Material and Visual Worlds of Oil Infrastructure in Histories of the Global South 

After WWII oil became ubiquitous in everyday life across the world, increasingly forming part of commodities consumed by billions each day, from fuels to food, clothing to plastics. The scale of its consumption over many decades is central to today’s global climate crisis and to the story of the ‘Anthropocene’. This conference is the first to explore histories of oil infrastructure across the Global South as the technical networks built by the industry in the age of Big Oil, encompassing derricks, offshore rigs, refineries, petrochemical plants, pipelines, tankers, loading terminals, roads, canisters and petrol stations. Covering Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, it promotes multi-scalar and comparative analysis of the place of oil infrastructures in histories of colonialism, corporate imperialism, and postcolonial development. This event brings together scholars from various disciplines and art practitioners to provide new perspectives on the visual and material lives of oil infrastructures, past and present.

Convened by
Nelida Fuccaro, Associate Dean, Graduate Studies; Professor of Middle Eastern History, NYUAD
Mattin Biglari, Lecturer in Asian and Middle Eastern Environmental History, University of Bristol