Bio

Max Bautista Perpinyà is a researcher in the history and philosophy of science, completing his PhD at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He is interested in the relationship between science and politics, and is working on the emergence of scientific environmentalism –the idea that science has the capacity, duty and legitimacy to propose solutions to environmental problems– during the Spanish political transition from the Francoist regime towards democracy. His thesis work focuses on the emergence of different discourses, practices, and social and institutional movements around different conceptualisations of ‘forest biodiversity’. Apart from his academic work, he has developed artistic collaborations, such as the interactive sound installation ‘reading, listening, and reading’ (World Congress of Environmental History, Oulu 2024). In 2021 he co-founded the ‘Journal of Trial and Error’. His background is in biology (Maastricht), neuroscience (Strasbourg), and history and philosophy of science (Utrecht).

Project

At Faberllull Olot, he will write a chapter of his doctoral thesis on the ambition to build environmental awareness in Catalonia through science. Using interviews and archive work, he has collected the views of those who worked on and promoted the first ecological forest inventory in Catalonia in the 1980s and 1990s. This forest inventory was developed in a period of deep political, social and scientific transformation. Computing what there was in the forests had a multidimensional meaning for different actors. For ecologists, it was a response to the productivist forestry of the Franco regime; for politicians, it served as a nation-building project.