The New Hinterlands: Infrastructure, Precarity and Southeast Asia
Professor Timothy Oakes explores infrastructure, migration, precarity and urban change in Southeast Asia through China’s investment corridors and Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor.
The New Hinterlands: Infrastructure, Precarity and Southeast Asia
17 Jun 2026, 16:00 – 18:00
Professor Timothy Oakes joins the UCL Department of Geography for a seminar exploring how infrastructure, mobility and global investment are reshaping everyday life in Southeast Asia.
Focusing on Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor and wider Chinese investment landscapes, this talk examines how new infrastructures create uncertain spaces between rural and urban life, agriculture and industry, permanence and precarity.
Free public seminar at UCL Geography
Join Professor Timothy Oakes for a seminar exploring infrastructure, precarity and urban transformation in Southeast Asia. The event takes place on Wednesday 17 June 2026, 4–6pm, in G01 Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0NN. Free and open to all. No booking required.View more events from the UCL Department of Geography
View more events from the UCL Department of GeographyAbout the seminar
Across Southeast Asia, large-scale infrastructure corridors and development zones are transforming landscapes, livelihoods and communities.
In this seminar, Professor Timothy Oakes explores how these new infrastructural spaces create what he describes as “new hinterlands”, places suspended between rural and urban worlds, where people navigate unstable forms of work, mobility and belonging.
Drawing on research in Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), the talk examines how roads, logistics hubs and industrial developments reshape everyday social life. While these infrastructures are designed to facilitate movement, investment and global supply chains, they also create interstitial landscapes where residents must continually adapt to uncertainty and temporary opportunities.
The seminar will discuss:
- infrastructure and urbanisation in Southeast Asia
- Chinese investment and regional development
- migration, mobility and precarity
- youth, creativity and social connection
- the social geography of economic corridors
- rural–urban transformation and everyday life
This event will be of interest to researchers and students working across urban geography, development studies, political ecology, migration, infrastructure studies and Southeast Asian studies.
Within spaces meant to facilitate movement, how do connective infrastructures produce interstitial and contingent landscapes of settling?
Timothy Oakes is a cultural and political geographer, working at the University of Colorado. His research focuses on development, urbanisation, infrastructure and mobility in China and Southeast Asia.
His work explores how large-scale economic transformations shape everyday social life, identity and place-making. He has published extensively on infrastructure, regional development and cultural politics across Asia.
This seminar is relevant to:
- undergraduate and postgraduate students
- researchers in geography and urban studies
- policymakers and practitioners
- those interested in Southeast Asia and development
- audiences working on migration, infrastructure and inequality
The event particularly complements teaching and research in:
- urban studies
- political geography
- development geography
- migration studies
- infrastructure studies
- Asian studies
The event will take place in G01 Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0NN.
If you have accessibility requirements or questions about the venue, please contact the organiser in advance.
Dr Arabindoo researches urban transformation, infrastructure and environmental change, with interests spanning urban political ecology, waste, cities and the Anthropocene.
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Further information
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes