[CASTAC Invited Lecture] The Fragility of Promised Futures

Please join us for the 2025 CASTAC Invited Lecture.
The Fragility of Promised Futures: A Case for Centring Maintenance in Nature Restoration

Syed Shoaib Ali (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi) with respondents Juris Milestone (Temple University, US) and Huiying Ng (University of Oulu, Finland)

• December 10, 2025
• 9:30 AM – 11 AM (EST) | Zoom
• Register to Attend on Eventbrite | All Welcome

Dr. Ali’s research examines environmental restoration in the Western Himalaya, bringing ethnographic and STS perspectives to bear on global initiatives such as the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and the Bonn Challenge. His work highlights the fragility of the optimistic futures these projects promise, and instead makes the case for centring maintenance and repair as vital to ensuring the long-term durability of restoration sites. By drawing on insights from maintenance and repair studies, Dr. Ali shows how concepts like usefulness, breakdown, and technical diplomacy can shed light on the often-overlooked, repetitive work of sustaining ecological projects. In reframing restoration as maintenance, he points to new forms of partnership and nature diplomacy that can reshape restoration futures in the Global South.