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Mingcan Rong @mingcan-rong.bsky.social · Sep 1

My first time organising a session at @rgsibg.bsky.social! Huge thanks to my amazing co-organisers Matthew Beach and Franklin Ginn, all the brilliant speakers across three panels, and everyone coming to our HPGRG-sponsored ‘Practicing Vegetal Geographies: Creativities and Beyond’ session!💚🪴🌺 #RGS

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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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IHC @ihchistory.bsky.social · Jul 30

📗 Luís Mendonça de Carvalho edited the book ‘The Victorians: A Botanical Perspective. Volume 1’ (Springer), which provides us with a 'unique re-evaluation of the Victorian Age and presents a new historiography based on plants'.
👉 link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Cover of the book ‘The Victorians: A Botanical Perspective. Volume 1’, edited by Luís Manuel Mendonça de Carvalho and published by Springer.

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UoBris Centre for Environmental Humanities @uobrisceh.bsky.social · Jun 20

This week we've been descending into mines, scaling coal-spoil tips, and swimming under waterfalls. Read about our recent CEH field trip in our latest blog post: environmentalhumanities.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2025/06/20/t... #envhum

The Centre that swims together… CEH Field Trip 2025

On the 17-18th of June 2025, members of the Centre gathered for our annual field trip, which took place in South Wales in glorious sunshine. Our first stop was the Big Pit National Coal Museum in …

environmentalhumanities.blogs.bristol.ac.uk

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planthums-uk.bsky.social @planthums-uk.bsky.social · Apr 18

#GARDENS & #EMPIRES - booking open! International conference @britishlibrary.bsky.social 27-28 June Convened by #BL, @rbgkew.bsky.social & @englishheritage.bsky.social Speakers include
@advollyr.bsky.social @sathnam.bsky.social & @corinnefowler.bsky.social
Booking: events.bl.uk/events/garde...

Gardens and Empires | British Library

The histories of plants and gardens are deeply entangled with the histories of empires. This conference investigates the impacts of these global connection

events.bl.uk

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Mingcan Rong @mingcan-rong.bsky.social · Jan 22

Excited to be organising a session with Matthew Beach on ‘Practicing Vegetal Geographies: Creativities and Beyond’ for the RGS-IBG Annual Conference in Birmingham, 26-29th August 2025. Please take a look at our CFP if you are interested in plants, creativities, more-than-human geography! 🌱

planthums-uk.bsky.social @planthums-uk.bsky.social · Jan 22

CfP: PRACTISING #VEGETAL #GEOGRAPHIES: #CREATIVITIES & BEYOND @rgsibg.bsky.social Annual Conference 2025 Abstracts to [email protected] & [email protected] by Feb 24 2025 More: rgs.org/research/ann... @kewgardens.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social @qmul.ac.uk

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Claudia (they/she) @claudiaeberger.bsky.social · Nov 25

I am so glad to finally have this piece published with the wonderful Heather Rogers. Open access, so no excuse to not check it out.

Digital Plant Encounters: Integrating Critical Plant Studies with Digital Environmental Humanities sciendo.com/article/10.2...

Digital Plant Encounters: Integrating Critical Plant...

The distinction between nature and technology is a western dichotomy that is slowly being eroded. As we are continuously confronted with humanity’s...

sciendo.com

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UoBris Centre for Environmental Humanities @uobrisceh.bsky.social · Jan 13

🥳 Behold! The CEH Termcard has landed and it's packed full of exciting events -- from workshops to walkshops, lectures to moth expeditions. We're so pleased to have @chrisjpearson.bsky.social back to deliver our annual lecture on the 26 February, along with many other brilliant speakers!

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Mingcan Rong @mingcan-rong.bsky.social · Jan 10

Looking forward to meeting you in Bristol!

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Jared Margulies @jaredmargulies.bsky.social · Jan 7

@ahubschle.bsky.social and I have a new article out in @theconversation.com about how to approach the illegal succulent trade in South Africa through the lens of conservation justice.
theconversation.com/south-africa...

South Africa’s rare succulent plants are threatened by illegal trade – how to stop it

Over 1 million of South Africa’s rare succulents have been illegally harvested since 2019.

theconversation.com

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Mingcan Rong @mingcan-rong.bsky.social · Dec 6

Huge thanks to Harry Fitzpatrick-Grimes and @austinread.bsky.social for co-organising the event at different stages 🥹 And thanks @jamesrpalmer.bsky.social and Negar Elodie Behzadi for constant guidance and the funding support from the Political Ecologies Research Group and Bristol Doctoral College

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Mingcan Rong @mingcan-rong.bsky.social · Dec 6

Please register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-archi...

From Archives to AI: Researching and Imagining Socioenvironmental Relations

An in-person workshop that covers conceptual, methodological and interdisciplinary contributions to research on socioenvironmental relations

www.eventbrite.co.uk

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Mingcan Rong @mingcan-rong.bsky.social · Dec 6

Our workshop ‘From Archives to AI: Researching and Imagining Socioenvironmental Relations’ will be held at Bristol on 12 Feb 2025, which includes talks by @oliviamason.bsky.social @mattinbiglari.bsky.social @jwyg.bsky.social & a panel discussion chaired by Mark Jackson! 🤩

Please find details below!

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Mingcan Rong @mingcan-rong.bsky.social · Dec 4

One more reading for next term’s Plants and Geographies reading group 🤩🍃🌳

James Palmer @jamesrpalmer.bsky.social · Dec 4

I've written a piece on biofuels and the potential for plants to help us rethink relationships between energy, growth and productivity – just out in Environmental Humanities 🌿🌳🌾

Thanks to @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social & Franklin Ginn for making space for this!

read.dukeupress.edu/environmenta...

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Reposted by Mingcan Rong

James Palmer @jamesrpalmer.bsky.social · Dec 4

I've written a piece on biofuels and the potential for plants to help us rethink relationships between energy, growth and productivity – just out in Environmental Humanities 🌿🌳🌾

Thanks to @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social & Franklin Ginn for making space for this!

read.dukeupress.edu/environmenta...

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James Palmer @jamesrpalmer.bsky.social · Nov 25

Marion Ernwein and I have a new paper out in EPE: Nature & Space:

"Making the mos(s)t of nature? Cleantech, smart nature-based solutions, and the ‘rendering investable’ of urban moss"

Hopefully of interest to vegetal geographers and critical NBS scholars 🌿🌱🌳🌍

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

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