The Anthropocene is a recent and informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The term was coined by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer but has been widely popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological era for its lithosphere.

In 2008 a proposal was presented to the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London to make the Anthropocene a formal unit of geological time. A large majority of that Stratigraphy Commission decided the proposal had merit and should therefore be examined further. Steps are being taken by independent working groups of scientists from various geological societies to determine if the Anthropocene will be formally accepted into the Geological Time Scale.

Many scientists are now using the term and the Geological Society of America titled its 2011 annual meeting: Archean to Anthropocene: The past is the key to the future. The Anthropocene has no precise start date, but based on atmospheric evidence may be considered to start with the Industrial Revolution (late 18th century). Other scientists link it to earlier events, such as the rise of agriculture. Evidence of relative human impact such as the growing human influence on land use, ecosystems, biodiversity and species extinction is controversial, some scientists believe the human impact has significantly changed (or halted) the growth of biodiversity. The Anthropocene may have begun as early as 14,000 to 15,000 years before present, based on lithospheric evidence; this has led other scientists to suggest that "the onset of the Anthropocene should be extended back many thousand years"; this would be closely synchronous with the current term, Holocene.

Will Steffen (born 1947) is the executive director of the Australian National University (ANU) Climate Change Institute. He is a member of the Australian Climate Commission, an independent body providing information on climate change to the Australian public. From 1998 to 2004, he was the executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, a coordinating body of national environmental change organizations based in Stockholm.

Steffen completed a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri in 1970. The University of Florida awarded him an MSc in 1972 and a PhD in 1975. He is widely published on climate science. His research interests range over climate change and Earth system science issues, with a focus on sustainability. He has written on adapting land use to climate change, bringing human processes into the modelling and analysis of the Earth system, and the history of and future prospects for the relationship between the natural world and humans. Steffen has also been prominent advocating along with Paul Crutzen the concept of the Anthropocene, and initiating along with Johan Rockström an international debate on planetary boundaries and the "safe operating space" for humanity.

Bruno Latour (born 22 June 1947, Beaune, Côte-d'Or) is a French sociologist of science and anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). After teaching at the École des Mines de Paris (Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation) from 1982 to 2006, he is now Professor and vice-president for research at Sciences Po Paris (2007), where he is associated with the Centre de sociologie des organisations (CSO).

He is best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern (1991; English translation, 1993), Laboratory Life (with Steve Woolgar, 1979) and Science in Action (1987). Although his studies of scientific practice were at one time associated with social constructionist approaches to the philosophy of science, Latour has diverged significantly from such approaches. Latour is best known for withdrawing from the subjective/objective division and re-developing the approach to work in practice. Along with Michel Callon and John Law, Latour is one of the primary developers of actor-network theory (ANT), a constructionist approach influenced by the ethnomethodology of Harold Garfinkel, the generative semiotics of Greimas, and (more recently) the sociology of Durkheim's rival Gabriel Tarde.

Michael Evans Osborne (28 September 1941 – 19 September 2007) was an English jazz alto saxophonist, pianist and clarinetist, perhaps most noteworthy for his contributions as a member to the Chris McGregor band Brotherhood of Breath in the 1960s and 1970s.

He was born in Hereford and attended Wycliffe College in Gloucestershire and the Guildhall School of Music.

From 1962-1972, Osborne belonged to the Mike Westbrook band. During this period the artist also did other work with musicians such as Michael Gibbs, Mike Cooper, Stan Tracey, Kenny Wheeler, Humphrey Lyttelton, Alan Skidmore and John Surman.

During 1974-75 Osborne was part of the saxophone trio S.O.S. with John Surman and Alan Skidmore. They recorded an LP plus BBC radio and television sessions and toured extensively in much of Europe.

Illness prevented him working from 1982. He died of lung cancer on 19 September 2007.

With Brotherhood of Breath

With John Surman

With Mike Westbrook

With Michael Gibbs

With Mike Cooper

With Alan Skidmore

With Kenny Wheeler

Dipesh Chakrabarty is a Bengali historian who has also made contributions to postcolonial theory and subaltern studies.

He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.

He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.

He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.