I joined Monash University’s Belinda Smaill to talk about the 1954 film Back of Beyond for Season 2 of her Seeing Green podcast. We explored how The Back of Beyond represents the environment as an expression of national identity, touching on themes of water scarcity, extreme weather, cultural belonging, and white settler histories.
Environmental Futures
With Lise Butler and Maria Christou, I produced a podcast series titled, ‘The Art and Artifice of Prediction’. Funded by the British Academy, the 2022 podcast series explored how the theme of prediction emerged and shaped scientific, literary-cultural, and social scientific forms of knowledge since the end of the Second World War. Over seven episodes, we talked to historians and literary scholars to find out more about why and how the Cold War period saw this rise of prediction and forecasting. I spoke with historians of science Sarah Dry and Matthias Heymann about their work on the Club of Rome and climate prediction.
Hydraulic Control
1938 Empire Exhibition fountains centre in front of Palace of Engineering in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, Wikicommons
Back in 2022 I was honoured to be invited by Giacomo Parrinello and Simone Neri Serneri to contribute to a roundtable, titled, ‘Rethinking the entangled history of water and power’, for the Italian journal, Contemporanea. Joining colleagues Debjani Bhattarcharyya, Corey Ross, David Pietz and Matthew Evenden, my piece reflected on the intersections of imperialism, technology and water. Check out the issue here.