Radical Ecological Conversion as Objective and Opportunity

Format: Public Lecture
Speaker: Dr Oliver Putz
About: In this talk, Dr Putz will explore the ways in which the Catholic Church can drive societal transition from the current 'technocratic paradigm' - the way society has taken up advancement in technology without concerns for its potentially negative impact on human beings - to an integral ecology that takes into account the relationship between humans and their environment.
He will discuss how a radical ecological conversion is needed, and turns to theological, philosophical, political, and psychological insights to identify how such a conversion might be feasible.

About the speaker:
Oliver Putz is Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Potsdam, Germany, where he studies the role of religion in a global societal transformation towards more just, equitable, and sustainable futures. Before coming to the IASS, he was Assistant Professor of Theology and Science at Santa Clara University in California (USA). Putz holds a PhD in biology from the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) and a PhD in theology from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley (USA). Aside from the role of religion in the anthropocene, Putz has conducted research on animal theology, theological anthropology, and suffering as a challenge for a contemporary theodicy.