Public lecture: “Exploring Saturn: Lord of the Rings and Icy Moons” by Roland Brockers

Saturn, with its distinctive ring system, is one of the most impressive planets in our solar system. Roland Brockers will take the audience attending his public lecture on Thursday, 5 June (5 p.m., Lecture Hall 1, University of Klagenfurt) on an exciting journey to the ringed planet with the largest number of known moons in the solar system. Roland Brockers is Professor of Modular Robotic Systems in the Control of Networked Systems group and a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory / California Institute of Technology in California. This public lecture continues his series of Space Exploration Lectures delivered during his teaching visit to Klagenfurt.

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Invitation to the lecture “Panda Heritage: Kinship Measurements and Life’s Value in Species Conservation” on 8 May (Dr. Christof Lammer)

Why are giant pandas considered a species worth protecting and a national treasure of China, while not all pandas are seen as equally valuable? Christof Lammer reports on his research into kinship measurements in species conservation and their political, economic, and ecological implications.

The Department of Society, Knowledge and Policy cordially invites you to the lecture “Panda Heritage: Kinship Measurements and Life’s Value in Species Conservation” by Dr. Christof Lammer. The event will take place on 8 May 2025 at 5 pm at S.2.05. We look forward to your participation and a stimulating exchange after the lecture.

Abstract: What makes certain species and individual animals worth protecting? Christof examines the iconic case of the giant panda – a global symbol of conservation efforts and a national treasure of the People’s Republic of China – and suggests that kinship measurements play a central role in species conservation. Kinship is measured using a wide variety of methods, technologies and forms of data. Indicators of kinship range from genealogical proximity to behavioural resemblance and from lived closeness to genetic similarity. Although measurements of human kinship are widely used, for example in decisions about citizenship and inheritance, they are rarely studied under one theoretical heading. Therefore, their political and economic consequences have often been overlooked, including in environmentalism. Measured animal kinship has been mobilized to claim the belonging of highly valued species and for making breeding decisions that affect not only individual animals but also the human institutions that keep them. In Christof’s talk, you will hear about palaeobiological measurements of animal remains found in Europe that were used to challenge claims about the Chineseness of the giant panda lineage, a genetic matchmaking algorithm for captive pandas that was criticized as reviving a ‘backward’ cultural tradition of arranged marriages, and biologists’ measurements of kinship as embodied maternal care that promise to enhance the value of pseudo-pregnant female pandas for preserving the panda heritage.

Christof Lammer is a social anthropologist based at the Department of Society, Knowledge and Politics at the University of Klagenfurt. As inherit fellow at Humboldt University of Berlin he pursued the project ‘Panda Heritage: Kinship Measurements and Life’s Value in Species Conservation‘ (2024-2025). He is the author of Performing State Boundaries: Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China (2024, Berghahn Books) and has co-edited special issues on Measuring Kinship: Gradual Belonging and Thresholds of Exclusion (2021, Social Analysis) and Infrastructures of Value: New and Historical Materialities in Agriculture (2024, Ethnos) and is also a co-organizer of the DFG Scientific Network ‘Anthropology and China(s)‘ (2021–2026).

The newspaper Tagesspiegel recently reported about his research:

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/berlin-bekommt-baren-zweiter-wahl-die-wissenschaft-hinter-chinas-panda-diplomatie-13512118.html

May 1st: Library closed

On May 1st the University Library stays closed.

 

Please register in good time – 24 h in advance of your use – for the 24/7 library to use our reading rooms and media stacks all around the clock as usual.

 

We look forward to your visit!

Efficient and secure: better systems for enhancing cybersecurity

Chitchanok Chuengsatiansup moved from the University of Melbourne to the University of Klagenfurt at the end of 2024 with the aim of continuing her work on optimised cryptographic codes that accomplish several goals: While maintaining the security offered by the design, the computational resources required to execute cryptographic code and the overheads to integrate such code into different systems should be minimal.

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