Seana Irvine
I am pursuing my PhD in Interdisciplinary Social Research at Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario) where I’m exploring how post-industrial landscapes can be repurposed to create more inclusive cities. I'm interested in understanding how the redevelopment and transformation of formerly industrial landscapes into cultural and economic hubs can be undertaken in ways that advance a public agenda of social inclusion and economic opportunity. Throughout my career, I've focused on community-based, participatory design and engagement processes, leading low carbon redevelopments, launching social enterprises and strengthening social innovation networks from the local to the international while serving in executive positions for entrepreneurial not-for-profit organizations. Much of my career involved the adaptive reuse of Toronto’s Don Valley Brick Works from an abandoned brick factory and brownfield, into a LEED platinum, award winning showcase for innovation and sustainability. As one of the project’s founding team members, I developed the original visitor program and interpretation experiences that celebrated the site’s industrial and ecological heritage, highlighted worker stories and engaged visitors in tangible environmental actions that create healthier cities.
Sessions in which Seana Irvine attends
Sunday 28 August, 2022
You are invited to the McGill-Queen’s University Press book launch of “Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence and Class” on Sunday August 28th (1-3pm) at Batiment 7’s
Join the conference organisers and TICCIH board members for a welcome cocktail and some festive words of introduction, in the former forge of the École technique de Montréal, founded in 1909, now part of the Université du Québec à Montréal campus.
Monday 29 August, 2022
This session presents case studies and policy reviews that contribute to ongoing debate and international dialogue on the role of planning systems and conservation practices in addressing the challenges of citizen engagement—conserving local interests, place attachments alongside physical remnants of industrial heritage. Over the past half century, we have witnessed the development and changing focuses of urban planning and conservation discourses addressing industrial heritage. Relevant p...
This session presents case studies and policy reviews that contribute to ongoing debate and international dialogue on the role of planning systems and conservation practices in addressing the challenges of citizen engagement—conserving local interests, place attachments alongside physical remnants of industrial heritage. Over the past half century, we have witnessed the development and changing focuses of urban planning and conservation discourses addressing industrial heritage. Relevant p...
Si la vallée du canal de Lachine a été le berceau de l’industrialisation canadienne, la géographie industrielle métropolitaine ne s’y est pas confinée, peu s’en faut, Outre les grandes concentrations d’entreprises des quartiers centraux, elle est constituée des réseaux infrastructuraux, d’une douzaine de centrales hydroélectriques et des ensembles manufacturiers disséminés dans une quinzaine de petites villes aujourd’hui intégrées dans l’aire métropolitaine. La conférence proposera un surv...
Tuesday 30 August, 2022
This session focuses on company towns from the perspective of urban planning. “Company towns” are here defined as single-enterprise planned communities, usually centered around a single industry, where a company commissions an urban plan, builds housing for its workers, and sets up recreational, commercial, institutional or community facilities. While these are now endangered by a second wave of deindustrialization, we observe that, aside studies or monographs of individual towns that popu...
Community lies at the heart of the processes of industrialization and de-industrialization. From labor to landscapes and from social fabric to ecological communities, scholars regularly examined the industrial community as core to industrial heritage. However, while social scientists have long studied industrial communities, only recently has there been a general consensus of respecting and working with communities themselves. Even so, working “with” a community on industrial heritage has ...
During this lunch break, you can come and discuss with the author about his most recent book.This is happening at the DePOT Table in the main hall of the conference. DePOT refers to the group "Deindustrialization and the Politics or our Time"; DePOT examines the historical roots and lived experience of deindustrialisation as well as the political responses to it. It is a SSHRC Partnership project consisting of 33 partner organizations and 24 co-applicants and collaborators from six ...
Efforts to preserve industrial heritage occurs in a socio-economic and political context. But what is being preserved and for whom? And, relatedly, what is the relationship between industrial heritage sites and the deindustrialized working-class communities that often adjoin them? The keynote will consider the ways that the preservation of Montreal’s Lachine Canal, Canada’s premier industrial heritage site, has enabled gentrification processes that have forc...
Wednesday 31 August, 2022
This tour offers an excursion on a privatized deck of Montreal's bateau-mouche; a playful guided tour that takes in some of the city's industrial landmarks from the St. Lawrence River.The tour is priced to cover additional costs; the fee includes access to the bateau-mouche, the tour and a drink.Departure will be on foot from the conference venue; boarding is at 3:45 p.m. at the l...
In this lecture, I would like to talk about deindustrialised communities, heritage and memory in the context of right-wing populism. Drawing on studies of memory and heritage, I argue that right-wing populists have cornered the market on talking about the past of deindustrialised communities. They have successfully misrepresented this rich and complex history to fuel rage, resentment, fear and reactionary nostalgia. Indeed, ‘the past’, and in particular the industr...
Thursday 1 September, 2022
This lecture will argue that the landscapes of industrial heritage that can be found in different parts of the world are directly related to the place-specific trajectories of deindustrialization. In other words: the different ways in which deindustrialization impacts on local communities has a direct bearing on the emergence of forms of industrial heritage. I will differentialte between deindustrialization paths and related industrial heritage regimes in a) Anglo-...
Friday 2 September, 2022
In the refusal of people in communities abandoned by industrial capital to abandon their own places, we can read an implicit critique of the mobility and unaccountability of capital, raised by those who were once inside (however tenuously or uncomfortably) and now find themselves marginalized, “left behind.” The desire to catch up again, whether through attracting new investment or transvaluing abandoned sites as tourist attractions, makes this an essentially conservative critique that is ...
