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Paper short abstract

Focusing on Lula, Sardinia, this paper shows how the Einstein Telescope, even before construction, reorganize land, authority, and expectations, turning a global scientific infrastructure into a contested arena where local futures are imagined, claimed or unevenly distributed.

Paper long abstract

The proposed Einstein Telescope in Lula, Sardinia, shows the political and territorial dynamics through which mega-science projects reconfigure space, authority, and future imaginaries. Post–Cold War mega-science infrastructures (Baneke 2019) are not merely technical enterprises but geopolitical and governmental projects that mobilize national prestige, scientific diplomacy, and territorial governance, activating profound material and semiotic transformations in host regions. In Lula, a small village marked by depopulation, pastoral decline, and a disused mining heritage, the telescope is promoted as an opportunity for development, global recognition, and scientific leadership. At the same time, it becomes a site of infrastructural polarization, where state interests, scientific institutions, and local communities confront each other through competing narratives of progress and territorial value. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among shepherds, ex-miners, scientists, and institutions, the paper analyzes how the project shapes imaginaries of the future, long before any material construction begins. Technoscientific and political discourses frame the telescope as neutral, inevitable, and universally beneficial, reproducing what Velho et al. (2024) describe as a dislocated and “nowhere” gaze. In constrast, local experiences are shaped by suspicion, attachment to place, and a diffuse sense of disorientation (De Martino 2023) in the face of transformations perceived as imposed from else where. By focusing on an infrastructure that remains largely imagined, the paper shows how infrastructural polarizations are enacted through political anticipation, competing regimes of authority, and struggles over who gets to define the future of a territory.