WRITING & SPEAKING

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 have also written about a deep-sea mining museum in rural Czechia, and on the links between 19th century abyssal sediments and mid-20th century economic geology. An article outlining a multispecies approach to the history of deep-ocean environments, and a chapter exploring debates over mathematical modeling between miners and politicians, are presently under review. 

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.

Galka, Jonathan M. “Deep Uncertainty: Law, Models, and Negotiating the Future Ocean in the 1970s.”

Galka, Jonathan M. “‘The Nodules are Alive and Well on the Sea Floor’: Deep Ocean Minerals, Invertebrate Traces, and Multispecies Histories of Abyssal Environments.”

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 (Forthcoming, December 2024).


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 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.


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.  

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. 

“‘Securing the Habitat’:On Critical Endangerment in an Ancient Lake,” Environmental Humanities in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, April 2025. 

“Deep Flow: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and Archipelagic Histories of the Future after Empire,” Reimagining the Pacific, Institute for Advanced Global Studies, University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan), March 2025; International Congress of History of Science & Technology (Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand), June 2025. 

“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.