Losing a Whole Generation

Losing a Whole Generation (2018) is a practice-based PhD in international politics using documentary film to trace two global drug trajectories: heroin adulterated with illicitly manufactured fentanyl, and naloxone, the overdose antidote. Shot across three continents — Massachusetts, the US-Mexico border at Laredo, Texas, and legal poppy farms in Tasmania, Australia — the project documents the heterogeneous worlds connected by a single public health crisis.

The resulting work is a three-channel audio-visual installation within a living room set design, visualizing the affective, material, and political links between community overdose response, commercial cross-border trade, and agricultural care. The PhD argues that documentary filmmaking is an exemplary method for developing new sites, senses, and knowledge of international relations.