“Thom van Dooren has expanded the scope of the humanities within the contemporary ecological debate”

Professor Richard Kerridge delivers the laudatio in honor of Thom van Dooren, recipient of the 7th Biophilia Award in Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences from the BBVA Foundation.

Kerridge highlights the international significance of van Dooren’s work in the field of environmental humanities and underscores his decisive contribution to the ethical and cultural understanding of the biodiversity crisis. He emphasizes van Dooren’s ability to combine philosophy, ethology, and storytelling to rethink how we understand extinction and our relationship with other species. Through concepts such as multispecies justice and his research on threatened species, van Dooren—Kerridge notes—has expanded the scope of the humanities within the contemporary ecological debate, offering intellectual frameworks that connect academic knowledge, moral sensitivity, and collective responsibility in the face of the accelerating loss of life on the planet.