Conference session report (1)

RGS/IBG paper session, Friday 29th August 2008

Matters of Interdisciplinarity: Archaeology meets Geography

Convenors: Dr. Divya P. Tolia-Kelly & Dr. Richard Hingley (Durham Geography and Archaeology, respectively)

This materiality session successfully brought together archaeologists and geographers to consider both their shared and divergent approaches to understanding landscape. The diverse range of papers promoted lively discussion and highlighted the overlaps between the two disciplines and the importance of taking a broader interdisciplinary approach to research. The papers led us from post colonial readings of landscape and shifting perceptions of ruination and reconstruction of historic landscapes to contemporary emotional experiences and the cultural commoditisation and consumption of landscapes, especially in the heritage sector, via time geography and models of innovation. Some common themes which emerged were issues of ownership of landscape and the nature of rightful encounter and how these are (re)presented in mapping and recording techniques and artistic and literary works that deal with landscapes. Contributors from archaeology, geography, rural economics, and the environmental sector created a truly interdisciplinary and diverse session which fostered a fruitful exchange of theory and method providing new perspectives for all concerned. The discussant was Professor Stephen Daniels (Director of AHRC Landscape and Environment Programme).

Chairs:
Divya Tolia-Kelly & Robert Witcher
Contributors:
Martin Redding (Environment Officer – Witham)
Divya Tolia-Kelly(Durham – Geography)
Robert Witcher (Archaeology – Durham)
Richard Hingley (Archaeology – Durham)
Claire Nesbitt (Archaeology – Durham)
Glynn Kelso (Geography – Queen’s University Belfast)
Adam Wainwright (Archaeology – Exeter)
Nick Winder (Institute for Policy and Practice – Newcastle)
Claudia Dürrwächter (Institute for Policy and Practice – Newcastle)
Victoria Bell (Centre for Rural Economy – Newcastle)

CFP Geographies of Art

Call for papers: Geographies of art: Annual Association of American Geographers Conference, Las Vegas, 22-27 March 2009



Are you critic, collaborator, creator, curator ? Does your research in some way develop a relationship between geography and art ? A look at recent publications and conference programs indicates the growing scope of the interrelationship between art and geography and the increasing range of forms this work is taking as boundaries between geographers, artists and curators blur. The title of this session is broad, and deliberately so, for it aims precisely to consider the breadth of this relationship between geography and art. The intention is to bring together a range of practices, and practitioners, to consider the ideas, methods and conceptual developments that come from this so obviously fruitful relationship. This is a relationship which offers us purchase on so many of the important debates within geography today: creative research and writing practices,
identity performance and practices, landscape, representation and non-representation, affectual and sensory relations, immaterial labour practices, social and political sculpture, the environment, discourses of new materialisms… to name but a few. Alternatively, what do you, as an artist, get from geography and geographers? What value is drawn from collaborative working practices? Your focus may be contemporary or historical practice and it is certainly not restricted to visual art.

Formats may include but are not restricted to : papers, videos, performance works, or sound works. Potential topics may include but are not restricted to:

• the outcomes and practices of collaboration
• social sculpture, art and participatory geographies
• production, consumption and the circulation of aesthetics
• art and, and as, the political
• artistic networks, creative clusters and art schools
• geopolitics and art forms
• art as therapy
• art as practice and performance of identity
• aesthetics and politics
• art and geography’s critique of the visual
• artist as social agent
• art and regeneration
• the internet as art space/ networked art
• art and questions of affect and sensory relations
• the space of the museum/ the museum without walls
• site-specific practices
• environmental aesthetics
• art and landscape
• geography and visual culture

Please direct any questions and abstracts ( 250 words) to Harriet Hawkins at
h.hawkins@exeter.ac.uk, by the 8th October 2008.

Third materialities conference/workshop, Dec, Exeter

Ian Cook (Exeter) is keen to get those who have been involved in previous workshops deciding the form and content of the third SCGRG materalities conference - 'Endgames'.

See http://materialgeographies.wordpress.com/ for both archive of previous workshop content plus details of forthcoming event

GEOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATION

GEOGRAPHIES OF EDUCATION
Loughborough University
8-9th September 2009

Responding to the growing interest in spaces of education within geography and cognate disciplines, this conference will provide a unique opportunity for debating key themes and concepts concerning the production, consumption and governance of education at different scales and in different cultural contexts. Recognising the diversity of sites of education and learning which are accessed at different stages of the life-course, it is intended that the conference will address issues relating to primary, secondary and tertiary education, as well as the wider production and circulation of knowledge within these spaces. Papers are hence welcomed which address any of the following themes:
• School catchments, parental choices and access to education
• Inclusions and exclusions in spaces of education
• Extended schools, families and communities
• The university in its social and cultural context
• Studentification and student cities
• Academic mobilities and migrations
• The globalization of education
The conference is supported by the Centre for Research in Identity, Community, Society (CRICS), based in the Department of Geography, Loughborough University, the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) and the Children, Youth and Family Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society. There will be a limited number of bursaries to support the attendance of new career, postgraduate and unwaged delegates.
Please send abstracts (no more then 250 words please) to P.J.Hubbard@lboro.ac.uk

Call for papers

Reinvigorating Social Geography: the politics and praxis of Social and Cultural Geography in the UK

A two-day conference of the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG

University of Brighton 30-31 January 2009

The main aim of the conference is to provide a supportive, collegiate and stimulating environment to explore ‘what’ and ‘where’ are the contemporary social geographies within the context of the Social and Cultural nexus. Often viewed as an exciting and progressive sub-discipline of British and European geography, the conference seeks to ‘take-stock’ of the positionality of social geography, as Social and Cultural Geography becomes increasingly mainstream. A significant presence at RGS/IBG conferences, combined with a marked growth in journals, books and monographs, undergraduate dissertations, and specialised Masters programmes in this area, is testament to the penetration of Social and Cultural Geography across a range of academic arenas.

Yet as the reach of the sub-discipline continues to extend, there are ‘mutterings’ of a possible divorce between different strands of the research group, arguably often based on perceptions and hearsay. In light of these recent informal discourses and the possible, inter-linked, forging of new research groups, the conference provides a timely opportunity to explore the general health of relations within the Social and Cultural Geography nexus. Fruitful, and potentially, provocative themes which delegates may wish to discuss are:

What and where is contemporary social geography?
How important are individual, self-definitional markers of the members of Social and Cultural Geography?
How are social geographers now defined by ‘others’ outside of the research group?
Where does social geography currently fit within the context of Social and Cultural Geography, and the wider disciplinary boundaries of human geography?
Have the set(s) of practices employed by social geographers changed over the last decade, and, if so, how have they changed?
Have the overlapping interests of social geography with other sub-disciplines of human geography been re-cast over the last decade?
Are perceptions of the marginalisation of some streams within Social and Cultural Geography accurate?
How inclusive / exclusive are Social and Cultural geographies?
Are social and cultural geographies inseparable?
Is there substance to some interpretations of the ‘policing of sub-disciplinary boundaries’ within the Social and Cultural nexus?
Are discussions of internal conflicts harmful for the vitality of Social and Cultural Geography, or simply evidence of a vibrant and active research group?
Is a deep splintering of sub-groups unfolding within Social and Cultural Geography?
Does the current mission of the Social and Cultural Research Group provide a meaningful base for social geographers?
How do social geographers currently interface with other sub-disciplines of human geography?
Are social geographers increasingly multi-positional within human geography, and is this linked to the activities of the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group?
Should social geography be restricted to analyses of social relations?

Papers/presentations are sought which focus on one or more of the themes, outlined above.

The event will include short interventions from panellists, drawn from Social and Cultural Geography. Confirmed panel speakers include Rachel Pain, Phil Hubbard, Sophie Bowlby, Anoop Nayak, Peter Hopkins.

Please send abstracts or expressions of interest, before the end of September 2008, to one of the conference organisers:

Darren Smith (D.Smith@Brighton.ac.uk)
Kath Browne (K.Browne@Brighton.ac.uk)
David Bissell (D.J.Bissell@Brighton.ac.uk)

Attendance by postgraduate and research students at the conference is encouraged, and travel/registration bursaries will be available.

Details of the conference venue, accommodation and registration will be provided at a later date.

Annual Conference

Just over a week now until the Annual Conference of the RGS-IBG and I thought I'd take this opportunity to remind you of what the group is doing at the conference. This includes an unprecedented number of paper sessions, as follows:

Non-representational geographies (Weds)
The promise and problematic of technology (Thursday)
Events space (Thursday)
Fit Cities (Thursday)
Where species meet and mingle (Friday)
Photographs matter (Friday)
Mapping social enterprise (Friday)
Matters of interdisciplinarity: archaeology meets geography (Friday)
Migration and everyday matters (Friday)

I hope you agree this is lively and varied line-up that covers the gamut of social and cultural geography.

Our AGM is on Weds 27th August 1310-1425 in the Drayson Room (ground floor, next to Ondaatje Lecture Theatre), and all members are welcome. We are very keen to hear from people who want to propose sessions for RGS-IBG Manchester 2009; who have ideas about other meetings or conferences; who want to seek sponsorship for their own event; or want to get involved in the group as committee member (or any other capacity).

Full details of the annual conference are available online at:

http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+International+Conference+2008.htm

I look forward to seeing you there!

Denis Cosgrove 1948-2008

It is with tremendous sadness that we hear of Denis' passing. Indelibly associated with the revivification of the idea of 'landscape' in geography, his work also presaged more recent engagements with art and performance. As such, his contributions to cultural geography are inestimable. The Reading Weekend will provide one opportunity to reflect on his multiple contributions (see below): there will no doubt be others to come. Our thoughts are with his friends and family.