Thursday
13
November 2025
1:00 - 2:30 PM IST
Location
Room 300, School of Arts and Sciences
Central Campus
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Earth Rising
Arts and Sciences Lecture Series
Aditya Malik
Founding Professor
Humanities and Social Sciences
Plaksha University
Speaker
This talk is based on ideas Professor Malik explores in his new book: Bird of Thought. Entanglement and the Illusion of Separation (Primus, September 2025). The title draws inspiration from the first photograph of Earth taken from outer space by a NASA astronaut in 1968 called ‘Earthrise’. It has been described as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”. It is the first photograph taken of Earth in its totality as a singular, unitary celestial body without national or political boundaries that is the dwelling place of all life as we know it. What does it mean to think of Earth as a dwelling place for life (and nonlife)? What is to dwell in or dwell upon? How does the idea of Earth as a dwelling place contrast with thinking of Earth as a resource? Is it possible – following this - to re-imagine Earth as source rather than resource? To move beyond thinking of Earth as a resource would mean – among other things - moving beyond a thinking that prioritises measurability and calculability. It would mean allowing Earth to a-rise as a field, space or presence rather than a thing or object that is waiting to be used by human beings.
Speaker
Aditya Malik
Aditya Malik is Founding Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Plaksha University, Mohali. He has conducted years of fieldwork in rural western and northern India, and has published twelve books and dozens of scholarly papers on the cultural significance of oral traditions and ritual performance as well as the intersections of religion, social justice and law; the social, symbolic and religious importance of pilgrimage; the interconnections between memory, time, imagination, and historical consciousness; questions concerning the relationship between self, world, and language; and also the intersections of humanities and technology, as well as the meanings of thinking, creativity and intelligence. His most recent publications include Bird of Thought: Entanglement and the Illusion of Separation (Primus, 2025); Realizing Justice: Normative Orders and the Realities of Justice in India (with Antje Linkenbach, Manohar, 2024); Hammira: Chapters in Imagination, Time, History (De Gruyter, 2021); and Tales of Justice and Rituals of Divine Embodiment. Oral Narratives from the Central Himalayas (Oxford, New York, 2016, New Delhi, 2018).
Aditya has been Dean, School of Historical Studies at Nalanda University; Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Science at the University of Erfurt; Visiting Professor, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Deputy Director, New Zealand South Asia Centre (NZSAC) at the University of Canterbury; Resident Representative, Office of the South Asia Institute (University of Heidelberg) in New Delhi. He was recognized as an “Inspired Teacher” by the late president of India, Bharat Ratna, Dr Pranab Mukherjee in 2016.
