Projects: Geographies of Life

Our community is currently engaged in a variety of research projects from migrant livelihoods to the deep ocean to climate activism and shrimp economies in the Mekong Delta.

More projects coming soon!

Circulatory Entanglements: Marine Biomaterials and Paradoxes in Ocean Governance

A cross-disciplinary, Leverhulme-funded project that explores the politics of marine biomaterial extraction. The project examines tensions between, on one hand, the depiction of marine organisms as vulnerable victims devastated by over-production and, on the other, promissory Blue Economy policies that emphasize the abundance of marine materials and their potentials as biomedical resources. The research team includes Elizabeth R. Johnson (PI), post-doctoral researcher Hannah Dickinson, historian of science Kristoffer Whitney at Rochester Institute of Technology, and artist Helen J. Bullard. Together, they are following the circulation of three marine organisms--horseshoe crab blood, shrimp-derived chitosan, and jellyfish materials—from marine ecologies through laboratories, processing plants, and into human bodies for biopharmaceutical and biomaterial innovation.

You can read more about the case studies and researchers on the project website: http://circulatoryentanglements.com/blog/

Related Publications:

Elizabeth R Johnson

“The matter and meaning of turbulent seas.” 2021. Theory & Event, Special Issue on Matterphor, 24(1): 192-219. With Jessica Lehman and Philip Steinberg. 

Blue Legalities: The Law and Life of the Sea. 2020. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Co-Edited with Irus Braverman.

“Governing Jellyfish: Eco-Security and Planetary ‘Life' in the Anthropocene.” 2016. In Animal, Biopolitics, Law: Lively Legalities. London: Routledge. 

Hannah Dickinson

“Conservation and Crime Convergence? Situating the London 2018 Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference.” 2020. Journal of Political Ecology. With Francis Massé, Jared Margulies, Laure Joanny, Teresa Lappe-Osthege, and Rosaleen Duffy. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/JPE/article/view/23543

Kristoffer Whitney

“It’s about time: Adaptive Resource Management, environmental governance, and science studies.” 2019. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 44 (2): 263-290. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0162243918794035

“Tangled up in Knots: an emotional ecology of field science.” 2013. Emotion, Space and Society, Special Issue on Ecology and Emotion, 6: 100-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2011.10.003

Helen J Bullard

“But You Didn’t Come Here to Tell Stories.” 2019. Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Vol 47. http://www.antennae.org.uk/back-issues-2019/4594681219