Details about the workshop agenda will be posted to this page as they are available. Times and location are subject to change, so please bookmark this page to confirm the latest information.

Information about local logistics will help prepare travelers to visit Duke Kunshan University.

Readings for select presentations will be made available to workshop participants by early June 2026. Please email the organizers if you are a registered workshop participant but did not receive access information.

We particularly appreciate the faculty and staff of the Environment Research Center at DKU for their generous hosting of this workshop.

All times are listed in local time (GMT +8).

Thursday, June 18

time TBC

Welcome dinner at DKU (informal meet-and-greet)

Friday, June 19

8:45–9:00

Welcome and Opening Remarks

9:00–10:15

Keynote w/ Q&A—“Metabolism of the Petrostate”

Speaker: Dominic Boyer (Anthropology, Rice University)

10:15–10:45

Break

10:45–12:00

Panels 1 & 2

Panel 1: Green Infrastructure

Panelists:

  • The Socio‑Technical Shell: Reconfiguring Labor and Life in China’s EV Infrastructure Complex
    —Yanping Ni, Princeton University
  • The Legacy of Cheap Infrastructure and the (Im)Possibility of Green Growth: Energy Transition Trajectories and Barriers in Korea
    —Deokhwa Hong, Chungbuk National University
  • From Creating ‘Market’ to Creating ‘Stability’: The Infrastructuralization of Solar Power Stations in Northwest China
    —Yijun Gai, University of Hong Kong

Panel 2: Wind & Hydropower

Panelists:

  • Wind as a Contested Commons: Critical Analysis of Local Acceptance of Wind Energy in Jeju Island
    —Hyun Choe & Seung Hee Cho, Jeju National University
  • “This is a Secret Place!”: Scale and the Work of Secrecy in China’s Mega‑Dam Project on the Tibetan Plateau
    — Xiao Schutte Ke & Jay Ke-Schutte, University of Pennsylvania & Zhejiang University
  • From Hydropower to Cloud Power: The Making of Green Digital Infrastructure at Qiandao Lake
    — Zhengfang Wang, Paderborn University

12:00–13:00

Lunch

13:00–14:30

Panels 3 & 4

Panel 3: Political Aesthetics of the Non-Human

Panelists:

  • The Parana‑Paraguay Hidrovía: Geopolitical, Extractive and Biocultural Infrastructure
    —Robin Rodd, Duke Kunshan University
  • From Sin Economies and Carbon Offsets: The Political‑Aesthetics of Environmental Compensation
    —Joseph Giacomelli, Duke Kunshan University
  • Memories, Performance, Moving Pictures: Remembering Lost Landscapes at the Miao‑Han Borderlands
    —Shuyi Lynn Shen, Duke Kunshan University
  • Deserts, Desertification and the Politico‑Aesthetics of the “Green Transition”
    —Renee Richer, Duke Kunshan University

Panel 4: Crises and Eco-Modernity

Panelists:

  • Marine Enclosure: The Eco‑modern Imagination of Undersea Data Center in Lin’gang in Shanghai
    —Wendy Wenxin Zhang, UC Irvine
  • Green Transition and the Melting Cryosphere in Asia
    —Cymene Howe, Rice University
  • Turbid Unspectacularity: Debating the Geos and Bios of an Imperiled Algal Reef
    —Tim Shao-Hung Teng, Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • A Flyway‑Scale Assessment of Cumulative Offshore Wind Farm Exposure Using the Migratory Flight Path of a Threatened Species as an Example
    —Yi-Chien (Emilia) Lai, Tunghai University

14:45–17:30

Optional site visit (location in progress)

Saturday, June 20

9:00–10:30

Panels 5 & 6

Panel 5: Spiritual and Community-Based Approaches

Panelists:

  • Urban Green Transitions: Lessons from University Campuses in China
    —Annemieke van den Dool, Duke Kunshan University
  • The Missing Subject of Green Transition: Human Bearing Capacity, Zen Meditation, and the CARE Framework
    —Chia-ju Chang, CUNY–Brooklyn College
  • Degrowth and the Commons
    —Suh-Hyun Park, Jeju National University

Panel 6: Eco-economy in Transition

Panelists:

  • Eco‑compensation and China’s Pathway to Green Transition
    —Wumeng He, Duke Kunshan University
  • Institutional Innovations in AIIB’s Climate Finance: A Case Study of Bangladesh’s Climate Resilient Inclusive Development Program
    — Anqi Zhou & Peixin Yin, Beijing Int’l Studies Univ.
  • Green Transitions, Darker Realities? The Paradox of Green Transitions, Sustainable Pathways, and Geo‑economic Realities
    —Tobias Burgers, Fulbright University Vietnam
  • Financing Nature: Transforming China’s Energy Transition Landscape through Green Finance
    —Xue Ma, UC Irvine

10:30–11:00

Break

11:00–12:30

Panels 7 & 8

Panel 7: Minerals and Mines

Panelists:

  • Latent Conflicts: Conflicts Governance in China’s Coal Transition—A Case Study of Coal Mine Closure in Guizhou Province
    —Lichao Yang, Beijing Normal University
  • Can SOEs Help Achieve a Just Transition for Coal Workers in China?
    —Coraline Goron, DKU, & Weijun Rong, Freie Universität Berlin
  • The Green Loop: Rare Earths and the Mineral Politics of Growth
    —Xin Zhou, Concordia University Montreal
  • From Dams to Minerals: Green Transitions, Extractivism, and Energy Politics in the Philippines
    —Jonel Maria Caba, Mindanao State University

Panel 8: Food, Waste, Forest

Panelists:

  • Cultivating Green Transitions Otherwise: Food Forests, Soil, and Ecological World‑Making in Southwest China
    —Yueke Li, University of Otago
  • Recycling Waste and the Limits of Environmentalism in Urban China
    —Adam Liebman, Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Managing Disposability: What Is Left Behind in the Green Transition
    —Victoria Lupaşcu, University of Montréal
  • Forestation as Method: Scientific Forestry and a Politics of Green Transition in South Korea
    —Sumin Myung, Te Herenga Waka–Victora University of Wellington

12:30–13:30

Lunch & wrap-up discussion