FRIAS Colloquium

The central thesis of my talk is that we need to develop a concept of nature orientation in order to establish an ethics of sustainable AI. I intend to show (1) which nature-ethical values AI systems should be guided by and (2) which methods can be used to identify them.

(1) Nature orientation should primarily refer to nature external to humans in the form of our planet’s biosphere. It is certainly already recognized that AI itself has an ecological footprint, but can also contribute to reducing our own ecological footprint. However, this largely ignores the fact that nature is always a culturally shaped concept and that culturally different nature-ethical values must be considered. (2) Furthermore, since nature-ethical values are culturally shaped on the one hand and are not usually explicitly articulated on the other, suitable methods must be used to identify them. This talk will argue in favor of supplementing the value-sensitive design (VSD) approach with historical and intercultural awareness, as well as methods of empirical ethics, such as cognitive-affective mapping (CAM).

Date: 13 October 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Philipp Höfele, History, Young Academy for Sustainability Research

Constitutionalism, as a normative concept, is typically understood to be antithetical to authoritarianism. Yet in Africa, it may give rise to either democratic constitutionalism or “syncretic authoritarianism”, a form of authoritarianism that draws on a particular configuration of international law, administrative law, customary law, and democratic constitutionalism as a blueprint and billboard. This Chapter explains the constitutional origins, manifestations, and enabling conditions of syncretic authoritarianism. It examines the paradox of African constitutionalism and reveals its authoritarian impulses. By analyzing the modes and methods of syncretic authoritarianism, it sheds light on the legal, constitutional, and structural factors that allow authoritarianism to persist despite popular demands for democracy on the continent.

Date: 20 October 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Berihun Gebeye, Public Law, University College London

Aristotle defined place as “the inner boundary of the containing body.” While this works for ordinary cases of containment, it raises difficulties at the two limits of the cosmos: the earth at the center and the outermost heaven. For the earth, Aristotle’s definition implies that its place is the concavity of the sphere of water, yet its “natural place” might also be the geometric center—an indivisible point. Can such a dimensionless point count as a place? At the opposite extreme, the outermost heaven is not contained by any body and thus seems to lack a place altogether. Could the cosmic center somehow serve as the place both of the earth and of the heavens?

Moreover, each element is said to rest in its natural place, yet the heavens—though supposedly in their proper place—are in perpetual motion. How, then, can something be both at rest and in motion? The case of the earth presents a similar tension: is its place the body containing it or the central point toward which it moves? In both situations, Aristotle’s definition of place as a container conflicts with the notion of “natural place” as the element’s place of rest.

This talk explores how medieval commentators addressed these puzzles, focusing on Geoffrey of Aspall’s attempt to reconcile them through a distinction between quantitative and natural place, thereby redefining the relation between geometry and nature in Aristotelian cosmology.

Date: 27 October 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Yael Kedar, Philosophy, Tel Hai College

By 2060, Indian Muslims are expected to make up the largest Muslim population in the world. However, despite their size and diversity, this population is both a numerical and a juridical minority. India has indeed adopted a particular form of secularism, which grants collective rights to religious minorities. Within this framework, Indian Muslims are both citizens “like any others” and members of a religious minority that is recognized as a distinct legal entity. This minority occupies a central position in the debates about the Indian nation-state, which are deeply marked by the trauma of the partition with Pakistan (1947). The question since then has been: does India rest on a Hindu foundation or is it a composite nation, of which religious minorities — including Muslims — form an integral part?

This talk probes the relations between state actors and Muslim minority citizens to propose a new perspective on secularism in postcolonial India. It shifts attention away from a definition of secularism premised upon citizens’ religious freedom and the state’s neutrality in religious affairs to look instead at secularism as a system of patronage, based on asymmetrical relationships of power between state actors and religious groups. I focus, firstly, on Muslim “intermediaries” – especially Muslim parliamentarians, religious organizations and state institutions for Muslims – who acted either as delegates for state authorities vis-à-vis the Muslim minority, as patrons, or as spokespersons for their co-religionists. My project examines the role that these actors played, formally or informally, in the management of religious co-existence. It draws attention, secondly, to the grievances and demands of “ordinary citizens” who sought, through these intermediaries, to reach out to the state. This project thus combines a social history of India’s secular state with a history “from below” of its minority citizens. Its objective is to show both how secularism functions and what it means “from a minority perspective”, in the country that claims to be the “largest democracy in the world”.  

Date: 3 November 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Laurence Gautier, History, Delhi

Restoration of nature is central to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the European Nature Restoration Regulation (EU-NRR). Yet, it is often unclear what is meant by restoring nature. The reason for this is that, in contrast to climate mitigation, the objective of restoring nature is multidimensional and relates to the many values that biodiversity underpins. In this talk, I will present a project that aims to clarify competing biodiversity values related to the EU-NRR, and to explore the extent to which potential synergies and conflicts exist between restoring for different values (e.g., intrinsic, relational, and instrumental values). In particular, I will discuss how carefully balancing measures that segregate (“land sparing”) and integrate conservation with production landscapes can help identify synergistic solutions. However, I will also discuss why such solutions are difficult to implement because of the “tragedy of ecosystem services”.

Date: 10 November 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Henrik Smith, Environmental Sciences, Lund University

This paper examines the intersection of gender, medicine, and food history in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the 16th–17th centuries. Focusing on the medicinal use of wine and beer, it reveals how reproductive health dominated medical advice for women. Informed by humoral theory, alcoholic beverages were used to regulate menstruation, pregnancy, and lactation. Despite patriarchal norms, such practices allowed educated women limited agency and access to reproductive knowledge. The study highlights how medical texts reflected both Renaissance ideas and enduring gender roles, offering insight into early modern conceptions of women’s health, pharmacology, and bodily autonomy.

Date: 17 November 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Tetiana Hoshko, History, Ukrainian Catholic University

This talk examines the evolving relationship between digital constitutionalism and artificial intelligence (AI) governance in Africa. Its central thesis is that Africa’s engagement with AI regulation must transcend passive adoption of external norms and instead articulate an indigenous, rights-based constitutional vision for the digital age. It argues that sustainable AI governance, understood as governance that balances innovation with enduring commitments to accountability, transparency, and human dignity, cannot be achieved through regulatory imitation but through contextual norm-building grounded in Africa’s constitutional and developmental realities. The presentation pursues three key objectives: first, to interrogate whether AI indeed requires distinct governance frameworks or whether existing constitutional mechanisms suffice; second, to evaluate emerging African regulatory initiatives, including the African Union’s AI Framework; and third, to reflect on what it means for Africa to be a rule-maker rather than a rule-taker in global AI norm-setting. Ultimately, it proposes that digital constitutionalism offers a sustainable path toward an inclusive and democratic AI future for Africa.

Date: 24 November 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Lukman Abdulrauf, Law, University of Ilorin

Patient preferences are central to good clinical care. Yet, challenges arise when individuals cannot decide for themselves and lack advance directives. In recent years, artificial intelligence has been hailed as a potential solution to determine patients’ preferences in such cases, promising improved accuracy over human proxies. This talk will introduce the first proof-of-concept study of a patient preference predictor (PPP), based on population-representative Swiss data, and will highlight conceptual and technical challenges with regard to data and modelling. It will then critically discuss the potential and limitations of AI-based PPPs, scrutinizing the risks of techno-solutionism in end-of-life decision-making.

Date: 8 December 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Georg Starke, Medical Ethics, Technical University of Munich

Agrivoltaics combines agricultural production with renewable energy generation and is considered a key technology for sustainable land use. The presentation provides an overview of the international research landscape and core technological, ecological, and socio-economic challenges. It focuses on how altered light and microclimatic conditions affect plant growth and what this implies for system design and management. The talk highlights the interdisciplinary work of the Agrivoltaics Project Group at the University of Freiburg and invites discussion on collaborative approaches linking field experiments and integrative models to optimize yields, biodiversity, and energy production.

Date: 15 December 2025

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker: FRIAS Project Group Agri-Photovoltaic

This project develops a unified political-economy framework for the study of conflict that links cultural salience to institutional transmission and strategic choice. Eclipse-induced shifts in perceived religiosity identify effects on war initiation and the hardening of ingroup-outgroup boundaries. First-name dynamics record durable alignment with leaders, offering a revealed-preference gauge of legitimacy and mobilization. For violent non-state actors, effectiveness is evaluated by consequential international responses rather than tactical success. A parallel program constructs rigorous causal measures of willingness to endorse transgressive political action, including forms of martyrdom. Across parts, new data and transparent identification trace routes from meaning to institutions to confrontation.

Date: 12 January 2026

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Tim Krieger, Economics, University of Freiburg

Date: 19 January 2026

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Ayesha Qurrat ul Ain, Islamic Studies, International Islamic University

The analysis of the social, political, and ecological costs and opportunities of so-called generative artificial intelligence needs to be complemented by its aesthetic critique. This project employs key terms from the longue durée of aesthetic theory – the sublime, the grotesque, the interesting, the uncanny, and the eerie – to understand the current impact of generative AI on contemporary cultures of writing and reading. It addresses the question of how generative AI – with its apparent autonomy – transforms ideas of the aesthetic autonomy of the author and the work. In providing an alternative AI aesthetics to existent models in media studies, the project will demonstrate that the critical perspectives of literary and cultural theory as well as the creative perspectives of contemporary literary texts are vital for current debates on generative AI in and beyond the university.

Date: 26 January 2026

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Gero Guttzeit

Life originated billions of years ago from a chaotic chemical soup. A fundamental puzzle remains: in the absence of life’s sophisticated modern machinery (such as enzymes and DNA), how did simple molecules manage to find each other and assemble into the first rudimentary structures of life?

In replaying this pivotal evolutionary chapter, we discovered that amino acids, life’s essential building blocks, can spontaneously form dynamic microcompartments. These molecular “sorting workshops” selectively recognize and connect specific amino acids into sequence-defined chains, establishing what may be considered nature’s earliest chemical information system. These insights not only illuminate life’s origins but also provide a new blueprint for synthetic biology. By harnessing these simple chemical principles, we open simpler pathways to engineer artificial cells and novel biomaterials from the ground up.

Date: 2 February 2026

Time: 15:00 – 16:00

Speaker:
Kun Dai, Molecular Self-Assembly, University of Freiburg