WRITING & SPEAKING

I have written mostly the histories of snails, deep-sea mining, and other oceanic extractive efforts during the last hundred-odd years. 

On deep seabed minerals, I have written about a deep-sea mining museum in rural Czechia, the place of the deep-sea in Singaporean future-proofing, on the links between 19th century abyssal sediments and mid-20th century economic geology, and on approaches to the study of manganese nodules as hybrid biogeological objects in large American research programming during the 1970s.

On deep seawater, I’ve written about ocean thermal energy conversion and artificial upwelling projects in the Hawaii islands and in the US Virgin Islands. 

Forthcoming writing covers subjects related to deep-sea mining and ocean governance in Norway, the architectural history of upwelling experiments, and configurations of conservation practice in Sulawesi’s ancient lakes.  

On snails, I have written about social networks and the making of ecological knowledge about tree-snails, and the kinds of possible ethics of engagement generated by molluscan species introduction and extinction in the Hawaiian Islands. 

I speak and organize panel sessions regularly on the history of oceanic environments and resource extraction, and on the contexts of invertebrate species conservation. I am also available to write book reviews, op-eds, and to consult on related concerns.

Special Collection, 2026, “Doing Ocean Governance in Archipelagic Southeast Asia.” Maritime Studies. Editors: Jonathan Galka & Laurie Bashford.

Special Issue, 2026, “Epistemic Hospitality and Anthropogenic Impacts on the Oceans: Deep-Sea Mining.” Frontiers in Marine Science. Editors: Sandor Mulsow, Jonathan Galka, Stefan Braeger.

Special Issue, 2025, “Thinking the World from the Deep Ocean: Seabed Mining Across Resource, Regulatory, and Ethical Frontiers.” Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific Special Issue XXVIII. Editors: Jonathan Galka, Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, Nabil Ahmed, and Ute Meta Bauer. Authors: Sonya Schoenberger, Diva Jain, The Deep Currents Collective, Mekhala Dave, Mae Lubetkin, Yasmin Sani, Sun Woo Yoon.
“An Ocean in Common.” LIMN (Special Issue, The Great Offshore, forthcoming).

“The Opening Process: Memory and Transition at Svalbard’s Deep-Sea Edge.” The Ocean Yearbook (Brill Nijhoff) (in review). 

“Tapping the Ocean’s Thermal Battery,” in The Built Ocean. Ed. André Tavares. (in review).

“Using Deep Seawater in St. Croix and the Oceanic Scales of Planetary History” In Planetary Waters. Eds. Fabienne Will, Katrin Kleeman, and Noemi Quagliati. (forthcoming, Bloomsbury Press).

“Deep Uncertainty: Law, Models, and Negotiating the Future Ocean in the 1970s.” In The Datafication of the Deep Sea. Eds. Susanna Lidström and Adam Wickberg. (forthcoming, Routledge). 

“Wallace’s Dreamponds: Seeing the Future in Sulawesi’s Ancient Lakes.” In Environmental Humanities in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Eds. Ruel Pagasan, Patricia Dacudao, and Anthony Medrano. (in review, University of Philippines Press).


“Waiting for Future Mineral Resources in the Singaporean Deep-Sea.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 9 (5): 1714-1734.

“Ambivalent Abundance: On Deep Hawaiian Seawater and the History of Pacific Archipelagic Futures after 1960.” Global Intellectual History, 1-25. 

E. DeLoughrey, S. Reid, G. Champion, K. Stewart, A. Limpo, J. Galka, M. Dave. “The Deep Currents Collective: A manifesto for the abyssal zones.” Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific, Special Issue XVIII.

“‘The nodules are alive and well on the sea floor’: Deep ocean minerals, intertebrate traces, and multispecies histories of abyssal environments.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 47 (18). 

*Awarded Honorable Mention for the 2026 Jacqueline Carpine-Lancre Early Career Scholars Prize in Ocean History

Galka, Jonathan M. “Bohemia at the Pacific Seabed: Archiving the Future of Deep-Sea Mining  with the Interoceanmetal Joint Organization.” Social Studies of Science (OnlineFirst). 

Galka, Jonathan. “Oceans of Ooze: Deep-sea Sedimentary Data, Mineral Resource Frontiers, and Imperial Continuities in Ocean History.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 53 (5), 481-517.

Galka, Jonathan M. “Liguus Landscapes: Amateur Ligging, Professional Malacology, and the Social Life of Snail Sciences.” Journal of the History of Biology, 55 (4), 689-723.

Galka, Jonathan M. “Mollusk Loves: Becoming with Native and Introduced Land Snails in the Hawaiian Islands.” Island Studies Journal 17(1), 102-122. 

Galka, Jonathan M & Bashford, L. “Terraforming Beautiful China: Island-Building and Chang-E Lunar Exploration in the Making of the Chinese State.” International Quarterly of Asia Studies 53(3), 385-411.

Boulicault, M., Perret, M., Galka, J., Borsa, A., Gompers, A., Reiches, M., Richardson, S. “The Future of Sperm: A biovariability framework for understanding global sperm count trends.” Human Fertility 25 (5), 888-902.

Review of Martinez-Rius, Beatriz. New Deep Territories: A Story of France’s Exploration of the Seafloor. The Ocean Yearbook (Brill Nijhoff). Forthcoming.

Review of Alaimo, Stacy. The Abyss Stares Back: Encounters with Deep-sea Life. H-Sci-Med-Tech. H-Net Reviews.

Review of Bashford, Alison, Kern, Emily M., Adam Bobbette, eds, New Earth Histories: Geo-Cosmologies and the Making of the Modern World. International Journal of Maritime History 37 (3): 567-569.

Review of Yin Han, Lisa. Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor. H-Oceans. H-Net Reviews. September 2024.

Review of Helmreich, Stefan. A Book of Waves. H-Environment. H-Net Reviews. January, 2024.

Review of Swanson, Heather Anna. Spawning Modern Fish: Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon. H-Environment. H-Net Reviews. June, 2023.

Review of Anderson, Katharine; Rozwadowski, Helen M., eds. Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea, 1800-1970. H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews. September, 2022.


with Godfrey Jordan Abage. “Deep seabed mining is back in Papua New Guinea’s Bismarck Sea. What’s new this time?” Extracting the Oceans: Scales and Eddies. February 3, 2025. 

Galka, Jonathan. “Around the World in Pursuit of (Vanishing) Sperm.” Harvard Gendersci Blog. May 4, 2021.

Galka, Jonathan. “Sex, Gender, and Deep Space: Lessons from Earthly Anxieties Reproduced Past 100 Kilometers (Or, Who Gets to Take Up Space?).” Gendersci Blog. August 25, 2020. 

Galka, J., Gompers, A., Becerra, J. “A Haunted GWAS: The Missing Historical and Social Context in the ‘Gay Gene’ Study.” Gendersci Blog. December 19, 2019.  

“Ocean History as Planetary History,” Doctoral School in Planetary History, KTH Stockholm (November 24-26, 2026). 

“Okinawan Deep Seawater, Modeling the Small Island State, and the Making of Prepackaged Futurity,” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2026 (St. Louis, MO). 

“How Deep-sea Mining Lands,” Global Port Cities, Tulane Global Humanities Center (November 9, 2026). 

““The Mines of Neptune”: Deep Seabed Mining, Ocean Territorialization, and the Undersea as Underground (1957-1982),” History of Science Society/European Society for the History of Science Joint Meeting (Edinburgh, UK).

“Common Heritage, Inc.: A Prehistory of the Placeless Ocean,” Pacific History Association Annual Conference (Apia, Samoa). December 2025.

“Historicizing Ocean Promise,” 12th International Platform on Ocean Energy for Young Researchers, Saga University Institute of Ocean Energy, (Saga, Japan). November 2025.

“Worlding from the Deep Seabed,” NTU-KCL CLASS Workshop “What is ‘Worlding’ in Biocultural Worlding?” NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (Singapore). September 2025.  

“Tapping the Ocean’s Thermal Battery: On the Histories of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion’s Futures,” The Built Ocean, European Architectural History Network Annual Conference (Porto, Portugal). September 2025.

“‘An Artificial Environment: Harnessing the Promise of Deep Seawater in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands (1960s-1980s),” International Congress of History of Science & Technology (Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand). July 2025. 

“Wallace’s Dreamponds: Seeing the Future in Sulawesi’s Ancient Lakes,” Environmental Humanities in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, Ateneo de Manila University (Manila, Philippines). May 2025. 

“Ambivalent Abundance: On Deep Pacific Seawater and the History of Archipelagic Futures,” Reimagining the Pacific, Institute for Advanced Global Studies, University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan). March 2025. 

Guest Speaker, “Unearthing the "Blue Frontier": The ISA's New Mining Code and the Future of Deep-Sea Mining,” Climate Transformation: Sustainable Societies Lecture Series, Climate Transformation Programme, NTU, Singapore. December 2024.

“The Future of ‘Wallace’s Dreamponds’: Configurations of Conservation Practice in Sulawesi’s Ancient Lakes,” Biodiversity in Southeast Asian Freshwaters, NUS Asia Research Institute, November 2024.

“The Nodules Are Alive and Well': Benthic Biota, Mineral Resources, and Multispecies Histories of the Abyssal Seabed” 4th World Congress of Environmental History Meeting (Oulu, Finland), August 2024.

“Deep-sea Sedimentary Taxonomies, Technologies of Abundance, and the Logics of Resource Transitions,” SHOT-ICOHTEC Joint Meeting (Viña del Mar, Chile), July 2024.

“Mineral Dreams: Manganese Nodules & Anticolonial Worldmaking at Sea.” Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Oceans Working Group, May 21, 2024.

“The Work of Waiting for the Future in the Singaporean Deep-sea.” Critical Minerals in/as Context. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, May 2024. 

“The Rocks are Alive and Well: Mineral Resources, Deep Ocean Life, and the History of Extraction at Sea.” Department of History, National University of Singapore, April 2024.

“Political Rocks in the Wild Blue Yonder: Manganese Nodules, Comparison, and Making Ocean Resource Economics,” American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting (virtual), Denver, CO, March 2024.

Panel: “Speculative Practices in the Making of Deep-Ocean Frontiers.” Co-organizer: Giulia Champion. American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, March 2024.

Panel: “Oceans: Matter, Method, Meaning.” Co-organizers: Meghan Shea & Ned Molder. Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Honolulu, HI, November 11, 2023.

Panel: “When Species Travel: More-than-human ways of belonging in the Patchy Pacific.” Co-organizer: Anthony Medrano. Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Honolulu, HI, November 11, 2023.

“The Nodules Are Alive and Well”: Benthic Biota, Mineral Resources, and Multispecies Histories of the Abyssal Seabed,” Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Honolulu, HI, November 11, 2023.

“Dreissenid Dreaming: Biological invasion, technoscience, and mapping entanglements with mussels,” Learning from Aliens, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, May 2023. 

“Microbial Mattering and the US Manganese Nodule Program, 1970s-1980s,” American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, March 2022. 

Panel: “Marine Science and Sustainability.” Co-organizer: Aaron Van Neste. American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, March 2022.

“Seabed Topologies: Singapore, Nauru, and the Storage of Meaning in Deep Ocean Land,” Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Cholula, Mexico, December 2022.

Panel: “Storage: Infrastructures, Politics, Imaginaries.” Co-organizer: Caroline White-Nockleby. Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Cholula, Mexico, December 2022.

“Empire & Ooze: HMS Challenger, Pelagic Sediments, and the Production of Resource Frontiers from the Deep Ocean,” Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, Lisbon, Portugal (remote), July 2022. 

“Dreissenid Dreaming: On Bivalved Molluscan Entanglements,” Meaning in Evolution and Ecology working group, Yale University, New Haven, CT, May 2021.; Animal Studies Circle, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, May 2021. 

“Mussels, Modernity, and the Mobilization of Invertebrate Sensation,” Joint-Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology, Philadelphia, PA (remote), April 2021. 

“Terraforming Beautiful China: Island-Building and Chang’E Lunar Exploration in the Making of the Chinese State,” Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Prague, Czechia (remote), August 2020.