The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) is pleased to announce that the Call for Sessions and Papers has opened for its Annual International Conference 2014 (AC2014). The conference will be chaired by Professor Wendy Larner (Bristol University) and its theme will be ‘coproduction’.
Date: Wednesday 27th to Friday 29th August (opening reception evening of Tuesday 26th August)
Location: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), London
This year we will be sponsoring session proposals that creatively respond to the conference theme and its ethos. This means doing things a little bit differently.
As well as the main conference text, which can be seen below, we encourage proposals which might mobilise a range of understandings, methods and practices of coproduction. These could explore the relationship between co-production and co-authorship, between co-production and collaboration, between co-production and co-presence, and take the production in ‘co-production’ seriously, by engaging with things, materials, products, design and co-design. This should not preclude the wide array of sessions and themes we normally sponsor in Social and Cultural Geography, but that they should seek to engage with the theme.
Call for proposals:
1. Sessions: First, we would like to invite proposals for Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) sponsored sessions (see below for more detail). These should showcase the diversity and vitality of current social and cultural geography through the coproduction theme. Thus, whilst we will be sponsoring normal ‘paper’ or ‘panel’ sessions, we would encourage proposals to consider a broader range of activities than only a panel of 15 minute presentations. Thus proposals might consider visits or field trips to sites or external organizations; exhibitions and displays; more activity led sessions; and perhaps quite different ways of using the conference space. Proposals should consider the time and space constraints and detail their ideas in the proposal.
2. SCGRG Event: The research group would like to organize a Social and Cultural Geography Research Group coproduction ‘event’ which would engage coproduction head-on. We would anticipate allocating one session slot to this, and invite proposals to fill this space. We will support the chosen SCGRG ‘event’ with help and logistics.
3. Post-graduate sessions: Working closely with the Post-graduate Forum, we would like to encourage the proposal of post-graduate sessions that may receive co-sponsorship with the PGF. Our committee post-graduate reps, Richard Scriven and Emma Spence will help coordinate these activities.
And finally,
4. Co-writing the Conference: During the conference the SCGRG will host a collaborative feed where we will attempt to record conference participants thoughts, responses and reactions in tweet, text, blog, image, speech and video, collating together perspectives from all of the sessions we sponsor. Whilst the SCGRG will support this activity with technical support from our social media team (Sam Kinsley and James Robinson), we would like to open up the curation of the feed and invite 1 page proposals from interested ‘curators’, perhaps small teams, with ideas for how they would format and manage the process.
Proposals should be of no more than one page, outlining the topic, its connection to current concerns in social and cultural geography, the format of the session (see above for ideas on innovative sessions) and the number of anticipated slots required.
1 page proposals for SCGRG sponsored sessions should be sent to Rebecca Sandover by Monday 16th December 2013, to be considered by the SCGRG committee. Thank you.