Emil Henrik Flatø
Academic interests
My research looks at early efforts to bring science to bear on the question of future climates to advise politicians and publics.
Specifically, the peculiar environment at M.I.T. in the late 1960s and early ‘70s fascinates me. This was a culture that spawned various approaches to future change. Many of the protagonists had expertise that was new to the academy: they were “socio-technical engineers”, business school professors, and the computer-modeling pioneers of “systems dynamics”. They made their claims on the shifting epistemological terrain of an interdisciplinary field that was just coming together.
I am particularly interested in the proliferation of talk at the time about a science of “global problems”, which curiously resonates with the turn towards a politics of “issues” in science of technology studies.
I am also interested in how scientific claims about the future reckon with whatever collective human agencies that can, and do, shape earth-scale processes.
Background
My education includes a master’s in Modern Culture from the University of Copenhagen, and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University, majoring in human rights. I have also studied law and international relations. Queer theory, urban studies and documentary arts.
Before embarking on my PhD, I worked for several years as a staff writer, critic and commentator at the weekly Morgenbladet.
This broad experience has left me with a desire to work with knowledge in many ways; to be a scholar and not just a researcher. Luckily, the spirit of expanding the bounds of academic work is alive and well in the environmental humanities, but I am always open to encounters with new ways of thinking and doing.
Publications
-
Flatø, Emil (2021). Precious time, limited worlds: Toward a history of modeled climate futures.
-
Flatø, Emil (2021). Foreseeing Like a System: Enter the IPCC’s Scenario Matrix .
-
Flatø, Emil (2021). Is Time Space? The philosopher, the cybernaut, and futures in the Sixth Assessment Report.
-
Flatø, Emil Henrik (2020). Pandemien har vist oss noe viktig – teknokratene er ikke lenger føre var. [Newspaper]. Morgenbladet.
-
Flatø, Emil; Gruber, Christina; Hertz, Samuel; Brain, Tega & Domínguez Rangel, Natalia (2020). Zugzwang - The Compulsion to Find a Common Baseline in Sound. Show summary
-
Flatø, Emil; Zuiderveen Borgesius, Leonoor Elisabeth; Jacobsen, Stine Alling & Bastian, Michelle (2020). Is Time That Hard to Grasp? - Trailer for the stream Approaching Time-Things. Show summary
-
Flatø, Emil Henrik (2020). Temporalizing the Issue – Lessons about time and science from 1970s climate futures .
-
Flatø, Emil (2019). Journalism, History and Environmental Time(s) - Lessons from ”Atchafalaya” .
-
Flatø, Emil (2018). Jeg hater internett. Fanfare. ISSN 9780996421805.