The series is organized by the project’s Industrial Closures component, as a first step in thinking transnationally about deindustrialization and its politics. Its goal is to critically examine six keywords in deindustrialization studies and consider their historical emergence and explanatory power across multiple national and thematic contexts. What do these concepts offer us? Why do some concepts emerge in one national context but not another or come to have different meanings? And what are the adjacent or intersecting concepts that emerge in their stead?
This series took place between October 2020 and March 2021.
Click here to view the series on our YouTube channel.
Deindustrialization / Deindustrializzazione / Désindustrialisation / Deindustrialisation / Deindustrialisierung
Chairperson: Gilda Zazzara Other Presenters: Tim Strangleman, Xavier Vigna, Stefan Berger, Jackie Clarke, Dimitry Anastakis, Steven High. This workshop considers the emergence of deindustrialization as a core concept in academic […]
Ruination / Verfall / Rovine / ruine et perte
Chairperson: Alice Mah Other Presenters: Arthur McIvor, Roberta Garruccio, Fred Burrill, Rebecca Dolgoy, and Olaf Schmidt-Rutsch Fundamentally, deindustrialization is a process of physical and social ruination as well as part […]
Brownfield / friche industrielle/ Industriebrache / Area dismessa
Chairperson: Lachlan MacKinnon Other Presenters: Jana Golombek, James Rhodes, Steven High, Keith Gildart , Sean O’Connell, Andrew Perchard. By examining the meaning and significance of “brownfield” in different national contexts […]
Greening / Industrienatur / Ecologizzazione / verdissage
Chairperson: Petra Dolata Other Presenters: Alice Mah, Jana Golombek, Greg Wilson, Steven High, Lucie Morisset, Lauren Laframboise. This workshop considers the ways that deindustrialization gets entangled with the language of […]
Moral Economy / économie morale / Sozialverträglichkeit
Chairperson: Keith Gildart Other Presenters: Tim Strangleman, Stefan Moitra, Lachlan MacKinnon, Marion Fontaine, Andy Perchard, Pascal Raggi. Developed originally by labour historian E.P. Thompson in relation to the ways that […]
Populism / populisme/ Populismo / Populismus
Chairperson: Stefan Berger (or Steven High) Other Presenters: James Rhodes, Gilda Zazzara, Marion Fontaine, Stefan Moitra, Sean O’Connell, Greg Wilson. Populism is probably the most important keyword that our research […]
Illustration: Kerri Flanagan. 
Caption: protesting coal miners at the Friedrich Heinrich/Rheinland colliery in the town of Kamp-Lintfort in March 1997. There was a wave of miners' protests in Winter and Spring 1996/97 as the German Federal Government planned to cut subsidies which would have meant a loss of 60,000 jobs in less than ten years. The banner in front says "We want a perspective for our future". Credit: Betriebsrat Bergwerk West