Cancelled – Corine Pelluchon and Cyrille Barnerias at Duke University : Mending the Living World
Conference
January 26, 2026
Join us for a talk with Corine Pelluchon and Cyrille Barnerias at Duke University about today’s pressing ecological challenges.
01/26/2026 –This talk has been cancelled due to inclement weather.
Monday, Jan. 26, 2026 | 5:00pm – 6:30pm
Rubenstein Library Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room 153, Duke University
On January 26, Corine Pelluchon, Professor of Philosophy at Gustave Eiffel University, and Cyrille Barnerias, Director of European and International Relations at the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB), will be hosted at Duke University for a conference addressing today’s pressing ecological challenges.
Together, with Professor Felwine Sarr, Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies, and Professor Lori Snyder Bennear, Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment, who will be in dialogue with them, they will reflect on the idea of a “New Enlightenment” for the Anthropocene, exploring emerging forms of interdependence among human, animal, and plant life in the face of biodiversity loss.
The discussion will consider how earlier societies and ecosystems co-adapted to climate pressures, and whether a new social contract could foster a more equitable coexistence between human and nonhuman worlds. It will also examine how these philosophical and ethical reflections can be translated into public policy and meaningful forms of public engagement.
This panel is organized with the support of Villa Albertine to launch the new flagship program Albertine Conversations.
Corine Pelluchon is a Professor of Philosophy at Gustave Eiffel University. She specializes in moral and political philosophy, and in medical, environmental and animal ethics, addressing themes such as ecology and our relationship to nature, eco-anxiety, vulnerability and democracy. She received the Günther Anders Prize for Critical Thinking and the prestigious Leopold Lucas Preis in recognition of her work. Major publications include Nourishment: A Philosophy of the Political Body (trans. J.E. Smith, Bloomsbury, 2019), which explores our corporeality and dependence on nature and other living beings; Enlightenment in the Ecological Age (Ethics International Press, 2025), which examines the relevance of the Enlightenment heritage in the current technological, political and ecological context, and continues the work begun in Éthique de la considération (Seuil, 2018 – rights available) which focuses on the moral dispositions required to achieve ecological transition; L’être et la mer. Pour un existentialisme écologique (PUF, 2024 – rights available), where she examines our reliance on the ocean and the submersible dimensions of both the Earth and the human psyche.
Cyrille Barnerias is the Director of European and International Relations at the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB). Prior to joining OFB, he worked with the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Washington, D.C., where he contributed to marine and terrestrial biodiversity projects, and in Martinique, where he focused on biodiversity and the conservation of protected species and areas. He began his career at the French Forest Inventory, on methods, protocols, and management. Across these diverse roles, he has built a career dedicated to biodiversity, spanning the full spectrum from inventory and conservation to international cooperation. He is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas.
Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese academic and writer. He is Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, after teaching at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he is Professeur Titulaire des Universités and agrégé in economics. His academic work focuses on economics, the ecology of knowledge, contemporary African philosophy, economic policy, epistemology, economic anthropology, and the history of religious ideas.
He has published Dahij (Gallimard 2009), 105 Rue Carnot (Mémoire d’Encrier 2011), Méditations Africaines (Mémoire d’Encrier 2012), Afrotopia (Philippe Rey, 2016), Ishindenshin (Mémoire d’Encrier, 2017), Habiter le Monde (Mémoire d’Encrier, 2017), Ecrire l’Afrique-monde (collective work co-edited with Achille Mbembe, Philippe Rey/Jimsaan, 2017), Restituer le patrimoine Africain (Philippe Rey/Seuil, 2018) with Bénédicte Savoy, Politique des Temps (co-edited with Achille Mbembe, Philippe Rey/Jimsaan 2019), La Saveur des derniers mètres (Philippe Rey, 2021), Traces (Actes Sud, 2021, translation into Wolof Watit, 2023, éditions EJO), l’Économie à venir (Les liens qui Libèrent, 2021) with Gaël Giraud, Les Lieux qu’habitent mes Rêves (Gallimard, 2022) and Le Bouddhisme est né á Colobane (Philippe Rey /Jimsaan, 2024).
Lori Snyder Bennear is the Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy, with joint appointments at the Sanford School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics. Her research focuses on the rigorous quantitative evaluation of environmental policies, including their effectiveness, behavioral impacts, and distributional consequences.
