This event is hosted by the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society

Summary: Waste Flow is an interdisciplinary research project concerned with three central questions: what is waste; what do we do with our waste; and, what is our waste future? This talk focuses on the first question. From both local and global perspectives, waste is a relative term. Some claim there is no waste because humans never actually get rid of anything: things we discard are transformed into other things. Landfill, nuclear and other waste may be out of sight, but its materiality variously resists, flows, and transforms into other substances in deep time. So in asking the question, what is waste? we critically consider what it means to identify certain entities as discardable and discarded, to forget about waste, and to bring waste into view through an ethic of vulnerability.

Speaker: Professor Myra J. Hird, Queen’s National Scholar, School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University (Canada)

Biography: Myra J. Hird is Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University (Canada). She is the author of seven books and some fifty articles and book chapters on topics related to science and technology studies. Hird’s current project concerns waste management and the environment.

Venue: Seminar Room 2, Said Business School, OX1 1HP

Please sign up with Bethsheba McGill if you would like to attend.