The Care and Preparedness in the Network Society (CareNet) research group is pleased to invite you to the Workshop: «Platform Seascapes: Ethnographic Encounters with Anthropocene Seas and Oceans», given by Alejandro Limpo, PhD researcher at University of Southampton and visiting researcher at CareNet.
The seminar will be held, in hybrid format, on Friday, December 5 at 11:00 am (CET) in room U1.5 of the Can Jaumandreu (building U).
Venue
Can Jaumandreu (building U - room U1.5)
Perú, 52
08018 Barcelona
Espanya
When
05/12/2025 11.00h
Organized by
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Care and Preparedness in the Network Society (CareNet) research group
Program
Abstract
How does seawater move through the image cultures of ocean sensing? — from moisture disrupting camera sensors to entire ocean volumes being rendered as objects of platform knowledge? In this seminar session, Alejandro Limpo will present the topic and progress of his doctoral thesis, which situate these questions across ethnographic encounters with institutions and politics of ocean sensing — from conference rooms in ocean science to border policing and the blue economy. Reframing seawater from a universal milieu to a mediated and contested material, the thesis’ theoretical backbone proposes an articulation between contemporary environmental media theory — which views environments as inseparable from media technologies, epistemologies, and ontologies, or “Medianatures” (Parikka, 2018) — and ethnographic and STS-informed sensibilities to the material cultures of “seawater-cum-data” (Andersen & Jessen, 2023). The presentation will explore this entanglement by introducing the thesis structure alongside ethnographic materials gathered over a 3-year fieldwork period. The focus of these materials will be on data analytics that shape the epistemic object of planktonic seawater, as well as on the water column as a mediating form that sustains particular pathways to planetary-scale metabolism and spatial engagements with the ocean — while simultaneously marginalizing or erasing others.
Alejandro Limpo
BA in Anthropology from the National University of Córdoba (Argentina, 2018) and an MA in Digital Visual Anthropology from ISCTE-IUL (Lisbon, 2020). He is currently a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Researcher at the University of Southampton. As part of his academic collaborations, Alejandro has held research visits at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), FAMU in Prague (Czech Republic), and the CareNet group at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC, Spain). His work contributes to debates on environmental governance, media infrastructures, and computational aesthetics, while engaging with activist and critical perspectives on oceanic space. In 2024, he co-founded the Deep Currents Collective, an independent network of researchers intervening in the jurisprudence and politics of the seabed.