In her 2026 Earth Day Keynote for the British International Studies Association Joanne Yao, Reader in International Relations at Queen Mary,  unpacked the planetary image for us. In this blog, I reflect with Joanne on her lecture and what it means to ‘see everything from nowhere’.

We discuss what is at stake in the quest for ‘epistemic completion’ and how attempts to escape ‘Earthbound hierarchies’ have failed.

What happens when law encounters non-linear temporalities that exceed the human perspective - deep pasts, distant futures, and more-than-human temporal rhythms?

This post is co-authored with Veerle Platvoet (Heidelberg) and Iyan Offor (Birmingham). It follows a Research Dialogue which we had with the wider community of the Multispecies Collective on 11 February 2026.

Orbital is a novel by British writer Samantha Harvey. Published in 2023, it won the Booker Prize in 2024.

Set aboard the International Space Station, Orbital accompanies six astronauts as they circle the Earth, detailing routines, memories, losses, and quiet revelations.

The book’s narrative interweaves the mundane, the human, and the philosophical, engaging with questions of position, perspective, and responsibility.