Stigma Damages is an online resource launched in 2024. The platform focuses on furthering public knowledge and contexts of heavy industry in Ireland, with podcasts, documents, archival material and a digital app all continuing to be researched, produced and released as the project unfolds.
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A particular focus is placed on Aughinish Alumina, Europe’s largest alumina refinery sited beside the Shannon Estuary, today a continuous site in global extraction policies and environmental activism. The title of the project, Stigma Damages, is typically used as a legal term to describe suspected environmental contamination. Here, it additionally acts as a framework to map and uncover corporate greenwashing strategies of global extraction industries, and seek restorative justice for land and its people. The need for a heightened social awareness of these issues is a key motivation for Stigma Damages.
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The material presented on this website is additionally made available as an open resource for the case study of heavy industry in Junior Cycle Geography, as taught in the Irish educational curriculum.  See here