Vanesa Castán Broto, Embracing change in infrastructure landscapes, 16.02.2023, 5:30pm-7:15pm

Sciences Po, Online via Zoom*

Compulsory Registration

Infrastructure constitutes a key perspective for the analysis of social change. At the same time, infrastructures exemplify the tension between dynamism and permanence. While they facilitate the constant movement of resource and capital flows, they are also characterised by a visible obduracy that makes them impervious to change. This talk will explore how ideas of change and permanence have been analysed in infrastructure studies. It will especially focus on the alternatives generated from a landscape perspective. Infrastructure landscape perspectives foreground the complex socio-technical and socio-ecological relations that situate infrastructures in specific conditions and locales. Infrastructure landscape perspectives enable analysis beyond utilitarian perspectives on infrastructure, revealing the range of emotional and cultural attachments that shape them.

Speaker

Vanesa Castán Broto is a Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute in the University of Sheffield. She directs the projects Low Carbon Action in Ordinary Cities (LoACT), funded by the European Research Council, and the project Community Energy and Sustainable Energy Transitions in Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique, funded by the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund.

Discussant

Joost de Moor, Assistant Professor in Political Science, CEE, Sciences Po.

Compulsory Registration

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