Aeromobilities in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic
in TransfersSearch for other papers by Weiqiang Lin in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
All currencies in US Dollar
Abstract
This Perspective piece marks the ten-year anniversary of Transfers’ life as a journal and its contributions to aeromobilities research. Reflecting on my own past decade learning and writing about aeromobilities, the article takes stock of some significant threads in the field, before charting out three key future directions for aeromobilities research prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and health crisis. Without prejudice to existing scholarly threads, the article discusses the burgeoning salience of new (aero)mobility injustices, automation, and aerial (in)civilities, amid an aviation industry struggling to reboot itself. The next ten years present enduring possibilities for aeromobilities inquiries, and the article hopes to inspire future thinking on the subject as societies connect again through aviation.
Contributor Notes
Weiqiang Lin is assistant professor at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. His work lies at the intersection of mobilities (particularly aeromobilities) and the infrastructures of moving. In particular, his writings seek to open up the cultural politics of mobilities production (e.g., norms, laws, STS, technologies, affects), charting through the creation of a variety of artifacts and regimes. His recent research includes the production of airspaces in Southeast Asia; discursive and technological framings of air logistics in Singapore and China, as well as labor and automation in four of Asia's biggest international airports. He is the Ideas in Motion editor for Transfers since 2019. Email: weiqiang@nus.edu.sg