Call for Papers: POLLEN Conference 2026

Eric Cezne (among others) is organizing the Conference Panel 'The green hydrogen frontier in the Global South: capitalist expansion, colonial continuities and political contestations', within the POLLEN Conference 2026, which will take place in Barcelona between 29 June and 3 July 2026. The call for papers is open now - below, more information about the panel discussion:

As green hydrogen becomes key to decarbonization strategies – particularly in the EU – a new frontier is emerging through enclosures of land, water, and energy in the Global South for hydrogen export. This panel explores how the green hydrogen frontier is materially and discursively produced within the context of global capitalism and colonial continuities, and how it is contested and reimagined. The panel focuses on four dimensions:

1. Space: The hydrogen frontier links extraction zones in the Global South with consumption zones in the Global North through global production networks and transport infrastructures. This panel traces the movement of green hydrogen through trade corridors to examine socio-spatial transformations at each node. It sheds light on the multi-scalar dynamics through which global capitalist expansion and the making of a hydrogen market drive enclosures of local territories – mapping the uneven geographies of hydrogen production, trade and use.
2. History and continuities: The hydrogen frontier builds upon infrastructures, logics and enclosures of colonial resource frontiers. This panel examines continuities, shifts, and ruptures with colonial extraction regimes, analyzes colonial discourses that legitimize these developments – such as framing land as empty or underutilized, interrogates how green hydrogen intersects with colonial occupation and settler-colonial violence, and highlights epistemic exclusions embedded in hegemonic knowledge production.
3. Politics and international trade: The hydrogen frontier emerges through contested practices of frontier-making in “contact zones” (Cezne/Otsuki 2025), where global and local actors struggle over hydrogen futures. This dimension explores political strategies and partnerships of governments that enable trade corporations and transnational energy giants in securing access to hydrogen through investments and green finance in the Global South.
4. Resistance and counter-mobilization: The hydrogen frontier ist contested through state-led strategies of sovereign green industrialization and South-South cooperation, as well as grassroots resistance for self-determination, energy justice and democracy.

More information here.