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Dr. Theo Aalders

Postdoc Researcher

Research

Theo Aalders is a Postdoctoral fellow at Bonn University, Department of Geography. As part of his work for the Collaborative Research Centre “Future Rural Africa” he studies geographies of the future of unbuilt and unfinished hydropower projects in East Africa. He collaborates with artists and local communities to create collaborative comics and art works as a methodological entry point to researching futures.

Research Areas

  • Future-Making

  • Unfinished Infrastructure Projects

  • Infrastructure Sabotage

  • Labour

  • Collaborative Visual Methods

  • Comics

  • East Africa

Avatar Aalders

Dr. Johannes Theodor Aalders

RG Müller-Mahn

+49 228 73-3852

1.007

Geozentrum - Meckenheimer Allee 176

53115 Bonn

© Friederike Pauk /GIUB

CRC228 - Project C03: "Green Futures"

Consultation hours

By arrangement

Publications

Rieber, A., Aalders, J.T., Munene, K. (2025). Displaced futures or futures in displacement? Anticipations around the proposed High Grand Falls Dam in Kenya. Futures (166). Link1

Aalders, J.T., Müller-Mahn, D. (2025). The hard work of future-making: alienated futures, invisible labour and liberation. Territory, Politics, Governance, 1–18. Link2

Rieber, A., Kioko, E. M. & Aalders, T., (2025) “The non-economy of anticipation in the construction phase of large dams”, Journal of Political Ecology 32(1): 6117. Link3

Aalders, J. T., & Monson, K. (2022). Research With the Moving, the Vivacious Many: A Practical Poetry Of Paces In More-Than-Human Worlds. ACME, 21(2), 205–225. 

Aalders, J. T., Bachmann, J., Knutsson, P., & Musembi Kilaka, B. (2021). The Making and Unmaking of a Megaproject: Contesting Temporalities along the LAPSSET Corridor in Kenya. Antipode, 53(5), 1273–1293. Link4

Aalders, J. T., Moraa, A., Oluoch-olunya, N. A., & Muli, D. (2020). Drawing together: Making Marginal Futures Visible through Collaborative Comic Creation (CCC). Geographica Helvetica, 75, 415–430. Link5

Aalders, J. T. (2020a). Building on the Ruins of Empire: The Uganda Railway and the LAPSSET Corridor in Kenya. Third World Quarterly. Link6

Aalders, J. T. (2020b). Ghostlines: Movements, Anticipations, and Drawings of the LAPSSET Development Corridor in Kenya [Gothenburg University]. Link7

Aalders, J. T. (2018). The scale of risk: Conceptualising and analysing the politics of sacrifice scales in the case of informal settlements at urban rivers in Nairobi. Erdkunde, 72(2), 91–101. Link8

Brink, E., Aalders, T., Ádám, D., Feller, R., Henselek, Y., Hoffmann, A., Ibe, K., Matthey-Doret, A., Meyer, M., Negrut, N. L., Rau, A. L., Riewerts, B., von Schuckmann, L., Törnros, S., von Wehrden, H., Abson, D. J., & Wamsler, C. (2016). Cascades of green: A review of ecosystem-based adaptation in urban areas. Global Environmental Change, 36, 111–123. Link9

Links

  1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2024.103530
  2. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2024.2438844
  3. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.6117
  4. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12720
  5. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-75-415-2020
  6. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2020.1741345
  7. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.11706.62409
  8. https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2018.02.02
  9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.11.003