In the spotlightTristan Sturm
What were your first thoughts when you saw the call for applications for the fellowship?
My first thought was I need to be a part of this centre, whether as a fellow or as a collaborator. Indeed, Andy Crome (Manchester Metropolitan University) and I wrote a grant with CAPAS on the topic of “Popular COVID Apocalypses” just after the centre was announced.
What does the apocalypse and/or post-apocalypse mean for you?
That as geographers, we need to move from thinking of the apocalypse as a global event to thinking of apocalypse as a regional, local, and even personal emergence, one that is taking place in some places right now, or has already taken place. As Margaret Atwood once said, “It’s the end of the world every day, for someone” and I would add, somewhere.
What was your fellowship trying to achieve, which questions was it addressing, and with which methods?
I spent my fellowship working on a book. This book is a decade-long ethnographic study of American Christian Zionist pilgrims whose religious (Jewish-Christian) and national (American-Israeli) identities are formulated through an expectation of an apocalyptic future. This is a future that finds expression in landscape pilgrimage sites in Israel and Palestine. The principle contribution to the study of Christian Zionism is the application of both a geographical perspective and recent futures theories. The book interrogates landscapes of the future: an anticipation of an emergent future that is imagined by American Christian Zionists in Israel and Palestine and how this future is made possible through the visible construction of past territorial claims of lived, ritualized, and administered space from the perspective of landscape lookouts.
How does/did the fellowship project build on or connect to your previous career or biography?
I’ve studied the apocalypse—whether Christian Zionist, climate related, or conspiratorial—since my Master’s degree. I think I’m the only Geographer who claims to be a scholar of the apocalypse.
What do you take with you from the project and its results?
In addition to working on the book above, I managed to finish the book Apocalyptic Conspiracism (co-authored with Tom Albrecht), which is coming out with Bloomsbury in November 2024. I also nearly completed The Bloomsbury Handbook of Millennialism and Apocalypticism (Bloomsbury 2025), in which several important contributions were made by CAPAS staff and fellows.
What was particularly valuable for you at CAPAS?
The silos our universities and disciplines re-enforce are not productive. CAPAS was an incredible opportunity to challenge those boundaries and hear how other disciplines think about apocalypse. As a result, the CAPAS fellowship has been invaluable and rewarding.
To get some practical advice: What would be the three things you would definitely need in a post-apocalyptic world?
To paraphrase Douglas Adams [a british writer and author best known for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”], you only need one thing: a towel.
What are some of your favourite pop culture references to the/an (post)apocalypse?
I have two quotes: “Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come” by Haruki Murakami and “The End is really fucking Nigh”, a graffiti from the opening scene of 28 Days Later.
My favorite apocalyptic movie is tough, there are so many good ones… Children of Men, Melancholia, Take Shelter, but I would pick the film Save the Green Planet!, a 2003 Korean film directed by Jang Joon-Hwan. It is wild fun. I can’t write about it here, I would ruin it for those who haven’t seen it.
My favorite apocalyptic song is equally difficult. “We will become Silhouettes” by Postal service and “Star Eater” by Daniel Deluxe come to mind. But the one I would pick is “Forever Young” by Alphaville. Forever Young is primarily about growing up carrying the anxiety of Mutually Assured Destruction during of the Cold War in the 1980’s: “Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for awhile. Heaven can wait, we’re only watching the skies. Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. Are you going to drop the bomb or not?”
Tristan Sturm is Associate Professor of Geography at Queen’s University Belfast since 2015. He researches apocalyptic thought related to climate change, conspiracies, and religious movements in the USA and Israel/Palestine as well as critical health geopolitics. He was a fellow at CAPAS from April to July 2024.
