Dr Ge (Gigi) Tang
- School: School of English, Drama and Film
- Mentor: Dr Sarah Comyn
Lines of Mineral Extraction: Infrastructures, Capital, and Labour in British Southern Settler Colonies
Ge (Gigi) Tang completed her PhD in English at the University of Melbourne in 2023. Her thesis examines the interplay between emotion and racial politics in Anthony Trollope's travel writing and his fiction connected to his travels in the British Empire.
Gigi is currently a postdoctoral research fellow on the Research Ireland Starting Laureate project, 'Minerals', which explores and examines how the extractive mineral industries shaped the Anglophone literary cultures of the British settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa in the period 1842–1910. As part of WP 4 – Infrastructural Regimes, Gigi is working on a project titled 'Lines of Mineral Extraction: Infrastructures, Capital, and Labour in British Southern Settler Colonies', which explores the literary and cultural representation of infrastructures vital to extractive mineral industries in the British settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Her focus extends to both physical and non-physical infrastructures, encompassing railway and steamship networks, port cities, and segregated compounds in the former, and border control and legal administration in the latter. She also examines the critical role of intermediaries in facilitating the flow of labour and capital across these infrastructure networks. Gigi's project posits that infrastructure plays a pivotal role in shaping discourse and critique surrounding mining capitalism, extractivism, and the global colour line. She examines an array of texts, including photographs, postcards, petitions, songs, memoirs, poetry, and novels. By contrasting and comparing three distinct narrative types—the visual politics of pro-extraction capitalism, counter-narratives by labourers, and the critical insights offered by literary works—Gigi's project seeks to offer a nuanced understanding of the complex interplay between infrastructure, racial capitalism, and representation in the context of mineral extraction.
Contact details:
Email: (opens in a new window)ge.tang@ucd.ie
Website of the ‘Imperial Mineral’ Project: (opens in a new window)Imperial Minerals