Infrastructure and Information Infrastructure
In her first book, Roads to Power (Harvard 2012) Professor Guldi departed from the thinking of such scholars as Michael Mann upon the infrastructure state, and infrastructure’s role in connecting markets. She argued in that work that, in the nineteenth century, Britain became one of the first modern nations through an extensive project of roads and highways—and that this connectivity between cities in the British Isles not only stimulated industry and trade, but also transformed the connective relationships among the populace, and became a powerful channel for trade unions, and for other radical and dissenting movements.
Since the publication of that work, Professor Guldi has been exploring and building novel forms of infrastructure to support new work in the digital humanities. These include software packages associated with Democracy Lab, where she directs projects with graduate students and undergrads in applied digital methods of studying Parliamentary history. In 2012, she introduced Paper Machines, an open source toolkit to help students explore distant reading technologies.
She has written extensively on how we might expand our conception of the history of infrastructure as it occurred in the nineteenth century. And in her recent monograph, The Long Land War, to be published Spring 2022 by Yale University Press, she discusses the vast global infrastructure project that unfolded from so many different directions in the twentieth century, including the vast cartographical projects undertaken to transform poverty worldwide, and the ambitious information systems projects that, while unfinished and ultimately abandoned, represented a bold direction for a new generation of transformative infrastructure projects dedicated to social justice, land reform, and remedying poverty. and climate change.
Much of her on-going work explores how infrastructure is changing how scholars work.
Relevant Articles and Talks
Podcast - June 2021 - Radicalxchange - Jo Guldi and Brent Hecht: Maps, Computers, and Other Abstractions - Information Infrastructure and Legitimacy
“Topic Modeling Parliament’s Debates About Infrastructure,” Conference on Early Modern Mobility, Stanford University, May 14, 2021
“Digital Approaches to the Study of Infrastructure,” Conference on Early Modern Mobility, Stanford University, May 14, 2021
“Topic Modeling the History of Infrastructure in Nineteenth-century Great Britain,” Technology and Culture (forthcoming 2019)
“Infrastructure, Society, Economics, and Culture: Lessons from the History of Large Technological Systems,” Universite de los Andes, Bogota, Columbia, December 5-6, 2017.
Keynote, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure History, NYU Paris, May 30, 2017.
“Infrastructure in the Longue Duree,” Plenary Presentation, AAG Premeeting on Infrastructure, Boston, April 4, 2017.
Podcast - 2017 - Making of a Historian Episode 41: The Infrastructure Revolution
“Property Rights, the Post Office, and the Making of the Infrastructure State,” A Symposium on the History, Theory and Culture of Roads, University College Cork, Ireland, May 3, 2013.
“Human Infrastructure: Participatory Mapping in Chicago,” Conference on the Built Environment, University of Chicago, April 26, 2013. Video online at: http://techtv.mit.edu/embeds/23839?size=custom&custom_width=1000
“Human Infrastructure,” Infrastructure Monument Conference, MIT, April 8, 2013.
“"Infrastructure for a revolution,” Media Places Conference, Umea University, Sweden, January 2013. http://mediaplaces2012.humlab.umu.se/program.html, http://storify.com/search?q=guldi+%40mediaplaces2012
Apr 2012 - Harvard - Conference: "Landscape Infrastructure" - Two day symposium exploring the future of infrastructure and urbanization.
Apr 2012 - Harvard - Conference: "Landscape Infrastructure" - Closing Roundtable
"Britain Invents the Infrastructure State," Harvard STS Circle, February 2011.
“Infrastructure and Social Connection,” Social Computing Seminar, New York (January 2011).
"Keywords for the Infrastructure State," Early Modern Reading Group, November 2010