What fuels the data center economy? What minerals are mined to build it, and what energy systems power it? Who bears the environmental and social costs—and what can we learn from the long tradition of Indigenous resistance to extractive infrastructure, as well as recent campaigns challenging data centers in the U.S.?

This virtual event series offers tools, strategies, and perspectives to understand what is at stake in today’s struggles over life and land—and how we might enter these struggles from the other side.

Drawing lessons from The Natural History Museum’s ongoing project “We Refuse to Die,” NHM Research Director Steve Lyons explores how communities are pushing back against the dominant representation of so-called “sacrifice zones” as sites of powerlessness and victimization, metabolizing grief into collective strength and community power.

In this guest lecture at Brown University, NHM Director Beka Economopoulos links the theoretical concerns of public humanities — history and memory, museums and memorials, expertise and experience, community cultural development, and material culture — with the tactical work of an activist, museum-as-platform practice.