Nuclear Futures: Thinking with failure
4th/5th July 2023 – University of Exeter (funded by the Societies and Cultures Institute)
Led by Karen Bickerstaff and Leila Dawney, this two-day Nuclear Societies workshop explored how working with ideas of failure could enrich and strengthen research being conducted within the Nuclear Societies group. We had excellent keynotes talks from Catherine Alexander (Durham, Anthropology) on ‘thinking through fusion’s promises and failures’, and from John Downer (Bristol) on ‘reckoning with catastrophic reactor failure’.
There were a series of flash-talk (brief presentation) discussions based around the history of failure, contemporary energy transitions, and storying failure – which enabled us to make some really interesting connections between nuclear temporalities and critical intellectual and methodological debates around concepts and contexts of failure, environmental and climate politics, 20th century histories, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary working. The workshop brought together a diverse group of academics from across Geography, History and Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy and Anthropology, as well as leading academics from the universities of Durham, Bristol and Liverpool. We will look to put in place subsequent (annual) events to develop the network and support writing and research projects.
Do get in touch with us if you would like to connect with the group and find out more.