Erica Borg - UBEL DTP Postdoctoral Fellowship

A historian is writing a book about how industrialisation has transformed the deep sea from 1840 to 2050, and building a research network to study the hidden infrastructure that runs beneath the waves. This matters because the deep ocean is becoming a crowded industrial space—cables, pipelines, mining operations, and energy installations now crisscross the seabed, yet there is little historical understanding of how this transformation happened or what it means for governance, ecology, and society. The research fills a gap between technical accounts of ocean engineering and broader social or political histories of the environment. If successful, the monograph and articles will provide the first comprehensive historical analysis of deep-sea industrialisation. The workshops will bring together marine scientists, policymakers, and social researchers to discuss the "Anthropocene ocean"—a concept that frames the sea as shaped by human activity. The formalised research network (RUIN) could become a lasting hub for studying the social and political dimensions of submarine infrastructure, influencing how future deep-sea projects are planned and regulated. This is fundamental historical and social science research; its impact will be on how we think about and govern the ocean, not on immediate commercial or technical applications.