Collegium Carolinum,
and the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences
cordially invite you to the lecture

PROF. PETER WAGNER (BARCELONA)

Resource Regimes and Societal Self-Understandings:
Towards a Materialistic Interpretative Approach to Societal
Transformations

Wednesday, March 25 2026, 10 a. m.
Valentinská 91/1, 3rd Floor
The lecture will be streamed via Zoom as well, please contact
florian.ruttner@collegium-carolinum.de

The global ecological crisis of our time – and the apparent inability to do something about it – has boosted
assumptions about a linear logic of history, unfolding over long durations and unavoidably having led to the
point where we are now. The recently emerged interest in the relation between social organization and
biophysical resources is highly welcome, but it also requires a rethinking of the dynamics of social change, and
more specifically a historical sociology of the use of fossil fuels.

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Peter Wagner is a German social and political theorist. His research brings together social and political philosophy and theory with the comparative-historical sociology of modern societies in Europe, Latin America and southern Africa.  He is a former Professor of Social and Political Theory at the European University Institute, Florence, and a former Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick^. At present he is an ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona.