Programme

Registration 16.30–16.45 

Session I: New developments in off-earth politics

Collective work led by Julie Klinger (University of Delaware): 

Extraction, effluent, and enumeration in extraglobal geopolitics

Mia Bennett (University of Washington): 

High politics in low Earth orbit

Chair/Discussant: Rory Rowan (Trinity College Dublin)

Reception 18.30

Session II: Space geopolitics

Bleddyn Bowen (University of Leicester): 

Conceptualizing Outer Space Geopolitics: Perspectives from Original Sin and War in Space

Craig Jones (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow): Annexing the Stars: Enclosing Outer Space and Ethnofuturist Critique

Chair/Discussant: Saskia Vermeylen (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow)

Break 10.45 – 11.15

Session III: Astropolitical infrastructure 

Rory Rowan and Chih-Yuan Woon (Trinity College Dublin; National University of Singapore): 

A critical geopolitics of China’s “Space Silk Road”  

Yi-Ting Chang (University of Oxford): The god's eye view on the frontline of conflict: Taiwan's satellite industry amid geopolitical tensions    

Chair/Discussant: Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Lunch 12.45 – 13.45

Session IV: More-than-human astropolitics

Rachael Squire (Royal Holloway, University of London): Boosting British space science: Explosives, propellants, and the everyday geographies of Outer Space in Waltham Abbey (1948-1991)

Jason Dittmer and William Stewart (University College London): More-than-human space diplomacy: assembling internationalism in orbit

Chair/Discussant: Fiona McConnell (University of Oxford)

Break 15.45 – 16.15

Session V: Intellectual histories of outer space 

Ian Klinke (University of Oxford):
Panpsychism, space colonisation and the origins of astropolitics

Saskia Vermeylen (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow):
Legal utopianism and the future of space law

Chair/Discussant: Chris Lizotte (Oxford Brookes University)