Keynote: Associate Professor Tom Nurmi (The Norwegian University of Science and Technology): ‘Quarry of Thought: Minerality and AI’

This symposium is generously supported by the UCD College of Arts and Humanities (CAH), the UCD Humanities Institute, and Research Ireland through the Starting Laureate ‘Minerals’ project.

7 November 2025

University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Keynote Speaker: Associate Professor Tom Nurmi, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Recent geopolitical contestations over Ukraine’s rare earths, global debates on ‘critical’ minerals in the context of green energy transitions, and growing scholarly engagement – such as Museum and Society’s recent special issue on minerals – have all highlighted the ethical, political, and environmental stakes of minerals.

This one-day, interdisciplinary symposium addresses these urgent concerns by bringing together scholars and professionals from the humanities, social sciences, arts, and museums to examine minerals as political and cultural agents. The term ‘critical’ in our symposium title carries a triple meaning: 1) it refers to minerals deemed essential for renewable energy transitions; 2) it addresses the urgent environmental and political challenges tied to resource extraction and securitisation; 3) it signals a critical scholarly approach to the cultural and political knowledge of critical minerals. By fostering interdisciplinary dialogue, this symposium aims to deepen the understanding of the geopolitical and environmental consequences of minerals, and to encourage more sustainable and ethical perspectives on the mineral foundations of our modern life.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Ethical and political stakes of mineral demand in renewable energy transitions
• Construction, contestation, and circulation of cultural knowledge about minerals
• Minerals and literary imagination
• Minerals and art
• Minerals and archives
• Minerals in museum display and curatorship
• Evolution of mineral narratives
• Colonial histories underpinning today’s critical minerals discourse
• Minerals and imperial literary histories
• Nineteenth-century narratives of extraction
• Minerals, conflicts, and geopolitics
• Minerals and (non)human rights
• Minerals and domestic violence
• Minerals, green energy, and the climate crisis
• Minerals and racial capitalism
• Minerals and policymaking
• Alternative imaginaries of minerals and post-extraction futures
• Teaching critical minerals
• Researching critical minerals in the humanities

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit a proposal of 200–250 words along with a short bio (approx. 100 words) by 31 August 2025 to both organisers: ge.tang@ucd.ie and katie.donnelly1@ucdconnect.ie. We will notify applicants of acceptance by mid-September 2025.

This symposium is generously supported by the UCD College of Arts and Humanities (CAH), the UCD Humanities Institute, and Research Ireland through the Starting Laureate Minerals project. It is also supported by CAH’s research strands: Environmental Humanities, Thresholds of Knowledge, and Transnationalising the Humanities.

Modest travel bursaries will be available for PhD students and unwaged scholars. If you would like to be considered for a bursary, please indicate this in your proposal and attach a short CV.

Participants are invited to consider a wide array of materials, from extractive tools to architectures, from domestic artefacts to artworks created in mining fields, and from environmental remnants to archival records, etc. This roundtable aims to reveal how material culture can illuminate broader issues related to extractivism, including but not limited to race, gender, and environmental impacts, while also enabling the recovery of lost voices and stories.

Speakers:

• Dr Madhavi Jha, Assistant Professor, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani
• Dr Oliver Tappe, Substitute Professor, University of Kontstanz
• Dr Nicholas Y. H. Wong, Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong

The aim is to foster a dialogue that transcends conventional definitions of genres and forms, to think about how extractivism can generate unique forms of representation, and how these forms, in turn, critically engage with the practices and ideologies of extractivism. Additionally, we aim to create a space where speakers and attendees can share the obstacles they have encountered when working with forms that pose linguistic, cultural, or methodological challenges, and to discuss how these challenges shape their interpretations and analyses.

Speakers:

• Dr Adelene Buckland, Department of English, King’s College London
• Dr Julia Ditter, Department of Literature, Art, and Media Studies, University of Konstanz
• Associate Professor Nathan K. Hensley, Department of English, Georgetown University
• Associate Professor Charlotte Rogers, Environmental Humanities, University of Virginia

We aim to gather literary critics and historians researching the intersections of extractivism and race, across different geographical regions and historical periods. Our goal is to foster a discussion that stretches across the global and the local, the past and the present. Central to our dialogue is an exploration of the origins of the ‘global colour line’ in the long histories of resource extraction.

Speakers:

• Dr Danielle Kinsey, Associate Professor, Department of History, Carleton University
• Dr Rebecca Macklin, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, School of Literatures, Languages, Music and Visual Cultures, University of Aberdeen
• Dr Nick McGee, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Durham University

Abstract: Taking an early twentieth-century sketchbook of South African mines and botanical gardens as its starting point, this work-in-progress will explore the tensions between itinerancy and being grounded in the artistic and literary discourses of mining and minerality, particularly those of the British southern settler colonies. Prompted to follow the literary form of the mining sketchbook and scrapbook, the paper will sketch, cut, paste and explore various sites of itinerancy and groundedness from the auriferous and diamondiferous to the garden abecedarium of colonialism.

You can read more about the interdisciplinary and dynamic programme by following the link below.

The discussion seeks to uncover how literary cultures or histories both challenge and reinforce the capitalist and imperialist foundations of these global networks that facilitate extraction, often at the expense of local communities and ecosystems. We aim to deepen our appreciation of the complex ways in which texts engage with extraction and its connections with infrastructures, particularly in the context of contemporary discussions such as decarbonisation, degrowth, and localisation.

Speakers:

• Dr Dominic Davies, Senior Lecturer in English, Department of Media, Culture, and Creative Industries, City University of London
• Dr Nicola Kirkby, Honorary Research Associate in English, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Associate Professor Aims McGuinness, History Department, Dolores Huerta Research Centre for the Americas, Latin American & Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz

Roundtable I: ‘Extraction, Infrastructures, and Networks’

Date: 17th October 2024

Time: 4:30 pm – 5:40 pm (London & Dublin, BST)

Speakers:

• Dr Dominic Davies, Senior Lecturer in English, Department of Media, Culture, and Creative Industries, City University of London
• Dr Nicola Kirkby, Honorary Research Associate in English, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Associate Professor Aims McGuinness, History Department, Dolores Huerta Research Centre for the Americas, Latin American & Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz

Roundtable II: ‘Extraction and Racial Capitalism’

Date: 21 November 2024

Time: 3pm (London & Dublin, GMT)

Speakers: 

• Dr Danielle Kinsey, Associate Professor, Department of History, Carleton University
• Dr Rebecca Macklin, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, School of Literatures, Languages, Music and Visual Cultures, University of Aberdeen
• Dr Nick McGee, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Durham University

MORE DETAILS TO FOLLOW SOON!

Dr Sarah Comyn and Dr Ge Tang presented on a panel investigating the global colour line as ‘event’, with Comyn presenting on her recent work on illicit diamond buyers in late nineteenth-century fiction, while Tang presented on a series of photographs depicting Chinese labourers arriving on the goldfields of South Africa.

The project’s PhD candidate, Katie Donnelly, presented on her new research on the depiction of women’s labour on the goldfields of Australia and New Zealand in children’s literature.