Petrocultures is an international, multi-disciplinary conference on oil cultures and energy humanities, motivated by the core notion that the humanities and social sciences have significant input to add to both knowledge of oil and energy, and the irrevocable process of transformation.

The international field has grown rapidly since the inaugural Petrocultures conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2012, producing scholarly and creative work across numerous platforms, disciplines, genres, and territories. While much work has been done to highlight the social and cultural significance of fossil fuels, the ecological unfeasibility of high-carbon life urgently compels us to think, imagine, and realize a world ‘after oil’. The organizing theme of Petrocultures 2018 is Transition, which may be culturally interpreted in a variety of ways. The conference will provide an important forum for examining and extending existent framings and sitings of oil and petroculture, while also striving to consider the social, cultural, and aesthetic life of alternative forms of energy, such as wind, solar, and hydro power.
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This is the first Petrocultures conference to be held outside North America. Scotland is an excellent location from which to contemplate the petrocultural and beyond. The country’s relationship with its offshore oil industry offers a rich backdrop for examining all the contradictions and controversies, opportunities and challenges oil has presented to modern petroculture and the world-ecological condition it has fostered. As a relatively late site of oil and gas extraction, Scotland has always been acutely perceptive of the inevitable ‘ends’ of oil. Much recent focus has been on the reality of decommissioning its petro-infrastructure, and the social consequences of this event. Attempts to become a leading site of renewable energy have been accompanied by bold climate policy initiatives. Illuminating parallels can be drawn, therefore, between Scotland’s experience and that of other key oil-sites—from Ireland, Canada and Norway to the Netherlands and the City of London—but also with emergent low-carbon initiatives seeking to install a culture of transition, across the continent and the globe. Petrocultures 2018 will bring together scholars, policy-makers, industry employees, artists, and public advocacy groups from across Europe, North America, and beyond.

Tickets:
£220/£95 – Full Conference (Waged/Unwaged)
£55/£30 – Day Rate (Waged/Unwaged)