One World Warwick Public Lecture - Nov. 18th, 2026 - 18:00 — "When did space turn dark? And what happened to us in the process?" — Vladimir Brljak (Durham)
On 18th Nov., 2026, Dr. Vladimir Brljak — Associate Professor of English at the University of Durham, and a Warwick Alumnus (PhD in English and Comparative Literature, 2015) — will give a public lecture at the Warwick Venice Centre titled "When did space turn dark? And what happened to us in the process?" The event will be followed by a small reception.
Abstract:
Drawing on textual and visual evidence from antiquity to the present, the lecture traces a shift from a bright to a dark universe in the Western cosmological imagination, and discusses its cultural impact. For centuries, the Earth was a dark planet floating in the bright blue heavens. Now it is the ubiquitous ‘blue marble’: an image powerfully reinforcing the modern view of space as a hostile, lifeless environment, and of the Earth as a luminous oasis in this dark cosmic desert. But when did this reversal take place, and how it transformed our experience both of our planet and the universe beyond it? When did space turn dark, and what happened to us in the process?
Speaker Bio:
Vladimir Brljak works at the intersection of literary history, intellectual history, and the history of science. He is Associate Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University and a current (2025–26) British Academy Mid-Career Fellow. He has held the Thole Research Fellowship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, as well as visiting fellowships at the Bodleian Libraries’ Centre for the Study of the Book, the Huntington Library, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Warburg Institute.
