VITAE

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (Global) (evaluation 100/100)
Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Supervisor: Prof. Ludmila Lacková & Brigitte Baptiste
Project: VITAE. Vital Interpretations of Trans-ecologies, Animacy and Epistemologies, funded unders the MSCA Global Postdoctoral Fellowships (HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF-01-01), grant ID: 101275697 (2025-2029, total funding 285.005.70 EUR)

The core idea behind VITAE is to empirically test how the meaning of “life” shifts in an era shaped by ecological crisis, technological innovation, and cultural pluralism. Rather than reducing life to a fixed biological fact, the project approaches it as both a biological phenomenon and a culturally and historically situated concept, underscoring how different interpretations of life shape ecological responsibility and policy. Without rethinking what life means, current European and global policies for biodiversity protection and ecological governance risk remaining disconnected from the complexities of contemporary ecological challenges.

Responding to the need identified by European and international agendas (e.g. Horizon Europe, UNESCO’s environmental and cultural initiatives), VITAE bridges Indigenous ecological cosmologies and Western scientific models. The two research objectives are: O1 is to empirically assess how European environmental governance would change if Indigenous perspectives, where rivers and mountains possess agency, animacy and rights, were formally integrated; and O2 is to develop and test a trans-ecology as an epistemological methodology that redefines ecological responsibilities.

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