How can we conceptualize the relations between the land and the sea? This is the key driving question of a workshop organized by the Danish Institute for International Studies, that I am participating in on the 25th and 26th of August.

In my own contribution, I study the land-sea nexus as an example of ‘nexification’. I am interested in the sociology that drives the linkage. Broadly I distinguish three types: mergers driven by intellectual curiosity, interested in how the two hang together (largely anchored in history and anthropology), those that argue that the sea is increasingly governed by rationalities that persist on land (in international law and geography), and studies driven by policy demands, that investigate how solutions to maritime problems may be sought on land.