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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · 1d

In case you missed it: see our CfP for the AAG 2026 below 👇

Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · 12d

CfP #AAG2026 New Fluvial Geographies: critical currents in riverine thought, practice and activism.

We are organising a session to discuss the recent and exciting surge in human and environmental geographic scholarship on rivers. Full call here: docs.google.com/document/d/1.... Please share!

CfP AAG 2026: New Fluvial Geographies

AAG 2026: New Fluvial Geographies: critical currents in riverine thought, practice & activism Human geography is currently experiencing a river moment. Over the past decade, as the discipline has em...

docs.google.com

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · 12d

CfP #AAG2026 New Fluvial Geographies: critical currents in riverine thought, practice and activism.

We are organising a session to discuss the recent and exciting surge in human and environmental geographic scholarship on rivers. Full call here: docs.google.com/document/d/1.... Please share!

CfP AAG 2026: New Fluvial Geographies

AAG 2026: New Fluvial Geographies: critical currents in riverine thought, practice & activism Human geography is currently experiencing a river moment. Over the past decade, as the discipline has em...

docs.google.com

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Reposted by Austin Read

TIBG @tibg.bsky.social · Aug 29

#OpenAccess in TIBG:

'Infrastructure as archive: Examining the colonial geographies of rivers' by @austinread.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1111/tran... #geosky #geo

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Transactions by Austin Read (2025) entitled 'Infrastructure as archive: Examining the colonial geographies of rivers' with a red banner at the top.

Exploring the colonial geographies that have shaped Britain, this paper argues that recent debates regarding the ecological status of British rivers must centre colonialism and racial capitalism as the crucial drivers of river decline and thus prioritise developing anticolonial ecological politics. I anchor this argument in the River Severn in southwest Britain, which, until recently, was fragmented by hydraulic infrastructures such as weirs and canals. I examine here a conservation project that has built fish passes to reconnect the Severn's divided ecologies and unsettle technocratic framings of it as a silver bullet solution that bypasses political quagmires. I point instead to the five centuries of racial capitalist geographies that have shaped the Severn and insist that these cannot be avoided through engineering ingenuity. This paper's arguments are complex because entrenched spatial dichotomies of core/periphery have resulted in a lack of attention to how colonial geographies have shaped British ecologies like the Severn. The central contribution of this article is thus its development of a spatially relational theory and method of infrastructure as a colonial archive that can disrupt dichotomous core/periphery imaginaries and render spatially discontinuous and differential colonial geographies visible. I empirically develop this theory of infrastructure as an archive by deploying it to analyse the records of the Severn Navigation Commissioners (1835–c.1948), the body responsible for the infrastructural disciplining of the Severn.

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · Jul 21

The paper is about the overlooked ways that British rivers have been shaped by colonial histories and geographies. I develop a theory/method of "infrastructure as archive" to trace imperial geographies of rivers, and to challenge spatial binaries of "core" and "periphery"

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · Jul 21

my new paper is now published open access in @rgsibg.bsky.social Transactions journal: doi.org/10.1111/tran...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library

This paper begins by looking at a biodiversity conservation project on the River Severn (UK) and argues that dominant technocratic framings of it ignore the colonial legacies that shape the river. It...

doi.org

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · May 27

my first post on substack is available to read now! Newsletter #1: May 2025 open.substack.com/pub/occasion...

Newsletter #1: May 2025

The Green Party leadership election, Britain’s postimperial spatial politics & reading, watching and listening digest

open.substack.com

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · May 23

hello ! i have started a substack (mainly as a fun project to disrupt writer's block). please follow it at occasionalgeographer.substack.com if you're interested. first proper post (where i'm going to be discussing the spatial politics of the green party leadership election) is coming this sunday!

occasional geographer | austin | Substack

My personal Substack. Click to read occasional geographer, by austin, a Substack publication. Launched 4 hours ago.

occasionalgeographer.substack.com

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · May 7

reading buddy

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · May 7

Reposted by Austin Read

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · May 5

We need bold leadership. Now.

That's why I'm running to be the next leader of the Green Party.

Join our campaign: backzack.com

#BackZack

260 490 1.7K

Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · May 6

Northey Island

Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · Mar 23

TRADER joes*

Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · Mar 23

Arrived in Detroit for the #AAG! Geographers, please check out our session “Making space for anticolonial geographies of and from the metropole?” which is running tomorrow morning in the 10am slot (please refer to the program for location info). In the meantime, I’m hitting up Trading Joe’s!!

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Reposted by Austin Read

Aya Nassar @ayanassar.bsky.social · Jan 31

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Austin Read @austinread.bsky.social · Jan 27

Excited to be presenting my paper about salmon conservation, river infrastructures and the River Severn's hidden colonial histories this Thursday in Oxford (and online). And in great company!!

Technological Life - SoGE Oxford @technatures.bsky.social · Jan 27

This week, we have two speakers!

Tuesday, 4pm: Dr Jared Margulies will be presenting A political ecology of desire: loving plants into extinction?

Thursday, 4pm: Dr Austin Read will be presenting Infrastructure as archive: examining the hidden colonial histories of the River Severn, UK.

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