Dr Gareth Hoskins

Human Geography at Aberystwyth University PhD (Angel Island ImmigrationStation, San Francisco)

Dr Gareth Hoskins

Senior Lecturer

Department of Geography and Earth Sciences

Contact Details

Gareth Hoskins is a lecturer in Geography at Aberystwyth University where he teaches and researches on a variety of topics including urban geography, the politics of memory, the politics of mobility, environmental history, and material culture. His PhD research on Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco was completed while based in the Geography Department of University of California, Berkeley. Since then Gareth has published numerous academic articles, book chapters, and magazine articles on heritage operations in the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa. He was principal investigator on a 2-year international study of mining-related heritage sites funded by the AHRC and has recently completed an AHRC-funded comparative study on the logics and protocols involved in listing, landmarking, and designation by UK and US state agencies. Gareth is also involved in community-led local heritage initiatives in mid Wales, particularly those relating to lead-mining in the Cwm Rheidol Valley where he lives.

Thinking about now...

Global Political Ecology of Mining & Visuality - on reciprocity of resource extraction & photography, cultures of earth seeing, sensing & relating materialisms.

Colonising the cosmos - on & beyond earth humanities. Solar system settlement, spaceship-ark, new archiving of the geo (global seed bank, future proofing), the meme of species immortality, future heritage, value, uncanny cosmo-politics, corporeal anxiety, space germ quarantine.

Geological mobilities - on agency, vitality, temporality, self-organizing landslides eg. The Ferguson Slide Mariposa County California moving since 2006, Sailing stones of Death Valley – their tracking, mapping, and tagging by scientists.

Historical geographies of outer space - on-earth encounters with non-earth matter. Social & cultural histories of meteorites, asteroids & craters. Outer-space as spectacle, as everyday mundane eg. space dust.

Done recently…

Gold vs. Grain? The Ancillary Ecologies of Hydraulic Mining paper delivered at International Conference of Historical Geographers Dark light & diamonds: X-rays as a geological visuality' at the Visuality, Materiality & Mining Symposium, University of Brighton.

'The integrity of feeling on the emotional production of historic places in the United States' at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference

Keynote paper at the Quarantine Conference in Sidney Australia titled The Seduction of Interruption on our persistent love affair with un-fulfillment. Banjo-accompanied talk People Like Us on the pasts & presents of hydraulic mining as part of Aberystwyth's 'Stories by Gaslight' series.

AHRC research comparing definitions & applications of value in UK & US historical preservation.

Commentary on industrial heritage & contemporary environmental & social justice for Planet Magazine.

AHRC research on Geological Narratives of diamond mining in Kimberley South Africa at the University of Thessaloniki, in...

Archives of bombardment: terrestrial impact craters as sites of orientation. / Hoskins, Gareth.
In: Geographical Research, 19.02.2026.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Commemorating Picton in Wales and Trinidad: Colonial legacies and the production of memorial publics. / Hoskins, Gareth; James, Leighton.
In: Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 83, 31.03.2024, p. 68-79.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Terrestrial impact craters as sites of geo-political colonial relation: Terrestrial impact craters as sites of geo-political colonial relation. / Hoskins, Gareth.
2024. Paper presented at Subterranean Forces, Leeds , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper

Toxic legacies of slickens in California: A mobile heritage of hydraulic mining debris. / Hoskins, Gareth.
Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice. ed. / Elizabeth Kryder-Reid; Sarah May. Taylor & Francis, 2023. p. 9-22 (Key Issues in Cultural Heritage).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Wind. / Hoskins, Gareth.
The Encyclopedia of Mobilities: The Encyclopedia of Mobilities. ed. / Peter Adey; Kaya Barry. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary

More publications on the Research Portal