The New School of the Anthropocene: a conversation with Michael Hrebeniak

What kind of ‘higher education’ is suitable for our age of polycrisis—accelerating climate change, economic turbulence, and global authoritarianism? Can universities unshackle themselves from the chains of financialisation, managerialism, and technocracy? Can care, imagination, collectivity, and autonomy be taught and learnt? In this conversation, Dr Michael Hrebeniak—founder of the New School of the Anthropocene—talks about his experiment in ‘counter-nihilism’. NSotA was founded as a ‘micro-university’ with a curriculum dedicated to addressing biopolitical emergency, climate justice, and the entanglements of a more-than-human assembly through the Arts and Humanities. Here, students and teachers collaborate and self-organise to acquire the skills necessary to be citizen-custodians of our planet.