cfp: workshop "Greening Satellites", Barcelona, June

[Gemma Cirac]

Dear friends,

Find below a call for papers for an exciting workshop on "Greening Satellites" to be held in June in Barcelona. We encourage all interested to send your contribution!

Please circulate it through your networks and lists, thanks!

With best wishes,

Gemma.

Gemma Cirac-Claveras

Associate Professor 

Deputy Director

 

PI: ERC StG CLIMASAT

 

Institut d'Història de la Ciència
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

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                                           GREENING SATELLITES

 

Date: 12-13 June 2025

Place: Institut d’història de la ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Organized by: ERC-StG-CLIMASAT (some (limited) funds are available to cover travel expenses)

Topic and aims:

Based on historical empirical case studies, this workshop aims to reflect on how and why different forms of satellite technology, often originally developed for non-environmental purposes, was repurposed to pursue various environmental projects and goals, as well as the multiple ways in which this materialized. That is, this workshop seeks to collectively explore how and why satellite technology became “green”.

It emphasizes the period between the 1970s and the 2000s, when satellites, sometimes state-owned and sometimes private, started to proliferate as a widespread means for communications and data relay, high resolution imaging, weather and ocean forecasting, positioning and navigation, TV and internet broadcasting, and many other uses -all of which found new significance within existing environmental practices, reinforced them or created new ones.

Contributions are invited that explore the use of various forms of satellite technology (remote sensing, telecom, GPS, TV and telephony, weather satellites, etc) in projects related to aid and development programs, response to natural disasters, monitoring of pollution, Earth System science, exploitation and expropriation of natural resources, land use planning and management, conservation, market-based environmentalism, weather control, communication, and many other. This includes studies dealing with any of the elements that make satellite technology work (Earth stations and antennas, launching facilities, corporate headquarters, bandwidth, orbital paths, power sources, regulatory agencies, datacentres, scientific organizations, NGOs, etc), together with the people, the activities and industries they promote, the institutions and organizations they cultivate, the networks, connections and alliances they create, the rules and practices they foster, and the power relations that go with them.

The purpose is to better understand the discourses, practices and policies that elevated satellite technology within contemporary environmental grand narratives, while at the same time situating the processes of greening satellite technology in broader historical processes of globalization, capitalism, innovation, big science, European Integration, de-post-anti-colonization and the multiple modernities of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

 

Contributions: Please send your abstract (250 words) with a short bio to gemma...@uab.cat

Deadline: 2 April 2025

More info: gemma...@uab.cat

The CLIMASAT project fosters a safe, respectful and inclusive working environment for all and encourage contributions regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality and/or disability, particularly where underrepresented in our workforce.