Evelina Gambino
Contact
Visiting Postdoctoral Research Fellow
UCL Department of Geography
University College London
North-West Wing
Gower Street
London.
WC1E 6BT
Email: evelina.gambino.17@ucl.ac.uk
Research
My Ph.D thesis focused on the development of logistics infrastructure in Georgia. Through an ethnographic analysis of the on-going infrastructural reconstruction of one key site, I analyse the country’s logistical turn as at once a discursive and material formation. My field site was the emerging port town of Anaklia. Situated on the Black Sea Coast, at the border with the de facto state of Abkhazia this village has, for over a decade, been at the centre of ambitious national and foreign investment aimed at turning this once peripheral coastal village into a trade and transport hub with a global reach. This development, supported by the Georgian state and managed by a private multinational corporation was commonly referred to as “the project of the century” and understood to be vital for the country’s transformation into a transit corridor, an element of the Belt and Road Initiative that would forge new connections between Europe and Asia. Over the course of the ethnography, however, the project came to a halt. By charting the development and eventual demise of this ambitious infrastructural effort, my research brings together a theoretical and political focus on the geography of logistical capitalism with an ethnographic attention to practices of future-making. My research spans across the fields of critical logistics, feminist geography, critical geopolitics and the anthropology and geography of infrastructure. I am a member of the Environment, Politics and Society research cluster.
Primary Supervisor: Prof. Andrew Barry
Secondary Supervisor: Dr Hannah Knox (Anthropology)
Background
Ph.D. Candidate, University College London
Human Geography
2017 - 2021
ESRC funded
Ma in Russian and Eastern European Studies
University of Nottingham
2015-2017
ESRC funded
Ma Anthropology and Cultural Politics
Goldsmiths College, University of London
2012-2014
Ba Anthropology and Media
Goldsmiths College, University of London
2009-2012
Publications
Peer Reviewed Articles
Gambino, E., Jenss, A. (2021) "Interventions on Democratizing Infrastructures. The Politics of Seamless Connectivity". Political Geography. DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102378
Gambino, E. (2020) ‘Logistica in (s)composizione: spazio-tempo, espropriazione e infrastrutture nel Caucaso Meridionale’, Scienza e Politica (S&P), Vol 11, No. 2.
Barry, A., Gambino, E. (2019). ‘Pipeline Geopolitics: Subaquatic Materials and the Tactical Point’, Geopolitics. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2019.1570921
Gambino, E. (2019) “The Georgian Logistics Revolution: Questioning Seamlessness Across the New Silk Road” Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 190-206. DOI https://doi.org/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.13.1.0190
Gambino, E. (2019) 'Georgia, the South Caucasus and the BRI: a situated view'. Caucasus Analytical Digest (available at https://css.ethz.ch/en/publications/cad/cad-all-issues/details.html?id=/n/o/1/1/no_110_chinas_belt_and_road_initiative_a )
Chapters in edited volumes
Gambino, E. (2021) "Big Dick Energy at the End of the World: Technopolitics for a Global Hustle". In Benvegnú et al (eds) Gendering Logistics Feminist Approaches for the Analysis of Supply Chain Capitalism. Bologna: University of Bologna Press.
Gambino, E., Peano, I. & Into the Black Box (2021) "Introduction: Reading Logistical Operations Through the Prism of Gender". In Benvegnú et al (eds) Gendering Logistics Feminist Approaches for the Analysis of Supply Chain Capitalism. Bologna: University of Bologna Press.
Aslanishvili T., Gambino, E. (2018) “Remaking Anaklia: Landscapes of Trial and Error Across the New Silk Road” in Anfrage // Werkleitz Festival Catalogue 2018 HOLEN UND BRINGEN
Gambino, E., (2017). ‘The “Gran Ghetto: Migrant Labor and Militant Research in Southern Italy.’ in De Genova, N. (ed) The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822372660-011
Video
Aslanishvili, T., Gambino, E. (2020) Remaking Anaklia: The Architecture of Ruin. Video Essay commissioned by the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial (available at https://youtu.be/Jz4QKd5hOgc)
Other publications
Gambino, E., Barry, A. (2020) 'Unsustainable transition? Hydropower and the post-Covid recovery in Georgia'. Open Democracy (available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/unsustainable-transition-hydropower-and-post-covid-recovery-georgia/?fbclid=IwAR37Y6ZnNky4yo5NJfhwpVn-p9VebvCVHAAPDoOXTN5Mwy6bN844uFws1eQ)
Gambino, E., Taube, M., Woznicki, K. (2020) De-assembling the Deterritorialised Cyborg (available at https://blogs.mediapart.fr/krystian-woznicki/blog/191120/de-assembling-deterritorialized-cyborg?fbclid=IwAR3gEt7-Ce9Nn2w2FY0qX2513PTgMnpEyvXF9rx0hjRkta07OpRaTKhL3rM)
Gambino, E. (2020) 'Logistical nightmares: what can we learn from the crisis of Anaklia Deep Sea Port?' 1Tv.ge (available at https://1tv.ge/analytics/logistical-nightmares-what-can-we-learn-from-the-crisis-of-anaklia-deep-sea-port/)
Gambino, E. (2019). ‘Beyond Seamlessness: the Making and Unmaking of a Logistical Territory’, Lo Squaderno. 51, 59-63. (available at http://www.losquaderno.net/?cat=187)
Gambino, E. (2018) 'The New Silk Road and logistical geopolitics'. Society and Space (available at https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/the-new-silk-road-and-logistical-geopolitics#:~:text=The%20New%20Silk%20Road%20presents,project%20yet%20to%20be%20defined.)
Gambino, E., 2017. 'La Nuova via della Seta'. Euronomade (available at http://www.euronomade.info/?p=10029).
Teaching
PGTA
2020/2021
GEOG0086: Advanced Geopolitics (MA)
GEOG0056: Geopolitical Events (3rd year, BA)
GEOG0039: Migration and Transnationalism (3rd year, BA)
2019/2020
GEOG0084: Geo-Politics (MA)
GEOG0023: Economic Geography (2nd year, BA)
Guest Lectures:
Jan 2021 - Guest Lecture Ma Program Research Architecture: "Key Works: Collaboration, Conflicts and Negotiation Within and Against The Field". Centre For Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College.
Nov 2019 - Guest Lecture Ma Environment Politics and Society: "Logistical Geopolitics". Department of Geography, UCL.
Jan 2019 – Guest Lecture Ma Program Research Architecture: “ (Re)making the Georgian New Silk Road”. Centre For Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College
Jan 2018 – Guest Lecture Ma Program Research Architecture: “The Logistics of trial and error on the Black Sea”. Centre For Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College
Sep 2017 - Guest Lecture Ma Program Policy Lab: “Participatory Research and Militant Ethnographies”. Centre for Cultural Studies,
Goldsmiths College
Other Teaching:
2017, 2018 – Guest Tutor, DS3 Ma Architecture Studio,
Master in Architecture (year 2)
Oxford Brookes