Oriol Batalla
Oriol Batalla is a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Theory at the Center for the Study of Culture, Politics, and Society (University of Barcelona), supervised by Dr. Peter Wagner (ICREA/UB). Trained as a scholar in Cultural Analysis and Environmental Humanities at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (BA), San Diego State University (BA visiting student), and the University of Amsterdam (MA), he has focused his research on the concept of the Necrocene as the age of extinction driven by capitalist dynamics. His work explores neoliberalism after the Great Acceleration and the intersection between historical materialism and new materialism to address the current ecological emergency, with particular attention to non-human lifeforms and the stories and narratives they generate. In addition to his academic pursuits, he has experience as a secondary school teacher and he has also held positions as an adjunct professor in the Department of English at Rovira i Virgili University and in the Department of Communication at Pompeu Fabra University. His published works have appeared in edited books from Columbia University Press & Active Distribution and journals such as Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research, Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, CES e-cadernos, and Indialogs, among others. Oriol is one of the coordinators of the "Approaches to the Ecological Emergency" seminar series, in collaboration with Dr. Peter Wagner and Dr. Anna Clot-Garrell and one of the members of the Ecologies of Modernity in Spain: Displacement, Power Struggles and Entangled Knowledges (ENTANGLED) project. This 2024, he will be a visiting researcher at the University of Costa Rica, where he will give some lectures on the narratives of the Anthropocene and the intertwining between different kinds of materialisms.