Van Reybrouck as Arne Næss Professor 2024 in Norway
As a chairholder David will hold the distinguished Arne Næss lecture at Oslo University’s Festive Hall end of August and engage with graduate and postgraduate students. Former chairholders include Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk, economist Jason Hickel (degrowth), Polly Higgins (who coined the term 'ecocide'), French politician Eva Joly, British sociologist Anthony Giddens, American philosopher David Abram (who works on The More Than Human), Indian historian Ramachandra Guha (the biographer of Gandhi) and the world-famous James Lovelock (inventor of the Gaia-hypothesis).
The University of Oslo motivated its appointment as follows: "Van Reybrouck is an acclaimed Belgian cultural historian, archaeologist, and the world-renown architect of pioneering democratic innovations designed to combat the climate crisis."
In a reaction on Facebook, David said: “Humbled by this formidable recognition, I will do what I always do: showing that, beyond hope or despair, there are valuable and readily available solutions for doing so much better in terms of democracy, sustainability and survival.”