Caroline Krafft, associate professor of economics in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and ICGC affiliate, will give a talk on her current work. 

GS Sahota, Associate Professor of Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will give a talk on his current work in the ICGC South Asia Seminar Series. 

As we approach the midterm, the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) launches Machines & Meanings (M&M) — a cross-campus forum exploring how technologies transform knowledge, justice, and human possibility.

Generative AI and other emerging digital technologies have become ubiquitous with astonishing speed, promising to reshape how we learn, decide, and relate to one another. Yet these tools belong to a much longer story — of automation, cybernetics, and global information infrastructures — that continue to transform how humans imagine knowledge, justice, and possibility. At ICGC, we believe that understanding these technologies begins with understanding the world — its histories, inequalities, and moral imaginations. 

Future sessions in the M&M forum will trace the longer histories of cybernetics, feedback systems, and global information infrastructures that shape today’s generative-AI moment.

M&M brings together researchers, artists, and practitioners to ask not only what machines can do, but what they are doing to us — to our methods, creativity, and sense of being human.

The arc opens with a seminar featuring Dr. Janaki Srinivasan (University of Oxford) in conversation with Vinay Brandon (Anthropology, UMN).

Hosted by Approaching Global Asias Working Group.

Co-sponsors: Anthropology, Sociology, Mass Communication, CBI, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, Geography, Global Studies, Social Innovation Lab, Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, Technology Leadership Institute, Women and Gender Policy Center, Center for Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, Asian American Studies, Institute for Advanced Studies, Data Science Initiative.

Megan Manion will give her presentation, Dolus Perdere: the 'specific intent' to destroy a people as such, at ICGC on October 17th.

Laira Rocha Tenca, ICGC Visiting Scholar during academic year 2025-26, will give a talk on her work in progress. 

Chau Pham, PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, will give a talk on her work in progress. 

Shankar CSR, PhD candidate in the Department of History, will give a talk on his work in progress. 

Lindsey Willow Smith, PhD student in the Department of History, will give a talk on her work in progress.