News from the Boom2Dust project

The Boom2Dust project, for which Prof. Jan-Bart Gewald has received an NWO Open Competition grant, is up and running with a brand new project website.

Multi-species histories
Industrial mining centres in southern Africa once stood at the very forefront of imperial expansion. Once they promised modernity, progress and economic development, but now they are bedevilled by the toxic legacy of economic collapse, societal upheaval and environmental ruin. “Boom2Dust” will research and write the post-humanist multi-species environmental histories of three industrial mining centres between 1870 and 2020.
‍
South Africa, Zambia and Namibia
The project will investigate the environmental history of three industrial mining centres in southern Africa: Kimberley in South Africa, Kabwe in Zambia, and Tsumeb in Namibia. Through a comparative study, “Boom2Dust” will describe and analyse the long-term impact of mining in southern Africa on more than humans alone. Central to the research will be the testing of a new methodological approach in which the landscape is taken as a historical source that can be read.

Find out more about the project on the special website, and read the interview with Jan-Bart Gewald!

Photo credit: Elif Kirankaya