When: Tuesday, May 9, 2023, 4:00 PM - 5:15 PMWhere: Online
Speaker: Dr Kerry Holden
This online session includes a 45-minute talk from an academic, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A with the academic and a student ambassador studying Geography at QMUL.
The talks provide an insight into the exciting, research-led teaching on offer in the School of Geography.
The infrastructures that we rely on such as water, energy, and transportation circulate goods and services around societies and around the world.
We often do not notice infrastructures. When we switch on a light we rarely imagine the electricity grid that we have just accessed. We notice infrastructures when they fail and breakdown.
Recently, geographers have become very interested in understanding infrastructures as more than technical and engineering feats. Geographers are asking questions about the politics and economics of infrastructures: who commissions and pays for infrastructures such as bridges, roads and railways? Who designs them and to what end? Where do materials come from? Geographers are also exploring about how people and communities interact with and use different infrastructures.
These questions highlight how infrastructures divide up space and structure how communities and people live and move around places deepening forms of inequality and exploitation. As infrastructures continue to expand, they are also increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
A major goal is for geographers at QMUL to understand how we can create resilient infrastructures that can withstand hazards and respond to the needs of communities in ways that are fair and just.
Through a series of modules driven by staff research interests, we want students to look at infrastructures differently, see how they are integrated into and shape our lives.