Infrastructures for a (dis)connected world
A workshop at the University of Glasgow, 9-11 June 2026
The region comprising Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Caucasus, Central Asia, Russia, and China has a long history of exchange of people, goods, and ideas. Some of the overland infrastructures that historically facilitated these flows include the Silk Road, the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Druzhba pipeline, and, most recently, the Belt and Road initiative. The region, at the same time, also has a history of restrictions and blockages to flows and mobilities, including the sealing of borders, the limiting of access to social media and the sabotage of pipelines.
This year, the UKRI Network Plus initiative ‘Shifting Global Polarities: China, Russia, and Eurasia in Transition’ will explore the diverse infrastructures of the region and the ways in which they facilitate or restrict the flows of people, energy, material goods, finance, information, and ideas. We invite proposals for contributions to a workshop on the theme “Infrastructures for a (dis)connected world".
Contributions may include interdisciplinary and collaborative, theory and practice-driven, comparative, and/or policy-oriented proposals for papers and roundtables, film screenings, artistic performances and posters. Some of the questions that will inform the workshop are:
- Which material forms are used by various actors to connect to different parts of the region?
- Who gets to decide which infrastructures are built or abandoned?
- How does the materiality of infrastructures relate to the content of the flows that they facilitate?
- What are the everyday experiences of navigating and creating infrastructures?
- Which connections are enabled or restricted by the existing infrastructures?
- What happens to infrastructures that outlive their purpose?
- How are the meanings and imaginations of past, present, and future infrastructures related to the geopolitical changes in the region?
We invite proposals of up to 300 words for papers/ posters/ roundtables/ screenings/performances on topics including but not limited to:
- Infrastructures of human (im)mobility
- Infrastructures of war and peace
- Roads and transport
- Infrastructures of energy
- Afterlives of infrastructure
- Poetics and aesthetics of infrastructure
- Digital infrastructures and cybersecurity
- Infrastructures of knowledge production
Submission process
Submit your proposal via the Online application form.
The deadline for submissions is 28 November 2025 (4pm UK time)
Successful applicants will be notified by end of January 2026.
Travel and accommodation grants are available for workshop participants.
Contact: polarities@contacts.bham.ac.uk (Martha Holmes)