Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy
What happens if we tell the history of the planetary emergency from the margins? In Burning Swamps: Peat and the Forgotten Margins of Russia’s Fossil Economy (Cambridge University Press 2025), Katja Bruisch traces the forgotten role of peat in Russian industrialisation and electrification and points to the social and ecological legacies of this history. Providing a corrective to more familiar energy history narratives dominated by coal, oil, and gas and with an eye to the intersecting histories of labour and matter, her book moves beyond the socialism/capitalism binary and invites us to recognise the role of seemingly marginal people, resources and places in the broader trajectory of planetary change. The event will feature a presentation of the book with an emphasis on how the case of peat may help us think about the socio-ecological premises of modern growth.