How can a history of the present be written, if not as a history of entanglements? Humans as political actors and humans as geological agents exist within different scales of time as well as different scales of life. But in the everyday these scales become entangled and give rise to singular temporal arrangements, or regimes, which govern decisions and actions. To write the natural history of the present means to engage with all these different scales and explore how they become entangled with each other. It means to think how political and historical events and experiences form temporal arrangements and regimes which affect the lives of the people who live and act within them. This is what the Lifetimes research group sets out to do.

Lifetimes: A Natural History of the Present is supported by the Research Council of Norway and based at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Langauges, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo.