This event is part of the Atmospheric Apparitions mini-symposium on Sept 18-19 2025. It is is free and open to the public. We encourage you to visit the departmental Atmospheric Apparitions: Particle Pollutants – Dust, Ash, Smog and Smoke! exhibition in the Liu Lobby Gallery on view from July 21-Sept 26, 2025.
Speaker:
Dr. Elsa Noterman (University of Nottingham)
Title:
Counter-Cartographies of Atmospheric Trespass
Abstract:
In my work on the ‘fugitive dust’ of urban development, I trace the indeterminate trajectories of toxic lead dust as it traverses property’s spatio-temporal limits, therein disrupting racialized notions of ‘improvement’ and refiguring questions of socioenvironmental justice. In this talk, I build on this work by considering efforts to map, and thus manage, vertical property boundaries, and how ‘trespassing’ materialities can help us think differently about normative ownership regimes and their associated socio-spatial relations. Specifically, examining efforts to map toxic dust in the city of Philadelphia amidst broader trends to claim and regulate ownership of airspace, I explore the following questions: What challenges emerge in efforts to map (and manage) atmospheric particulates that continually re/circulate over time and space, and what can these challenges tell us about the ways that we imagine and seek to police property boundaries? And what kinds of atmospheric counter-cartographies might allow us to illustrate the porosity and changeability of spatial and temporal boundaries, and contest normative models of property?
Bio:
Elsa Noterman is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the University of Nottingham. Her research considers questions related to everyday collective struggles over land and housing. To examine these questions, she draws on critical legal, feminist, decolonial and antiracist theories of property and social reproduction, as well as her background in community organizing, public education, and community development. Elsa’s research bridges conversations in the social sciences and humanities, and draws on qualitative, critical cartographic, and participatory research methods. She has formerly held a faculty position at Queen Mary University of London and a research fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Elsa received a PhD and MS in Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Respondent:
Bella Pojuner, PhD Candidate, UBC Geography
This is an in person event hosted in room 229 Geography.
