Spencer Adams

Dr. Spencer Adams is an interdisciplinary researcher, with doctoral training in STS and critical theory and further interests touching on environmental humanities, critical geography, and sci fi studies. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Rachel Carson Center, he’s working on a book project forwarding a social and cultural history of Antarctic research stations as a case study for understanding the labor relations and the social and technical infrastructures that lie behind global climate and environmental knowledge. Past and forthcoming publications of his have looked at contemporary Antarctic futurist architectural design, as well as amateur and informal speculative stories written by Antarctic station inhabitants.

Research projects / interests:

• Social and Cultural Life of Antarctic Research Stations
• History of Climate and Environmental Science
• Labor, Logistics, and Infrastructure in the Antarctic
• Antarctic Science and Speculative Fiction
• Theories and Imaginaries of the Anthropocene

Areas of interest:

• Humanities
• Literature
• History
• Human Geography
• Architecture
• Anthropology
• Cultural Studies
• Environment
• Labor

Keywords: Labor, Workplace Relations, Cultural Production, Environment, Anthropocene, Speculative Fiction, Speculative Design

Publications:

• “Imaginaries of Planetary Inhabitance: Polar Futurism and the Labors of Climate Science” (in Nature and Space, published 2023)
• “Polar Futurism and the Labors of Knowledge Production” (Dissertation, published 2023)