Hay Festival Querétaro 2021 – Nature & Environment

The historian Andrea Wulf (Germany/United Kingdom), winner of the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award 2013, wrote the award–winning and international bestseller The Invention of Nature (2015), a biography of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859). The visionary German naturalist and explorer was daringly adventurous but also created the way we understand nature today. He was the most famous scientist of his age and predicted human-induced climate change. In her book, Wulf follows Humboldt’s footsteps from the highest volcanoes in the Andes to his journey down the Orinoco river. Wulf traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. In conversation with Onir Roo.

Event in English

Carlos Umaña (Costa Rica) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 together with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for calling attention “to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and for their “ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”. At this event in the country of the Tlatelolco Treaty, which bans nuclear arms in Latin America, Umaña will to talk about environmentalism, the need to eradicate nuclear arsenals from the world and his own work as a scientist and an activist. In conversation with Alexandra Haas.

The acclaimed historian, winner of the 2013 Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award, will talk about her latest work Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self, which tells the story of a group of thinkers and poets who shaped the way we think about ourselves and the world. This group, who came together in the German town of Jena in the late 18th century, instituted a revolution that can still be felt today. With a book written in lively prose and full of engaging anecdotes, Andrea Wulf (United Kingdom-Germany) offers a panorama of the most important ideas of Romantic philosophy and how these have become a part of the contemporary understanding of the subject. In conversation with Diego Rabasa.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

Elisa Guerra (Mexico) lectures in Education at the University of Harvard. In 2015 she was named Best Educator in Latin America and the Caribbean by the Inter-American Development Bank, and she was a member of the International Commission of UNESCO’s Futures of Education. At this event she will talk about her latest book, Las voces de los árboles, a work that takes readers into a parallel world in which trees of different species and places around the world tell their stories and allow us to reflect on the harm we are doing to the planet.