In 2015, Turkish president Erdoğan traveled to north Cyprus to inaugurate an undersea freshwater delivery pipeline that he labeled “the project of the century.” The project relied on technology that had not been used elsewhere in the world to deliver water across 60 kilometers of sea from the peaks of the Taurus Mountains to the desertifying island. It did appear to have claims to the “project of the century” label. However, it did not have exclusive claim. Indeed, members of the ruling Justice and Development Party quickly picked up the label and began applying it to various megaprojects, from the renewal of water and sewage pipelines in Yozgat to the mass building of housing in the aftermath of the 2023 earthquake—the latter labeled “the construction of the century.”
The Turkish government, however, is not the first or only to use this label. In the 1970’s, it was the label given to a Soviet nuclear reactor project developed in Cuba. In the Philippines, the government has given the label to Manila’s new subway project. And perhaps most significantly today, it is also the label that Chinese President Xi Jinping has given to that country’s globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative. The Turkish government, however, is not the first or only to use this label. In the 1970’s, it was the label given to a Soviet nuclear reactor project developed in Cuba. In the Philippines, the government has given the label to Manila’s new subway project. And perhaps most significantly today, it is also the label that Chinese President Xi Jinping has given to that country’s globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative.
This workshop asks what this epochal temporality, which gestures to the past while pointing towards the future, tells us about the relationship between infrastructures and empire. In this epochal vision, the size and scope of the project appears an intrinsic part of a megaproject’s meaning and justification. If “ordinary” infrastructures, such as roads and water pipelines, show us what Michael Taussig (1992: 113) calls the “powerful insubstantiality” of the state, megaprojects such as futuristic cities, pipelines, and canals that challenge nature all call attention to the state in their spectacularity. Even more than this, such “projects of the century” are daring, risky, even “crazy”—as Erdoğan has called his project to build a new canal to the west of Istanbul. Such a description, in turn, evokes the exploits of legendary leaders, such as Mehmet II’s audacious conquest of Istanbul, even while indicating that future conquests will be material and economic.
Infrastructure, then, recalls a past imperial order even as it becomes a site for staging new geopolitical futures and acting out narratives of a new multipolarity. The workshop invites colleagues working on historical and contemporary infrastructural projects at the intersection of Russian, Chinese, and Turkish influence to collectively ponder the role of epochal temporalities in the power–infrastructure nexus. Turkey and China, in particular, have emerged as centers of influence, radiating towards neighboring regions formerly under imperial control as well as distant territories through infrastructural projects. However, infrastructures remain even when influence fades, and so we wish also to examine the palimpests of materiality and power at the seam of Eurasia, where these spheres of influence meet. The workshop aims to explore how past imperial experiences and spaces are re-imagined through contemporary projects while interrogating the coexistence of multiple imperial legacies as they are rearticulated in the present.
We invite contributions from anthropology, history, sociology, and related fields to engage with past and present infrastructures across multiple scales — from the everyday and intimate to regional formations and global geopolitical configurations.
Themes of interest include but are not limited to:
1. Forms of imperiality, imperial connectivity, movement and mobility. Why is connectivity central to the materialization of empire? We invite papers that explore connecting infrastructures—roads, railways, bridges, and integrated urban systems— as sites where imperial and geopolitical projects are produced, contested and undone.
2. Multi-layeredness of empires, imperial intersections, and inter-imperality. How can we analyze different materialities left behind by empires? We seek to understand the synchronicity of this multi-layeredness by examining how multiple imperial traces coexist as palimpsests in the present.
3. Scaling and scale-making. What kinds of practices, discourses, and relations are brought into play in the formation of imperial spatial imaginaries across multiple scales? How are past and new imperial projects forged through networks, intermediaries and brokers who sustain imperial connectivity? We invite contributions that use scalemaking as an analytical tool to understand how people imagine empires.
4. Narratives of multipolarity, staging geopolitical futures. How are contemporary infrastructural projects re-imagined through discourses of kinship, relatedness, proximity, and connection, that draw on imperial pasts while providing a foundation for staging geopolitical futures? We invite papers that explore the making of contemporary multipolarity through infrastructures and the associated tropes of kinship.
5. Empire and the everyday, imperial encounters. How does an intimate, everyday lens on empire reveal the processes through which imperial subjectivities are constructed? We invite papers that examine these encounters and probe connections between power, imperial rule, and everydayness.
6. Aesthetics and visuality of empire. How is empire materialized in arts, visual practices, and other sensory registers? We seek papers that explore how imperiality is constituted through sensory experience.
The workshop is part of the European Research Council Advanced Grant project, “Infrastructural Imperialism: Global ‘Big Brothers’ and Geopolitical Futures,” led by Prof. Rebecca Bryant. We will hold the workshop at the Orient-Institut in the historic Galata District of Istanbul. Travel and accommodation will be fully covered for selected participants.
Application:
Please submit an abstract of 250 words and a 50-word biography, including your academic affiliation, to infraempire@uu.nl by 28 February 2026. We welcome applications from junior scholars. We will notify selected participants by mid-March 2026.
Organizing team:
Rozafa Berisha, Utrecht University
Rebecca Bryant, Utrecht University
Özenç Çetinkaya, Utrecht University