ICS Seminar Series
SPECIAL
Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations
Presenter: Gökçe Günel
Date & Time: 17 August 2026 | 11:30am - 1:00pm
Room: 1PSQ, Level 7, Room 29
Abstract
Floating Power considers the role of energy production on an international scale, challenging the idea that new infrastructures wholly replace older sources of energy. Shifting the discussion from energy transition to energy accumulation, Gökçe Günel engages with a range of electricity producers including hydroelectric, heavy fuel oil, natural gas, and solar power plants, noting their intersections as societies work to expand their supply at large rather than focus on one type of source. Günel uses the Ayşegül Sultan, a Turkish-built floating power plant in Ghana, as a prime example and vehicle to explore how state and corporate intervention impact energy technologies as every nation strives toward infrastructural expansion. Floating Power challenges the linear thinking and substitutive logic of mainstream energy discourse, instead showing how various power sources often expand and grow symbiotically.
Biography
Gökçe Günel is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice. Her research examines how infrastructure transforms amid energy and climate challenges. She is the author of Floating Power: Energy, Infrastructure, and South-South Relations (Duke UP, 2026), which explores a Turkish-built floating power plant in Ghana, and Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi (Duke UP, 2019), which studies Abu Dhabi's Masdar City project. Dr. Günel also co-authored Patchwork Ethnography: A Methodological Guide (Chicago, 2027). She is an editor of Limn.
If you have any accessibility requirements, please email Denise at: d.rezk@westernsydney.edu.au
UPCOMING
For my Ancestors, for my descendants: empowering Indigenous collections sovereignty in museums
Presenter: Nathan Mudyi-Sentance
Chair: Juan Salazar
Date & Time: 20 August 2026 | 11:30am - 1:00pm
Room: EB.G.38 Parramatta South Campus
Abstract
Due to the long histories of exploitation and extraction, a key tension between Indigenous communities and memory institutions such as libraries, archives and museums is the ownership of Indigenous knowledges held within collections and how Indigenous rights are enacted and respected. This tension is evidenced throughout particular metadata, attribution and preservation practices. Drawing upon the recent initiatives by the Powerhouse Museum's First Nations Directorate and the Indigenous Archives Collective, Wiradjuri man and museum worker Nathan mudyi Sentance will case studies at the Powerhouse to resist and address the possessive logic of museums, their ingrained paternalistic ideology, and their historic decentring of Indigenous epistemologies. This includes enacting the Indigenous right of reply to archives and embedding Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property rights into museum systems.
Biography
Nathan mudyi Sentance is a Wiradjuri librarian and writer who grew up on Darkinjung Country. He is Head of Collections, First Nations at the Powerhouse Museum and a member of the Indigenous Archives Collective.
If you have any accessibility requirements, please email Denise at: d.rezk@westernsydney.edu.au
Semester 2 Program
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Download 2026 Semester 2 Program (PDF) (opens in a new window)
Past ICS Seminars
ICS Seminar 2026 Semester 1 Program (PDF) (opens in a new window) [[link]]
ICS Seminar 2025 Semester 2 Program (PDF) (opens in a new window) [[link]]
ICS Seminar 2024 Semester 1 Program (PDF) (Opens in a new window) [[link]]
ICS Seminar 2024 Semester 2 Program (PDF) (Opens in a new window) [[link]]
Access all our previous ICS Seminars.