Jonathan Michael Galka

I am a historian of the contemporary earth and environmental sciences, focused particularly on the oceanic dimensions of resource extraction since the mid-20th century.

One major strand of my work is interested in the ways that the evolution of global ocean governance systems concurrent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea process coevolved with the development of deep ocean sciences. My doctoral dissertation and book project, In Such Abundance:  A History of the Ocean that Minerals Promised, examines how mineral concretions called manganese (polymetallic) nodules became a novel resource frontier over the 1960s-1970s through epistemic contests over the possibility of material plenitude, the nature of the deep-sea environment, and the character of the marine resource commons. The project looks to explain how and why contemporary seabed resource governance has become broadly intractable.

Recently, I have extended these interests in the character of claims about marine resource abundance to consider the advent and eclipse of oceanic renewable energy technologies, especially ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), around the same time. This work follows OTEC from its roots in experiments across the colonial tropics through to its contemporary manifestations as one potential tool with which to address small island precarity in the unfolding climate crisis.

A second major strand of my work looks at layers of ocean governance within and beyond global legal architectures by attending to how vernacular and indigenous structures of marine tenure and resource stewardship have alternatively engaged or contested technoscientific tools and management.