Eighth session of the 2024-2025 CEFRES Francophone
Interdisciplinary Seminar The Map and the Border
In 2023 we started questionning the very act of bordering and representing (a territory, a period, a trajectory). In short, thanks to the interdisciplinarity of our respective disciplines, we began inquiring into the question of the map and the border.

Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Date: Friday May 23, 2025, from 10 am
Language: French

Speaker: Gilles LEPESANT (CEFRES / CNRS)
Discussant: tba

Abstract

Energetical systems obey a certain form of cartography that reflects material flows (gas, crude oil, coal or uranium extracted from deposits more or less distant to be transformed near places of consumption) and territories (those of the nation-states), governed by political principles and economic specificities. The European integration process and the deployment of intermittent energies initiated a reconfiguration of flows as well as a devaluation of member-states’ borders. Europe’s dependence on distant deposits still persists, but new sources of supply are gaining importance, as shown by the role now given to so-called critical minerals. In the European area, a new configuration of markets, networks, flows and production centers is taking shape, imposed by the stakes involved: security issues, the evolution of European integration, and the technical specificities of intermittent energies. Hence, a new cartography of energy is emerging, and drawing borders is once again a controversial exercise with strong symbolic consequences.

The seminary aims to discuss this new cartography by confronting it with the conclusions of the works produced in the field of energetical geography since the 1950s.

Two articles are available for our consideration and discussion:

 2025-05-23 From ‘energy geography’ to ‘energy geographies.pdf

 2025-05-23 Geographers in the field of energy and society.pdf

See the complete program of the 2024-2025 seminar here.