This event is organised by the Expert Knowledge and Authority in Transformative Times Interdisciplinary Research Cluster.
Noor Bin Ladin, a right-wing influencer, stridently declares I don’t want to eat the bugs on a talk show hosted by a former adviser to US President Donald Trump. Bartosz Kownacki, an MP from the nationalist Law and Justice party in Poland, suggests that opposition politicians write instead of chicken, eat a worm on their election materials, arguing that this is their real election programme. Thierry Baudet, a leader of the far-right Forum for Democracy party in the Netherlands, shouts No way! No way! while holding up a bag of mealworms in front of protesting farmers. Politicians in Lega, a far-right party in Italy, warn that the European Union is planning to impose the eating of insects on citizens in the bloc – and a Lega electoral campaign includes a billboard-sized image of a person popping an enormous cricket into their mouth, next to the caption, Let’s change Europe before it changes us.
Deirdre Moore received her PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University in 2021 with her dissertation, ‘The Heart of Red: Cochineal in Colonial Mexico and India’. Her research focuses on complex relationships between humans, plants, and animals in history, politics, and society.
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