We’re excited to finally welcome Jeff Diamanti for a talk. Jeff was originally supposed to visit us at one of our symposia a few years ago but had to cancel last-minute, so a visit has been long overdue. In his talk, ‘Supply Chain Ecologies’, he will offer a perspective on the supply chains of green transition minerals, and what they can tell us about sustainable development. Jeff Diamanti is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Global History of Sustainable Development at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (by special appointment). For over a decade he has researched and written on logistical cartographies, energy infrastructure, and political ecology.

His first book, Climate and Capital in the Age of Petroleum: Locating Terminal Landscapes (Bloomsbury 2021) tracks the political and media ecology of fossil fuels across the extractive and logistical spaces that connect remote territories like Greenland to the economies of North America and Western Europe. His new research, Bloom Ecologies, follows the mining of phosphorous in the occupied Western Sahara to the aquatic currents forcing algal bloom and hypoxic milieu all over the planet. He is also building a long-term research network on Supply Chain Criticism to document and evaluate the conflicts implied by the EUs Critical Raw Materials framework.


Short description of the talk:
From where will the resources summoned for the “twin transition” originate and on what terms of deliberation? What are the political ecologies and cultural inheritances conditioning the future of sustainable development in the European Union? This talk will introduce the field of “supply chain criticism” and offer a number of case studies for our collective consideration, with emphasis on phosphorous, nickel, and copper.

The talk can be attended both on- and offline.

Picture credits: Matthew de Livera