11th October 2023
The Making of Prison Land
Dr Emma Russell, La Trobe University, Australia
This talk focuses on the multiple, layered histories of the Ravenhall Prisons Precinct on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
Combining field visits with documentary analysis of the official administrative process of prison land-making, Emma will explore how localised contexts are embedded in global networks of capitalist accumulation and production, in which prisoners becomes commodities and endangered species become impediments to carceral development. To build this analysis, she examines practices of surveillance and quantification of ecosystems that form part of the biodiversity ‘offset management plan’ for the Ravenhall Correctional Centre, the third prison sited in the precinct, which opened in 2017.
This is a in-person event only.