Sandra Jasper - Wastelands as experimental fields
Lecture abstract
Wastelands as experimental fields
Wastelands are spaces of botanical discovery and collective memory. Ruins, former railway yards, abandoned military sites, and other wasteland spaces have produced a profusion of plants and animals, and have afforded a place for other-than-human life in the conception of urban spaces’ inhabitation. In this presentation, I will trace the histories, contemporary forms, and prospective futures of wasteland spaces. Drawing on fieldwork from various sites, including Berlin and Luxembourg, I will discuss responses to wasteland spaces from early geobotanical studies to more recent scientific, artistic, and architectural experiments. I will conclude by questioning the efficacy of current nature conservation policies and other tools to counter the rapid loss of these seemingly vacant spaces in the context of speculative development.
About the lecturer
Sandra Jasper is Professor of Geography and holds the Chair in Cultural Geography and Society-Environment Research at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), where she leads the Society-Environment Research Group.
Between 2020 and 2024, she was a Junior Professor for Geography of Gender in Human-Environment-Systems at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She holds a PhD from University College London (2015) and joined the Geography Department at HU in 2020 from Cambridge University, where she was a postdoctoral researcher for five years on the ERC project Rethinking Urban Nature.
Her research interests are in cultural, urban, and environmental geography with a particular focus on urban nature, wastelands and infrastructure, sonic geographies, and feminist theory. She is also a filmmaker and has co-authored and co-produced the documentary film Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin.
Her new AHRC-DFG funded project Networked through Sound: Listening to 20th Century Wildlife Sound Archives is an international collaborative research project, which examines the history of European wildlife sound recording through seven archives located in Europe and South Africa.