Mission Statement

In the past decades, remarkable advances and insights have been made into quantum gravity starting from a number of different approaches.  The breadth of these developments has made it difficult for researchers in any particular sub-field to keep track of the growth of others, instead  focusing mainly on their own. To alleviate this lack of communication, and to promote intellectual cross-pollination between these different approaches, we are organizing a series of pedagogical seminars by researchers in QG to inform the broader community on the progress and perspectives of their respective fields.  In this way we hope to trigger exchange and constructive feedback between  approaches, stimulate the development of new ideas, and foster the development of new collaborations.

Big Questions from Different Perspectives

The seminar series will focus on broad perspectives rather than technical details, and to encourage this focus, talks will be organized around topics common to all fields.  Possible examples include the role of topology change in gravity; the structure of gauge-invariant observables; black hole information and evaporation; the emergence of classical spacetime; and the Big Bang and the early universe.  Each topic will be explored through  a series of talks  by speakers in different fields in order to provide a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective.  Discussions between members of different fields will be encouraged, and different speakers within the same topic will be prompted to leave each other questions.

Quantum Gravity is Diverse and Global

The rich breadth of the field of QG is twofold: it is exhibited not just in the many approaches to QG, but also in the varied researchers themselves.  This diversity of people — whether of geography, gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and more — is just as important as the diversity in research perspectives themselves.  We therefore wish to make all QG gravity researchers feel invited and welcome, regardless of background (be it personal or scientific).  Behavior not in line with this goal will not be tolerated, as specified in our code of conduct, and we would be particularly grateful to anyone with suggestions on how to make the series more inclusive.  

As part of this goal, we embrace the virtual format of the series (in addition to its necessity due to the current pandemic) as a way of increasing its accessibility to a broader group of researchers, including those with, say, limited travel budgets or otherwise facing travel restrictions.  Moreover, we hope this initiative can contribute to decreasing our collective carbon footprint in the fight against climate change.