Our Work.Deep Currents Collective promotes the international ocean and seabed as a common heritage for all-kind and contest governance regimes and activities that pose cultural and ecological threats to these realms. We work to redress the absence of diverse voices, cultural knowledges and values within the International Seabed Authority and other ocean governance institutions. We engage alternative approaches towards more ecologically and culturally generative deep ocean futures.
We raise awareness of the cultural, legal, social and ecological implications of deep-sea mining and other extractive industries. We do this through academic and policy research, publications and conferences, producing critical cultural interventions, events, and thematic working groups, participation in international alliances and campaigns, and via consultation with non-governmental organisations and regional grassroots initiatives. |
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Interdisciplinary Expertise
Our collective expertise encompasses international law of the sea, science and technology studies, history, critical cultural studies, art and community engagement, social sciences, and critical ocean studies. We understand how global, national and local codes of governance, regulatory regimes and infrastructures operate. Our work generates unique insights into the legal, cultural, scientific and political trajectories of deep-sea mining and other marine resource sectors. We identify the gaps in critical cultural engagement within ocean governance. To bridge these, we facilitate dialogue across stakeholders, civil society, scientific experts, cultural practitioners, and member states of the ISA. |
At the International Seabed Authority
The Deep Currents Collective is an accredited Observer at the International Seabed Authority. We promote the role of cultural advocacy in bridging legal, scientific, technological and socio-cultural fields. We advocate for ocean governance approaches that platform diverse cultural knowledges and voices and which respond ethically to the urgent environmental issues of our time. Contributions to the ISA's Regulatory Framework
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Observers at ISA29, 2024. Image credit: ISA
Publications
Deep Currents Collective
An Abyssal Conversation. The Deep Currents Collective [Special Issue: Thinking the World from the Deep Ocean: Seabed Mining Across Resource, Regulatory and Ethical Frontiers]. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific (CLJP), 2025.
Dr Giulia Champion
Dr Mekhala Dave
Dr Jonathan Galka
Alejandro Limpo González
Dr Susan Reid
Deep Currents Collective
An Abyssal Conversation. The Deep Currents Collective [Special Issue: Thinking the World from the Deep Ocean: Seabed Mining Across Resource, Regulatory and Ethical Frontiers]. Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific (CLJP), 2025.
Dr Giulia Champion
- Can we envision decarbonisation beyond extraction? Challenging claims of a ‘just' energy transition from the seabed.
- “Other(ed)” Ocean Knowledges: Unlearning Integration in Ocean Governance for Recognitional Justice.
- Co-authored: A transdisciplinary co-conceptualisation of marine identity.
- Co-authored: “Marine art deepens our understanding of the oceans – here’s how it has evolved through the centuries”.
Dr Mekhala Dave
- “The Queer Ocean: Obfuscating Territorial Zones,” with Mae Lubetkin, Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific (Special Issue: Thinking the World from the Deep Ocean), 2025.
- The Case for Deep Sea Rights: A Path to Equitable and Sustainable Ocean Stewardship – A Manifesto, with Emma Critchley and Pradeep Arjan Singh, Science Gallery London / Resurgence & Ecologist, 2025.
- “Undulating Currents: A Group Show – An Analysis into the Curatorial Process,” OnCurating 59, 2025.
- Contributions to Yearbook on the Law of the Sea, Vols. 1–4, LuglioEditore/ASCOMARE.
- “The Migrant Crisis: Art’s Approach to Legal Policies,”inSynergiesBetweenInternational and Constitutional Law: Theory and Culture, CEPC, 2021.
- Critical Zones: Observatory for Earthly Politics, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien / MIT Press, 2020.
Dr Jonathan Galka
- "The Nodules are Alive and Well on the Sea Floor’: Deep Ocean Minerals, Invertebrate Traces, and Multispecies Histories of Abyssal Environments.”HistoryandPhilosophyofthe Life Sciences 2025: 47 (18).
- “Bohemia at the Pacific Seabed: Archiving the Future of Deep-Sea Mining with the Interoceanmetal Joint Organization.” Social Studies of Science 2024: 54 (5), 678-705.
- “Oceans of Ooze: Deep-sea Sedimentary Data, Mineral Resource Frontiers, and Imperial Continuities in Ocean History.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 2023:53(5).
Alejandro Limpo González
- “Haunted Wire / Haunter Mineral,” Video Art (8 min, double screen), Ocean Matters Studio (Alejandro Limpo and Lilly Mc Craith). Commissioned by the Structures of Haunting workshop at the 38th edition of transmediale festival, (near) near but — far, Berlin, 2025.
- Limpo, Alejandro et al. “Fluid states of matter and meaning. Anarchiving the Oceanic.” Holotipus Journal. Special Issue Archiving the Anthropocene: New Taxonomies Between Art and Science, edited by Cristina Baldacci & Emiliano Guaraldo, 2024.
- “Ocean Sensing: Anthropological Reflections on a Field Trip to Studland Bay Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ).” Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute Blog.
- “Material Culture.” In the Glossary of Philosophy of Technology, edited by Agustin Berti, Diego Parente, and Claudio Celis. Buenos Aires: Editorial La Cebra, 2022.
- Surface tension. Clouds, waves, noise and other medial figures of maritime surveillance. kult-ur, 10 (20).
Dr Susan Reid
- Current legal frameworks can’t protect the oceans from deep-sea mining.
- Multibeing Ocean; Ocean Justice: Reckoning with Material Vulnerability.
- Imagining Justice with the Abyssal Ocean.
- Solwara 1 and the Sessile Ones.
- Taking Code to Sea.
- Transitioning Currents in Times of Climate Change.
- Co-authored: New Mineral Collective: The Pleasure Report and Multibeing Drag Rift.
- Co-edited Book: Feminist, Queer, Anticolonial Propositions for Hacking the Anthropocene: Archive.