URGENT (2024-2028)

The project seeks to provide conceptual and empirical contributions for understanding the evolving relations between humans and the subsurface. Focusing on geothermal energy and geological disposal technologies, the project traces and describes how the intensifying exploitation of subterranean resources shapes society and the subsurface alike. These technologies, operating on domestic, regional and national scales, offer temporally and spatially diverging cases for exploring geosocial relations, how different actors make sense of the subsurface, how subterranean resources are made and unmade, and how the subsurface shapes human ability to act in the world. In doing so, the project contributes to ongoing efforts in social sciences and humanities to rethink what it means to be and act as human in a changing world characterized by a deepening need to engage responsibly and response-ably with nonhuman entities.

Funding: Research Council of Finland