Seminar: Digging the future
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The Centre for 21st Century Humanities' Space, Place and Mobilities Thematic Group and the Centre for Social Research and Regional Futures invite you to attend our informal lunch seminar with Dr Hedda Haugen Askland. She will speak on the topic of Digging the Future: Mining voids as potentiality, contest and destruction.
The seminar is on Wednesday 14th August, 12pm - 1pm at SR202.
Throughout New South Wales, mining has come to play a central role in imagining of local futures, whether as dystopic or utopic imaginings of a time ahead. The role of mining in informing the materiality of place and people’s connections to place have been explored, with concepts such as solastalgia (Albrecht 2005) bringing attention to the relationship between mining, environmental change and people’s sense of place and home. Less has, however, been written about how mining connects to place through visions of a time past and a time to come.
In this paper, Dr Askland will explore some of the dynamics around mining and temporality through the case study of the small village of Wollar in the Mid-Western Regional Council of NSW. She will also explore how the discourses of extraction as prosperity clash with lived experiences at the coal frontier through the notion of ‘mining voids’.
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.