Jimmy’s research project titled ‘Temporalities of Nuclear Infrastructures’ explores communities living in proximity to the nuclear industry and critical role of infrastructural presences (and absences) in how such communities make sense of their industrial past and their hopes and expectations about the future. The project will make use of participatory film and writing, based on ethnographic and archival research in West Cumbria to capture and communicate the relations between the material histories and presences of industry (nuclear and non-nuclear) and local meanings of place and community. The project addresses infrastructure (past and present) as a novel site for community participation and engagement around nuclear futures (cf. Marres, 2015).
Previously, Jimmy has researched other large-scale infrastructures and various narratives of their decline and material transformations. He made an ethnographic film set in Maesteg, an ex-coalfield in South Wales, in which he investigated the present lives of people whose past lives were so connected to an industry which was discontinued.
His broad interests include energy, materiality, transformation, futures and infrastructure.