The word ‘geography’ translates as ‘earth-writing‘. However, human geographers have focused their attention almost entirely on the terrestrial or landed parts of the earth — cities, towns, streets, homes — at the cost of studying the two-thirds of the earth which is water – our seas and oceans.
(More-than) Human Geographies of Seas and Oceans
Over the past two decades geographers have been been moving their studies beyond the shoreline, taking the social, cultural and political questions they ask about landed life, to sea. This project is not new and builds on (though oftentimes omits) non-Western perspectives, where the sea has been more central to life, and the imagination.
Taking a geographical approach to understanding oceans (governance) forms the basis of my work – my first book Waterworlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean (with J.Anderson) and my ongoing, collaborative work (with P. Steinberg) on ‘wet ontologies’: engaging with the sea to rethink modes of ‘doing’ geography. This focus is also part of all my collaborations, and especially with the brilliant Marine Governance Group at the HIFMB.
As well as researching the seas and oceans as central concerns, I am also increasingly interested in other ‘non-landed’ or grounded spaces, and elements, and how we seek to order andgovern other ‘terrains’ and ‘forces’ (these include electromagnetic waves, outer space Near Earth Objects, and fire).
Details about some of the projects I work on with an incredible collection of people, are below.
Invisible Infrastructure
One of my major research concerns relates to the connections between space and movement (or ‘mobilities’ – movement that is shaped by processes of power), both theoretically and empirically.
Following my PhD (see below), I continue to think about the Dover Strait as a particular maritime bottleneck through which the mobilities of ships have designed, engineered, ‘channelled’ and ultimately governed. Here I have investigated the formulation and operation of a global governance regime – a maritime motorway, or Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) – tracing it from its beginnings in the Dover Strait in the late 1950s, with the advent of increased trade and larger ships, through to its current day articulation and a means of directing, making secure and preventing collisions. I like to think of ‘maritime motorways’ as pieces of invisible infrastructure. You cannot build a motorway, physically, on the seas. You cannot tarmac the ocean. But through years of persistence, and then through constant monitoring and observation, the scheme materialises.
Funded firstly by the Aberystwyth Research Fund as a means of piloting the project, a larger scale version of the work, encompassing new case studies was funded 2016-2020 by the Leverhulme Trust. This was entitled ‘Invisible Infrastructure: Maritime Motorways and the Making of Global Mobilities’. I have presented the work widely in a variety of talks, as well as written about it in both academic and mainstream publications. I continue to work on the politics of ship routeing (also with O.Mueller).
Indoor Oceans
How is the ocean replicated in ‘indoor spaces’ – aquariums, and beyond this, virtual reality? What does it do for assisting our understandings of the ocean, current climate crises, and human (dis)connection?
Together with R.Squire we have been investigating these dynamics in our project ‘Behind the Glass’, funded by the British Academy. You can find out more about this project via our dedicated project website, which charts the work and outputs from this work.
Carceral Seas: Crime, Governance and Mobilities
Much of my work is historical in focus, seeking to question how past oceanic events can help us understand contemporary concerns. To date my research has explored this interest in relation to the case study of offshore radio piracy questioning how historical transgressions led to a change in the law of the sea.
For the past 10 years I have been working on various projects concerned with the seemingly contradictory relationship between ‘carcerality’ and the ‘sea’ (with J. Turner) in a historic and more recent context. Carceral spaces are those defined as closed, controlled, confined. The sea is often characterised in opposition – as the most ‘free’ and ‘open’ of spaces (Langewiesche 2003). However, as geographers (historians and International Relations scholars) have demonstrated, the sea – a space often out of sight and mind, can offer a legal exception to the state and has thus frequently been used as a prison space to hold and contain, where state regulation can be circumnavigated for carceral purposes (Anderson 2000; Mountz and Loyd 2014; Peters and Turner 2015). It has also been used as a space across which to move and remove (and also return) ‘unwanted’ or ‘undesirable’ people from one territory to another via ‘transportation’ or prison ships. In our work, seeking to explore ‘Carceral Seas’, we have examined this spatial paradox. The project first resulted in the book Carceral Mobilites: Interrogating Movement in Incarceration (Routledge, 2017) and most recently the book Ocean Governance (Beyond) Borders (Palgrave, 2025).
Elemental Governance: Air, Water, Fire, Earth
Whilst my PhD was most definitely about ships (their ‘illicit’ activities and their subsequent governance), it was also about much more than the governance of the seas. In investigating offshore radio piracy, I was also fascinated by the control of the air and airwaves – or, to be precise, electromagnetic waves through which sound travels. In governing the broadcasting corsairs of the North Sea, successive governments not only had to grapple with governing extra-territorial activities, in the extra-territorial space of the sea, but also the transmission of radio shows via another natural medium, one which also defies neat bordering processes, and humanly constructed boundaries. I discuss the elemental governance of electromagnetic waves in my book ‘Rebel Radio’.
This work, along with my collaborative work (with P.Steinberg and E.Stratford) has sought to grapple with the politics and governance of territories beyond terra – beyond the grounded, earthly and solid spaces that tend to dominate work on territory and political contestation. We argue, building from the extensive work of Stuart Elden on terrtory and terrain, that key arenas of political struggle are no longer confined to land alone – but to the skies, to ice, to the underwater and beyond. We were fortunate to have Stuart Elden write a foreword for our book ‘Territory Beyond Terra’, and to convene an incredible set of authors who are progressing our understandings of the varied geophysical terrains of political control and conflict.
My interests in spaces that are tricky to govern has extended beyond the book above, and earlier work on radio piracy, to include a project on the governance of fire and automated fire protection (funded by the Manchester Geographical Society).
Wet and More-than-Wet Ontologies: A Theoretical Project
In addition to these projects, and what connects them all, is my theoretical work with Philip Steinberg (Durham University). Working with Phil has been, and continues to be, a career highlight. In our first major piece together we aimed to theorise how key geographical concepts: place, time, territory and materiality, could be re-thought by thinking with the sea as a conceptual tool. Here we developed what we called a ‘wet ontology‘ (moving beyond ‘flat ontologies’) to open up a world of volume, complexity and matter (this in 2015). Drawing on a range of philosophers – Virilio, Serres, Schmitt, Deleuze – we sought to demonstrate how thinking with the sea allows us to reinvigorate, redirect, and reshape debates that are all too often restricted by terrestrial limits.
In 2019, concerned that our theory was falling short, we published a follow-on paper, ‘more-than-wet ontologies‘ where we argue the sea is not just wet. It doesn’t just exist in its liquid form alone, but in ‘excess’: within us, beyond us and in our imaginations. The sea is the air we breath, the smells we inhale, the food we eat, the dreams we dream. Thinking with excess allows us to reconsider the geographical and geophysical reach of the oceans and imagine them, and know them, differently – creating new opportunities for understanding, engaging and stewarding.
From 2025, we will continue to develop our ocean thinking. Watch this space…
Kimberley Peters 