Aura Raulo: The Queer Ecology of Death – An Introduction to Network Theory for Mortals

• 19.2.2026 15:00 - 16:00
• Aura Raulo

Is death an inevitable consequence of life or why have we evolved the ability to die?

We often think of death as a great individual tragedy, but for an ecologist, dying is not always that black and white. Biologically, our ability to die is not an inevitable consequence of life but a mechanism that has evolved because it supports life’s ability to renew: cells die so that the individual can develop and grow, individual death allows species to adapt and evolve, species extinction supports ecosystem renewal. Our ideas of death are semantically and biologically dependent on our ideas of individuals. Organisms with less individuality, such as corals and fungi, seem to die in more gradual ways that we find hard to recognise. And depending on how we philosophise about individuality, even us humans can die more or less.

Aura Raulo, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, artist, and Puistokatu 4 research member, gives a keynote on queer ecology and the evolution of death on 19 February at Puistokatu 4.

 

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