‘Temporalities of Permacrisis: Pasts, Presents, Futures’ (Interdisciplinary Symposium 2)

Date: 25-27 September 2025
Venue: Tallinn University

‘Temporalities of Permacrisis: Pasts, Presents, Futures’ (Interdisciplinary Symposium 2)

Building on Reinhart Koselleck’s foundational work on crisis as a mode of temporalisation, this interdisciplinary symposium sought to explore the conceptual, experiential, creative, and political dimensions of the transition from crisis as an exceptional state to permacrisis as a sustained condition of an entangled world. How does the notion of an “age of permacrisis” challenge modern historicity, particularly the linear articulation of past, present and future that has underpinned dominant historical and political narratives?

In a moment marked by ecological collapse, warfare, massive technological disruptions by AI and robotics, the rise of autocracy, a culture of disinformation, and a general erosion of democracy globally, we invited scholars, artists and practitioners to engage with and interrogate the new condition of permacrisis.

Developing from the first symposium in Dublin (22–24 May 2025), this second meeting was hosted by Tallinn University and sought to address a series of questions, in particular focusing on the anthropocentric assumptions of crisis discourse, and exploring how the idea of permacrisis might open onto more entangled, multiscalar, multispecies, or planetary perspectives.

Programme link: https://www.tlu.ee/en/ht/events/interdisciplinary-symposium-2-temporalities-permacrisis-pasts-presents-futures

This interdisciplinary symposium was part of the HI-led ‘From Modern Crisis to Permacrisis and Polycrisis’ project (PI Prof Anne Fuchs), funded by the UCD Strategic and Major Initiative Scheme.