Run a different kind of strategy workshop for your team.

Research Outputs

Welcome to my research outputs page. This page tells the story of my study, as well as the papers and multimedia content being produced from the research.

Step 1: The Literature Underpinning the Enquiry

Having a "framework for thinking" helps address complex issues, as I found from the Built Hierarchy of Needs for infrastructure recovery after the Canterbury earthquakes. The same is true for devising infrastructure strategy more generally, I felt, but when did infrastructure planning start and how has it been shaped, I wondered? This led to a review of the macrohistory of infrastructure development from the Neolithic Age, which revealed how civilisations have evolved from reliance on extraction and growth that has been driven by surpluses. These surpluses have fuelled population expansion, increased individual want, and different types of fortification against threats. The review also examines how, today, infrastructure strategies tend to be created from projected futures based on empirical data that are unlikely to eventuate. It is suggested that new methods of considering alternative futures have become necessary against this backdrop. A particular "pull of the future" identified in the review suggests that closer attention to a post-colonial relationship with nature is required. Reducing flows of living biological materials to the built environment and infrastructure lie at the heart of potential new human cohabitation with the earth system that endures into whatever epoch follows the Anthropocene.

Status: Read Preprint Now | Comments welcome

Step 2: A Picture Tells 1,000 Words

I was in Washington DC and pretty jetlagged. My supervisors wanted me to produce a more engaging medium for the literature review. Concepts come to me in pictures, but I can't draw - so frustrating. From all my reading and thinking, two images were forming in my mind. The first was what I came to term "Infrastructure Man", well served by the services infrastructure brings, but burdened by the cost and environmental weight of the physical works that deliver those services.

A further thought of the "Organic City" came to mind—infrastructure as part of an ecosystem. I imagined a street scene with road repairs revealing pipes and wires. To illustrate infrastructure as a living being, I mused about open heart surgery with retractors exposing the street and backhoes and other machines wielding scalpels and sponges.

How to bring this to life? I found Doan Trang, an illustrator, who was able to capture these imaginings and bring them to life. Such a rare skill and a big shout-out to Doan Trang for an enjoyable collaboration. The following are the resulting postcards, along with their captions.

Infrastructure Man
(wondering how we got here. Humans have become integrated with the built environment in ways we might not fathom fully. Yet, these entwined organisms still live independently from our Earth system. All must come to co-exist well for humanity to thrive.)

Organic City
(The Organic City and its system of systems may be seen as an extension of the human organism, sustaining greater populations with more comfort. To flourish, these creatures must co-exist with our Earth System better.)

Step 3:
Vanishing Point! Our Built World Comic

Having these images prompted me to consider building out the whole literature review as a story. I'd long thought about creating a graphic novel or comic book as a way to engage with people. It was October 2022 and, as I watched some Youtube clips about making comics, I learned about AI-generated images. The idea of being able to explain to an AI what is in one's mind's eye and then construct these images through (a lot of) trial and error was very exciting. I decided to turn my literature review into an illustrated story by writing a narrative and conjuring up images using Midjourney. Vanishing Point! Our Built World is the product.

The comic explores a future where individuals awaken in 2150, having been cryogenically preserved. Guided by historian Lisette, they traverse a solarpunk world, understanding the consequences of past infrastructure decisions. This narrative leap, facilitated by a mysterious event called the "Vanishing Point" that erased records from 2023 to 2050, challenges participants to reflect on actions that could foster human and non-human sustainability.

As a somewhat different approach to infrastructure strategy making, the comic invites readers to envision a positive future, the lifestyles we might lead, the services to enable those lifestyles, and the hard infrastructure that might be required.

Status: Read Now | Kindle Edition published on Amazon | Comments welcome

Step 4: Designing & Running Workshops

In addition to the issue of finding participants for workshops, workshop materials had to be prepared. Again, AI played a significant part, and while I thought the comic was labour-intensive, video production and workshop curating were on another level. The comic was turned into a series of three-minute segments to be played in the 2-hour workshops, followed by surveys and discussion. Here's a segment of "Mea" explaining to participants what the workshop entails.

The data collected from the workshops will feature later.

Step 5: Adaptation Futures Conference 2023 Poster/ Video

What started as crazy idea and a bit professionally risky was gaining momentum. A poster describing the method accepted and presented at the Adaptation Futures Conference in Montreal during October 2023. The poster describes the process of using comics-based research, future self-continuity and temporal discontinuity methods as a means of both disseminating knowledge and collecting data in participatory research.

Step 6: A Write-up of the Method

The method is finding its way into World Futures Review. WFR has produced a special issue about artistic, poetic explorations, and theoretical analyses to reimagine futures literacy. My submitted abstract on comics-based research, the use of future self-continuity and temporal discontinuity in participatory research was accepted and the full paper has now been peer-reviewed and published.

Status: Read Preprint Here | Read Published Article here| Comments welcome

Step 7: Getting back to the origins of the research

The research has its origins in the recovery of Canterbury, New Zealand, following a series of earthquakes there in 2010-2011. While the thesis expands upon that experience to address broader societal questions prevailing today, this article begins the process by exploring the evolution of disaster recovery theory, highlighting its shift from focusing on infrastructure rebuilding to encompassing social, economic, and environmental aspects.

Status: Read Preprint Here | Comments welcome

Rethinking Disaster Preparedness with Elizabeth McNaughton

Elizabeth McNaughton of Disastrous.co, a disaster preparedness and climate adaptation training and resource leader, hosts a podcast series about disasters done differently. We had a discussion about my studies, disasters, and infrastructure, which succinctly brought together some of the concepts discussed above.

What's Next?

Thanks for getting this far. I am now working on a paper that goes back to the Maslow Hierarchy of the Built Environment to formally record that work. It was an epiphany that set the scene for this research. Then there will be papers that write up the results of the data collected in the workshops. There's been another epiphany from this work that will likely be the main contribution from the research, and that will find its way here in due course.

Thank you for time and interest.

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