WEBINAR: Elaine Stratford’s “The Drowned – a cultural and political geography”, Tuesday 1 April from 4.00 pm – 5.30 pm AEST by Zoom

REGISTER NOW: Elemental Geographies: “The Drowned – a cultural and political geography”, Tuesday 1 April from 4.00 pm - 5.30 pm AEST
Zoom at: https://bit.ly/4ituMNh
Please note you need to register just once to attend any of the 2025 Webinars.

Elaine Stratford’s The Drowned – a cultural and political geography
Join us for an urgent and evocative webinar exploring The Drowned—a forthcoming book by Elaine Stratford (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). This compelling work examines the drowned as a haunting and significant presence that deserve recognition, respect, and posthumous dignity. In a series of gripping case studies spanning centuries and continents, The Drowned uncovers how water has been used as a tool of oppression, violence, and erasure—from infanticide and witch trials to the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, Indigenous massacres, forced migrations, and climate catastrophe. The work engages deeply with hydroimperialism, hydrosocial relations, and the absent-presence of those whose deaths remain unresolved in law, culture, and memory. How can we reckon with the unseen and unspoken geographies of the drowned? What obligations do we owe them? Can we even begin to think about forgiveness for those who create the conditions for such deaths? Stratford pushes us to consider the material, metaphorical, and ontological dimensions of drowning, and asks us to confront how past injustices shape the present—and the planetary futures we are creating. This webinar will introduce these powerful themes, offering a critical and emotional conversation about water, violence, and memory. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with a work that is set to transform our understanding of liquid geographies and the politics of the drowned.