The Anthropocene Sediment Network Conference 2025
18th June 2025
The 2025 ASN Conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and creative thinkers from across many fields, with sediment in common.
We explored materials and their motion on Earth, through an interdisciplinary lens.
CLICK HERE to watch presentations from the Anthropocene Sediment Network Conference 2025!
Today’s sediment doesn’t just route through natural systems, but also engineered channels, infrastructures, economies, and legislation. We have entangled the physical matter of the Anthropocene with social, political, and novel ecological forces, shaping new patterns of erosion, transport, deposition, and legacy.
The Anthropocene Sediment Network (ASN) exists to explore this expanded understanding of sediment. Founded to support open, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary exchange, the ASN is a space for anyone working with materials and processes that are human made or impacted. If you are modelling particle flows, urban flows, designing restoration systems, or reimagining the sedimentary archive in any way, the ASN is for you.
The 2025 ASN Conference brings together researchers, practitioners, and creative thinkers from across many fields, spanning environments from coasts and rivers to engineered environments such as dams, reservoirs, and mines. Across 26 presentations, we will address materials ranging from plastiglomerates to industrial minerals, and explore how it is made, moved, altered, and remembered through scientific, historical, artistic, environmental, architectural, and ethical lenses.
All times are listed in UK London time (BST / UTC+1)
Conference Programme
Note: presentations below are shared at the speakers discretion.
09:30 Introduction to the Anthropocene Sediment Network
Catherine Russell, Loughborough University
09:45 How Sand Mining Reshapes River Beds and Affects Water Flow on the Mekong River
Chris Hackney, Newcastle University
10:00 Shaping the Land: How Centuries of Mining Altered England’s Landscape
Bryony Reynolds, JNP group
10:15 I was born next to a hole – Artistic Research in the Central German Lignite Mining District
Frida Teller, Artistic Researcher
10:30 Anthropogenic sediments and their role in coastal subsidence
Kay Koster, TNO Geological Survey of the Netherlands
10:45 – 11:00 BREAK
11:00 Sediments of the “old oceans”
Christoph Rosol, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
11:15 A Sublime Blunder: anthropogenic grains composing the Leslie Spit, Ontario, Canada
Rachel Rozanski, Concordia University
11:30 Rethinking Earth Surface Processes in the Age of Plastic-Rich Sediments
Eun Young Lee, Department of Geology, University of Vienna
11:45 Geomorphic characteristics of eroding anthropogenic coastlines
Billy Arthur Newman, Queen Mary University of London
12:00 – 12:15 BREAK
12:15 Tumbled, Rolled, and Buried: plastic debris incorporated into shoreline grasses
Patricia Corcoran, University of Western Ontario
12:30 Searching for Microplastics in Coastal Environments: Leaky Lagoons and Sticky Shorelines
William Bailey, University of Texas at Austin, Jackson School of Geosciences
12:45 Dam Construction Interrupts Channel-Floodplain Processes in Andean Foreland Rivers
Muriel Brückner, Louisiana State University
13:00 Shaping Rivers: Dredge Placement Sites along the Upper Mississippi
Elaine T. Stokes, DDes, Rhode Island School of Design
13:15 – 14:15 LUNCH BREAK
14:15 “Plastic Frankenrocks”? – Plastiglomerates and other types of rock-like plastic pollution in coastal ecosystems
Lars Reuning, CAU Kiel University
14:30 Against the force of gravity: the movement of materials from deep strata to surface through human actions
Matthew Edgeworth, University of Leicester
14:45 Minewastes – a range of metalliferous Anthropocene sediments
Gawen R. T. Jenkin, Centre for Sustainable Resource Extraction, University of Leicester
15:00 Reverse Alchemy
Jessica Segall, Artist
15:15 – 15:30 BREAK
15:30 Evidence for a rapid anthropoclastic rock cycle
Amanda Owen, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow
15:45 How Anthropogenic Sediments turn into Rocks
John MacDonald, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow
16:00 Affective Gradualism: Tracing Continuities Across Time, Uncovering Ethical Treasures
Daniel Allen Solomon, De Anza College
16:15 Anthropocene Indicators in the Arabian Gulf: Plastiglomerates and Pyroplastics on a Sea Turtle Nesting Beach
Kannaiyan Neelavannan, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
16:30 – 16:45 BREAK
16:45 The sedimentological consequence of the Glen Canyon Dam “Experiment”
Cari Johnson, University of Utah
17:00 Humankinds’ legacy in flood deposits – Anthropogenic markers in recent flood deposits downstream of Vienna
Diana Hatzenbühler, Department of Geology, University of Vienna
17:15 Trash Detection to Track Waste Pathways into Storm Drain Systems
Matthew Brand, Louisiana State University
17:30 Thin Natures, Speculative Cores, and Rumors of The Regenerative Turn
Dev Harlan, Columbia University
Thank you again to all our speakers!
Any questions, please e-mail c.russell@lboro.ac.uk
The Anthropocene Sediment Network 