Petrochemical transitions: a dialogue on industrial, geopolitical and sustainability transformations

When: Thursday, March 13, 2025, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Room 210, Laws Building, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS

Conversation between Professors Alice Mah (University of Glasgow) and Adam Hanieh (University of Exeter) on the industrial, geopolitical and sustainability challenges for global petrochemicals

Social scientists have tended to overlook the circuits of downstream petrochemical production that have interwoven oil into the material realities of our everyday life. Instead, when writing about oil, the upstream segment of the world market has been the overriding object of inquiry, which has contributed to popular notions of oil as either a ‘prize’ to be captured or a ‘curse’ to avoid. The competition between sovereign producer countries and vertically integrated international oil companies to control global supply has dominated our geopolitical understanding of the oil industry.

In the context of the green transition, the industrial transformation of petrochemical production has come into much sharper focus. Please join us for a wide-ranging discussion of the ecological implications of our dependency on fossil-fuelled petrochemicals and the geopolitical implications of the transition to decarbonized feedstocks. The event brings together two leading scholars – Adam Hanieh and Alice Mah – whose shared focus on the East-East hydrocarbon axis and Asian petrochemical production will offer enlightening perspectives on the global dimensions of a just energy transition.

Alice Mah is Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on toxic pollution and environmental justice, the subjects of her most recent books: Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation and Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations are Fuelling the Ecological Crisis.

Adam Hanieh is Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the University of Exeter, and author of Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (Verso Books 2024).

Venue

The venue, Law Building, is marked 36 on the Mile End campus map. For more travel information, visit the Mile End campus web page.

Organisers

The event is organised by Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) 

Event image: Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash