Marianne Holm Hansen, For the Record, ongoing

We have three regular authors that contribute to the Discard Studies blog, but we are also seeking guest contributors from various academic disciplines. The blog receives between 150-200+ unique visitors a day, on average. We have also received upwards of daily 1000 views on more popular postings. Our readers are academics, activists, makers, designers, beach combers, artists, and a generally interested public.

Posts might summarize current research, analyze current events, review works of art, summarize a panel discussion, criticize recent literature, or offer theoretical insights in plain language. We may edit contributions and cannot guarantee running all submissions. Feel free to pitch us an idea before you start.

Submissions can be various lengths depending on the scope, but always should be written for a general audience. This can include everything from the more academic to the personal to photo essays. Have a look at some of the most read posts by our authors to get a sense of what goes over well with our audience:

• “Tactics of Waste, Dirt and Discard in the Occupy Movement: A Photo Essay” by Max Liboiron
• “Singapore is a gold mine”: Re-Orienting global trade flows of secondhand electronics by Creighton Connolly
• “Dumpsters, Muffins, Waste and Law” by Sebastian Abrahamsson and Katja de Vries
• “In Colonial Shoes: Notes on the Material Afterlife in Post-Oslo Palestine” by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
• “Garbage strikes and the imposed categories of modernity” by Eric Friedman
• Our most popular image collections are “Visual Culture of Food Waste Data: Theaters of Proof” and “Ocean waste: The absurdity of matter out of place“

The most popular search terms that lead first time readers to our site are:

• food waste
• endocrine disruptors
• tire pile
• burning trash
• New Delhi slums
• (history of) hoarding
• garbage strike
• throw away culture

Send your guest post as an MS Word document with hyperlinks inserted so that we can easily review it and provide comments / suggest edits. At the end of the text, please include a one-sentence, third-person bio in italics.  (We suggest that authors include a link to their personal website). Finally, place bracketed links inside the document to indicate the location of any pictures or video we might include in the post, and attach the images separately or provide links to them.

Please email the document, or idea for a guest post, to max.liboiron [at] nyu.edu

Previous Guest Authors

Sebastian Abrahamsson is a postdoc at AISSR Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. His book, Something Happening: On the Geographies of a Mummified Body is about practices around the mummified body, such as archaeology/an excavation, radiology/body scans, museum studies/a museum exhibition, archive/X-ray plates, works of art/an art gallery.

Creighton Connolly is a PhD student in the University of Manchester’s geography department. His dissertation is The Environmental politics of bird’s nest production in Malaysia and Indonesia’s cityscapes.

Katja de Vries is a PhD student in Legal Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels) within the Law and autonomic computing. Her research is focused on the collisions and interactions between legal and technological modes of thinking.

Kim DeWolff is a PhD candidate in the Communication and Science Studies program at the University of California, San Diego. She is writing her dissertation on the material problems of plastic waste in the ocean and blogging about related issues at Plasticzed.

Jordan Howell is an  Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Geography & Environment at Rowan University. He examines solid waste and energy issues in North America and Hawai’i.

Mathew Lippincott is the co-founder and Director of Production at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (PLOTS), a non-profit organization dedicated to civic science. PLOTS helps people investigate environmental concerns using DIY technologies. He is also a partner in MDML, which focuses on creating solutions for sustainable sanitation, like dry toilets and other ecological solutions to human pollution.

Josh Lepawsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Memorial University in Canada. His research involves mapping the international trade and traffic of electronic waste and recently began working on the prospects and challenges of ‘fair’ or ‘ethical’ trade in rubbish electronics and recycling.

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Columbia University. Her current research is on the intersections of garbage, sewage and waste markets with the changing nature of occupation in post-Oslo Palestine.

Sarah Wanenchak is a PhD student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her current research focuses on contentious politics and communications technology in a global context, particularly the role of emotion mediated by technology as a mobilizing force.