Saturday 11 January 2025, 11 a.m.

The invention of races. Understanding human biodiversity

Guido Barbujani, geneticist and writer, introduced by Francesco Nazzi, lecturer in Entomology at the University of Udine

Casa Cavazzini, Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Udine

Guido Barbujani, geneticist and writer, leads us in a meeting introduced by Francesco Nazzi, lecturer in Entomology at the University of Udine, to deconstruct stereotypes and reflect on the role and power of scientific narratives in shaping the perception of the other.

In the meeting, Barbujani retraces the stages of the debate on the biological bases of human diversity, from the first attempts at racial classification to modern DNA studies. He tells us how genetics has succeeded in reconstructing the most remote stages of humanity’s journey, from our African origins to the colonisation of the five continents, and how this knowledge disproves the 19th-century idea that humanity is fragmented into biologically distinct groups, those groups that in other species are called races.

Guido Barbujani was born in 1955. He has worked at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the Universities of London, Padua and Bologna, and is currently Professor of Genetics at the University of Ferrara. A contributor to Il Sole 24 Ore, he won the Premio Napoli for Italian language and culture in 2014 and the Pianeta Galileo Prize for scientific communication in 2024. His books have been translated into several languages.

Among the essays: L’invenzione delle razze (Bompiani 2006 and 2018), Europei senza se e senza ma (Bompiani, 2008 and 2021), Gli africani siamo noi (Laterza 2016), Come Eravamo. Storie dalla grande storia dell’uomo (Laterza 2022) and L’alba della storia (Laterza 2024). Among the narrative texts, Questione di razza (Mondadori 2003, Solferino 2023), Lascia stare i santi. Una storia di reliquie e di scienziati (Einaudi 2014), and Soggetti smarriti (Einaudi 2022).

The meeting is part of the public programme of the exhibition Come costruisci le immagini dell’altro? (How do you build images of the other?), realised by Altreforme in collaboration with the Municipality of Udine and open at Casa Cavazzini until 16 March 2025.

See the programme of appointments here:
www.projectmindthegap.it/en/conferences-and-workshops/