Program
Thursday, November 12, 2026
7:15 PM Dinner at Henrietta's Table, The Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett Street, Cambridge
Friday, November 13, 2026
Lee Gathering Room, CGIS-S030, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
9:00 - 9:10 Welcome (Aditya and Arunabh)
9:10 - 9:15 Welcome from Emma (CHE)
9:15 - 9:45 Introduction
- Aditya Balasubramanian: "Histories of Physical Infrastructure: Towards an Understanding and an Agenda (with some examples)"
- Arunabh to reflect; Preliminary responses from other attendees
9:45 - 10:45 Session I: Security
- Ian Kumekawa: "Guarding Growth: Private Security as Infrastructure."
- Michael Szonyi: "Past, Present and Future of Infrastructure in a Cold War Flashpoint: The Quemoy (Kinmen)-Xiamen Bridge Project"
10:45 - 11:00 Break
11:00 - 12:00 Session II: Writing Infrastructure's History
- Alek Bierig and Swarnabh Ghosh: "Notes towards a History of Infrastructure and Mania"
- Urvi Khaitan: "Concrete Evidence: Building a Visual Archive of Women's Labour and Infrastructure in India"
12:00 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:30 Session III: Whose Infrastructure?
- Abby Spinak :"Our Lines: American Experiments in Electricity Ownership since the New Deal"
- Arunabh Ghosh: "Some Reflections on Infrastructure and Collective Action"
2:30 - 2:45 Break
2:45 - 3:45 Session IV: Afterlives and Path Dependence
- Yuting Dong: Afterlives of Imperial Infrastructure: How Changchun Water Filtration Plant Shaped Sino-Japanese relations (via Zoom)
- Sophie FitzMaurice: "The Many Afterlives of Telegraph Infrastructure: Memory, Materials, and Management"
3:45 - 4:00 Break
4:00 - 5:00 Discussion: Where do we go from here?
