Cultures of American evangelical apocalyptic theology and rightwing conspiracism have formed of constituency—what we call apocalyptic consipiracism—that is productive of alternative truths concerning climate change and Covid-19 in the crucible of digital spaces.
In this book we make visible the buried histories, geographies, infrastructures, and architectures of water in Belfast by tracing the water network, unearthing its contents, mapping its history, allowing it to reflect back our cultures and built environments. Water, and the infrastructure that delivers and disposes of it, is a taken-for-granted resource: it is infra (meaning invisible)-structure. Employing New Materialism theories, including more-than-human geographies, to architectural design and co-production we explore climate change related future flooding, lead exposure via lead water pipes, the history of water plumbing in Belfast, water scarcity, oral histories of the docks, and filmic reflections of the Lagan River.
This comprehensive study discusses evangelicalism in its different forms, from the moderates to the would-be theocrats who, in anticipation of the Rapture, seek to impose their interpretations of the Bible upon American foreign policy. The result is a unique appraisal of the movement and its geopolitical visions, and the wider impact of these on America and the world at large.
Edited Journal Issues
Lynch, R., Sturm, T., & Webster, J. (2021) “The apocalyptic and other crisis.” Special Issue of Anthropology and Medicine.
Sturm, T. (ed.) (2013) “The Future of Religion and Geopolitics: Towards a Theory and Research Agenda.” Special Issue of Area, 45(2), pp. 134-69.
Struckman, L. & Sturm, T. (eds.) (2013) “Contemporary Geopolitics in the Middle East.” Special Issue of The Arab World Geographer. 16 (1), Pp. 3-145.
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles & Book Chapters
Sturm, T. and Albrecht, T. (2025) “Religion and geopolitics: apocalyptic geopolitics as a way of knowing about global space.” In The Handbook of Geographies of Religion. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64811-3_39
Boland, P., Sturm, T. & Shorter, G. (2025) “(Dealing with) illegal drugs and unwanted land-use: a socially inclusive future planning imagination for drug consumption rooms.” Journal of Planning Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X251318245
Sturm, T. (2022) “The Geopolitics of the Chosen People’s Apocalypse: The Los Angeles Jews for Jesus and the Judeo-Christian Tradition.” Apocalyptica. 1(1) https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.apoc.2022.1.24608
Sturm, T. & Lustig, N. (2022) “Variegated Environmental Apocalypses: Post-Politics, the Contestatory, and an Eco-Precariat Manifesto for a Radical Apocalyptics”, in Earl Harper & Doug Specht, Imagining Apocalyptic Politics in the Anthropocene (pp. 213-234). Routledge.
Flaherty, E., Sturm, T., & Farries, E. (2022) “The Conspiracy of COVID-19 and 5G: Spatial Analysis Fallacies in the age of Data Democratization.” Social Science & Medicine. 293, (114546). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114546
Erwin, J. & Sturm, T. (2022) “Living in the Wake of Rural Irish Troubles: Building an Institution for Sustainable Peace Through Emotive Out-of-Place Tourism.” Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 30 (2), 515-532. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2021.1912055
Sturm, T. & Albrecht, T. (2021) “Constituent Covid-19 apocalypses: contagious conspiracism, 5G, and viral vaccinations”, Anthropology & Medicine, 28(1): 122-139. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2020.1833684
Sturm, T. (2021) “God’s Just Gaza War: Futurity Foreclosed through Evangelical Apocalypse as Orthogonal Promise of Eretz Israel”. Geografiska Annaler: Series B., 103(3), 301-319. https://doi.org/10.1080/04353684.2021.1891557
Lynch, R., Sturm, T., & Webster, J. (2021) “Apocalyptic futures: Morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world.” Anthropology & Medicine, 28(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2021.1888548
Sturm, T. & Albrecht, T. (2021) “Hal Lindsey.” In Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements. Bedford: CenSAMM. https://www.cdamm.org/articles/hal-lindsey
Sturm, T., Mercille, J., Albrecht, T., Cole, J., Dodds, K., & Longhurst, A. (2021) “Interventions in critical health geopolitics: Borders, rights, and conspiracies in the COVID-19 pandemic.” Political Geography, 91 (102445). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102445
Boland, P., McKay, S., Sturm, T., & Gale, R. (2021) “Religion, neoliberalism, planning: an analysis of Northern Ireland’s ‘superchurch’ ”. Religion, State, and Society. 49(1), 61-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2021.1909448
Flood, N. & Sturm, T. (2021) “New Materialisms: Harnessing collaboration to understand the spatial consequences of complex matters of public concern.” In Bridging the Gap: Emergent Ideas on Architectural Pedagogy and Practice. Routledge.
Sturm, T. (2020) “Hal Lindsey’s geopolitical future: towards a cartographic theory of anticipatory arrows.” Journal of Maps, 17(1), 39–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2020.1819902
Farries, E. & Sturm, T. (2019) “Feminist legal geographies of intimate-image sexual abuse: Using copyright logic to combat the unauthorized distribution of celebrity intimate images in cyberspaces.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. 51(5) 1145–1165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X18786964
McConnell T, Best P, Sturm T, et al. (2019) "A translational case study of empowerment into practice: A realist evaluation of a member-led dementia empowerment service. Dementia.19(6).
McConnell, T., Sturm, T., Stevenson, M. et al. (2019) "Co-producing a shared understanding and definition of empowerment with people with dementia." Res Involv Engagem 5.
Sturm, T. (2018) “Religion as Nationalism: The Religious Nationalism of American Christian Zionists.” National Identities, 20(3), 299-319. https://doi.org/10.1080/14608944.2016.1255187
Sturm, T. (2017) “Christian Zionism as Religious Nationalism Par Excellence.” Brown Journal of World Affairs 24 (1) 7-22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27119075?seq=1
Sturm, T. & Dittmer, J. (2016) “Introduction: Mapping the End Times.” In J. Dittmer & T. Sturm (eds.), Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions. Routledge, pp. 1-23. ISBN 9781409400837
Sturm, T. (2016) “Imagining Apocalyptic Geopolitics: American Evangelical Citationality of Evil Others.” In J. Dittmer and T. Sturm (eds.), Mapping the End Times: American Evangelical Geopolitics and Apocalyptic Visions. Routledge, pp. 133-154. ISBN 9781409400837
Sturm, T. (2015) “Political Geographies of Religious Movements”. In J. Agnew, J. Sharp, A. Secor, and V.D. Mamadouh. Companion to Political Geography, 2nd Ed (pp. 352-365). Blackwell.
Sturm, T. (2015) “Theorizing Religious Nationalism: The Case of American Christian Zionist National Allegiance to Israeli Territorial Maximalism.” In S. Brunn (ed.) The Changing World Religion Map (pp. 819-839). Springer.
Sturm, T. and Frantzman, S. (2015) “Religious Geopolitics of Palestinian Christianity: Palestinian Christian Zionists, Palestinian Liberation Theologists, and American Missions to Palestine.” Middle Eastern Studies, 51(3) pp. 433-451. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2014.971768
Sturm, T. (2013) “Geography and Popular Culture.” In B. Warf (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sturm, T. (2013) “The Future of Religious Geopolitics: Toward a Theory and Research Agenda.” Area, 45(2) pp. 134-40. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12028
Struckman, L. and Sturm, T. (2013) "Introduction: Interrogating Conventional Geopolitics of the Middle East" The Arab World Geographer 16 (1): 3–9. https://doi.org/10.5555/arwg.16.1.v764236t5557r152
Sturm, T. (2012) “The Immanence of an Imminent Apocalypse: Christian Zionists and Israel as the New Redeemer Nation-and-State.” Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception, 2(2), pp. 333-341. https://doi.org/10.11157/rsrr2-2-511
Sturm, T. (2011) “The Free Gaza Flotilla and the Christian Zionist Response: Territory, Media, and Race.” Human Geography, 4(1), pp. 10-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/194277861100400102
Sturm, T. & Oh, E. (2010) “Natural Disasters as the End of the Insurance Industry? Scalar Competitive Strategies, Alternative Risk Transfers, and the Economic Crisis.” Geoforum, 41(1), pp.154-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.09.010
Sturm, T. & Bauch, N. (2010) “Nationalism and Geography: An Interview with Rogers Brubaker.” Geopolitics 15(1), pp. 185-196. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040903420503
Sturm, T. (2008) “The Christian Right, Eschatology, and Americanism.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(5), pp. 929-934. https://doi.org/10.1068/d7807a
Sturm, T. (2006) “Prophetic Eyes: The Theatricality of Mark Hitchcock’s Premillennial Geopolitics.” Geopolitics, 11(2), pp. 231-255. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040600598452
Sturm, T. (2024) "Mike Huckabee’s old-school Christian Zionism is bad news for anyone who wants Middle East peace." The Forward. November 15.
Sturm, T. (2024) “Christian Zionism and the Apocalyptic Landscape of Gaza.” In Contending Modernities. University of Notre Dame Press.
Sturm, T., Auerbach, J. & Flood, N. (2022) “Belfast’s silent public health crisis? Why we need widespread testing for lead-contaminated water.” The Conversation.
Albrecht, T. & Sturm, T. (2021) “It’s No Coincidence that Some of Those Storming the US Capitol Were New Age Conspiracists.” The Journal.ie. Jan 13.
Sturm, T. (2017) “The End of the World is Coming – Just Not This Saturday.” National Post 20 Sept
Sturm, T. (2013) "Feast of Tabernacles Conference: The Christian Zionists Lobby Has Returned." Palestine Chronicle.
Sturm, T. (2012) “Christian Zionists Support Israel’s Risky Policy Decisions.” Jerusalem Post. 2 Oct.
Sturm, T. (2012) "Anxious Apocalypticism, Meaningful Millennialism." Rabble.
Sturm, T. (2011) “The Day After the Rapture.” Toronto Star. A15, Sun. 22 May.
Sturm, T. (2009) “Bible Politics and Palestinian Zionists.” Haaretz. B4, Fri. 25 Sept.
Review of (2022): Hagar Kotef's The Colonizing Self: Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine. (Duke University Press). H-Net.
Review of (2021): S. Jonathon O’Donnell's Passing Orders: Demonology and Sovereignty in American Spiritual Warfare (Fordham University Press). Environment and Planning D: Society & Space.
Review of (2017) Saba Mahmood's Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press). The Arab World Geographer.
Review of (2017) William J. Smyth, Toronto, the Belfast of Canada: The Orange Order and the Shaping of Municipal Culture (University of Toronto Press). American Review of Canadian Studies.
Review of (2014) Introduction. Book Review Forum: Justin Wilford's Sacred subdivisions: the postsuburban transformation of American evangelicalism (NYU Press). Social and Cultural Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2014.927272
Review of (2013) Rob Sullivan's Geography Speaks: Performative Aspects of Geography (Ashgate). Progress in Human Geography.
Review of (2010) William E. Connolly’s Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (Duke University Press). Antipode.
Review of (2008) "Critical Methodological Geopolitics: Discourse Analysis/Ethnography". Book review forum of François Debrix's Tabloid Terror: War, Culture, and Geopolitics (Routledge) & Mark L. Gillem's AmericaTown: Building the Outposts of Empire (University of Minnesota Press). Geopolitics.