CANCELLED: Call for papers: Ghosts of Empire in the North Sea

Workshop.

Unfortunately the workshop is cancelled. 

The North Sea is one of the most industrialized seas in the world. Notwithstanding the Russian shadow fleet transporting crude oil and other goods up through the Baltic Sea and further out into the world oceans via the North Sea, oil and gas extraction, offshore wind farms, and extensive fishing comprises the industrial North Sea.

Contextualizing the present North Sea endeavors, this workshop explores the geo-political, infrastructural, imperial and cultural heritages that aided the North Sea’s emergence as an extractive frontier. It aims to shed light on imperial logics embedded in extractive activities within the North Sea in order to rethink the North Sea as a space for Northern European imperial ambitions. This reconsideration is prompted by the perplexing narrative portraying North Sea oil and gas as a cleaner and greener fossil fuel.

The workshop wishes to explore how North-Sea activities are deeply influenced by imperial logics and practices, necessitating a re-evaluation of the North Sea as a frontier space intimately connected with the exploitation and expropriation that took place in the former European colonies. These imperial logics, practices, and actors laid the foundation for transforming the North Sea into an extractive frontier. How can we confront and rethink the concept of imperialism in the context of the North Sea's extractive history? How are the region's activities connected to imperial powers around the world?

Call for papers

We are inviting abstracts of maximum 3000 characters (including spaces) that fall within the scope of the workshop either by focusing geographically on the North Sea or by providing perspectives from other parts of the world – historical and present that shed light on imperial logics, practices, and actors.

Abstracts should be submitted by 1 May, 2026, to kerr@hum.ku.dk. Selected abstracts will be invited to a workshop in Copenhagen 20-21 August, 2026. If selected, you are expected to present a 15–20-minute paper.

We have a limited budget for travel. If you require travel funds to join the workshop, please indicate this when you submit your abstract.