IAS Turbulence: Engaging with Turbulence - A Panel Discussion

From the Latin turba denoting the crowd and turbāre meaning to agitate and disturb, ‘turbulence’ has come to be imbued with a wide range of inflections. The term turbulence has, for instance, scientific valency in its link to combustion processes and the irregular flow of fluids. It also relates to chaotic weather systems and violent environmental conditions. Additionally, the idea of turbulence is mobilised to describe social, psychological and aesthetic forms of commotion, disorder and disruption.

This panel discussion is dedicated to exploring these and additional meanings that converge around turbulence as it is used and conceptualised across diverse disciplines. The aim of the panel is to foreground the capacious analytical possibilities of turbulence, whilst engaging with some specific examples of the ways it can be approached, contemplated and deployed.

To this end, we will ask leading academics from different UCL departments to speak for 5-8 minutes on the following questions:

‘How would you define turbulence?’

‘How does turbulence relate to your research?’

The short presentations will be followed by a question and answer session and a discussion.

Our invited speakers are as follows:

• Maja Fowkes (Post-socialist Art Centre, UCL)

• Arthur Petersen (Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, UCL)

• Mohammed Rashed (Wellcome ISSF Research Fellow, Birkbeck)

• Alison Wright (History of Art, UCL)

Co-convened by Lucy Bollington and Véra Ehrenstein