the history of the natural sciences, and the Environmental Humanities, with a particular focus on the history of ecological thought, the genealogies of the Anthropocene, and the emergence of Earth System Science. Her work initially focused on systems thinking, cybernetics, and theories of complex organization, with particular attention to Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Tektology, before expanding to the historical and epistemological reconstruction of the concepts of biosphere, noosphere, and the global environment in the twentieth century. A central strand of her research examines Russian and Soviet scientific traditions, particularly the work of Vladimir Vernadsky and its contribution to the development of a planetary understanding of the Earth and living processes. Her research also investigates the relationships between scientific knowledge, political ideologies, and environmental governance during the Cold War, with particular attention to the role of climate and Earth system modelling in scientific diplomacy and transnational relations between East and West.

She has published extensively in international scholarly journals and edited volumes. Her most recent books include Antropocene. Storia di un’idea (2025) and Storia dell’ecologia. Dall’Ottocento ai giorni nostri (2026, co-authored with Andrea Candela), both published by Carocci.

At Ca’ Foscari, she combines her research with teaching across the university’s philosophy, international studies, and environmental programmes. Her courses include Environment, Science and Global Politics in the Bachelor's Degree Programme in Philosophy, International and Economic Studies (PISE), and Environmental Humanities and the Anthropocene in the Master's Degree Programme in Environmental Humanities. She also teaches Storia e filosofia dell’ambiente (History and Philosophy of the Environment) and Storia del pensiero biologico (History of Biological Thought), the latter focusing on the historical and epistemological foundations of the life sciences.