Wired Open Country: the intersection of empire and telecommunications infrastructure in Australia

Annie is a PhD Student in the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, and is the second of the 4 RGSSA Library Research Fellows for 2026

This presentation introduces Annie’s PhD research, which examines the relationship between telecommunications infrastructure and imperial power in Australia. 

The project seeks to articulate how imperial logics of expansion, consolidation, exploitation, and control are embedded within telecommunications infrastructural technes, and how these logics continue to reproduce the dynamics and relations that characterise exploitative relationships between a metropole and its colonies. The analysis proceeds through three case-study periods: the Overland Telegraph of the late nineteenth century, the mid-twentieth-century expansion of coaxial telephony, and the emergence of internet and AI infrastructures in the twenty-first century.

Annie Burrett is an urban geographer and first-year PhD student in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney. Her PhD research forms part of the ARC Discovery Project Wiring Australian Cities: Making Space for Telecommunications, which brings together academics from the University of Sydney and UNSW. Prior to commencing her PhD, Annie completed her Honours thesis at UNSW, examining the governance of the Western Sydney Parklands and the implications of parkland privatisation and development for environmental justice. Presentations arising from this research received awards from the Institute of Australian Geographers (2025) and the Royal Geographical Society of NSW’s Very Early Career Researchers Assembly (2025), and a manuscript is currently in preparation for submission to Australian Geographer. Annie’s research is grounded in a strong environmental justice ethic and a commitment to interrogating the taken-for-granted narratives that shape urban spaces.