SCGRG – Page 8 – Social and Cultural Geography Research Group

RGS/IBG AC2011 sponsored sessions

The Social and Cultural Geography Research Group is delighted to be sponsoring the following sessions at the RGS/IBG conference in London 31 Aug – 2 Sept 2011. If you are interested in submitting a paper, please follow the links and contact individual session organisers. Session organisers have set their own deadlines for papers, but the final deadline for all sponsored sessions, complete with papers and abstracts, to be submitted to the Society is the 25^th of February 2011.

Sole sponsor

Co-sponsor

We are also delighted to be sponsored the following interactive event. Please follow the link below to see how the story of your last conference bag can become part of an event tracing academic mobilities.

Journey of a Conference Bag: Reflecting on Academic Mobilities and Footprints

We had an unprecedented number of applications to the group this year, and given our limited allocation of conference slots, we regret we have not been able to sponsor the majority of session proposal submitted to us. We hope these will still find a place within the conference programme, and look forward to attending all of your sessions.

Social and Cultural Geography Research Group Statement on Tuition Fees

The committee of the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (RGS-IBG) would like to express their personal support for the geographers and other students who have sought to open up creative spaces to challenge the inevitability of such rapid and deep public spending cuts in higher education. Our position is that creative, innovative thinking is critical to social and ecological justice, and the stripping away of the intellectual capacity of higher education, through the removal of public funding for teaching and its replacement with a market for students and for knowledge, is detrimental to the achievement of more equitable ways of thinking and living.

“To illustrate the importance of knowledge sharing, I would like to tell you a little lesson in economics: I have a block of butter, and you have three Euros. If we proceed to do a transaction, you will, in the end, have a block of butter, and I will have three Euros. We are dealing with a zero sum game: nothing happens from this exchange. But in the exchange of knowledge, during teaching, the game is not one of zero sum as more parties profit from the exchange: if you know a theorem and teach it to me, at the end of the exchange, we both know it. In this knowledge exchange there is no equilibrium at all, but a terrific growth which economics does not know. Teachings are the bearers of an unbelievable treasure – knowledge – which multiplies and is the treasure of all humanity.” (Michel Serres).

Our thanks to Angela Last for the quote and translation. We welcome postings of further links and comments.

Bursaries for Space and Irigaray Workshop

The SCGRG is pleased to offer bursaries for a two-day workshop exploring different modes of spatial engagement within the writing and philosophy of Luce Irigaray. The workshop is organised by Sarah Cant (Oxford Brookes) and Rachel Colls (Durham). Thursday 6 and Friday 7 January 2011, at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford. The workshop is funded by Oxford Brookes Central Research Fund and the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (RGS-IBG).

To enquire for further details or book a place at the workshop, please email sarah.cant@brookes.ac.uk by WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER 2010.

Your input on the 2012 conference

The RGS is asking research groups to help them choose the location for the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2012. Due to the London Olympics (25 July – 11 September 2012) it is not feasible to host AC2012 in London. Several other locations around the UK are also fully booked with Olympic-related and other events taking place. A shortlist of 5 locations and dates for the AC2012 conference has been drawn up. Research Groups and their members are invited to vote here: www.rgs.org/AC2012vote. Voting closes: Friday 29 October 2010.

Geography and the ‘new empirics’ event

The Social and Cultural Geography Research Group are organizing a conference and workshops on ‘Geography and the New Empirics’. The event is on the 20th-21st January 2011, and will be hosted by UCL and The Royal Geographical Society, London.

In an intellectual context that celebrates uncertainty, complexity and multiplicity, this workshop engages with the practicalities and demands that these ideas place on the doing and dissemination of research. We aim to bring together post-graduates and early career researchers from across social and cultural geography to engage with ideas of the empirical and to share the issues and challenges of research in this contemporary context.

The workshop begins on the afternoon of Thursday 20th January at UCL with a series of discussion/reading groups. Friday 21st January will compromise a series of paper sessions followed by a panel session. For the Friday, we are inviting abstract submissions on the theme of ‘Geography and the New Empirics’. Abstracts should be submitted to geographynewempirics@gmail.com by Friday 26th November. We particularly encourage the submission of abstracts from post-graduates and early career researchers.

Dissertation prize winners 2010

Kaleigh Jones, University of Oxford, is our 2010 winner for her dissertation entitled Embodying Mobile Cultures: a case study of Capoeira. The committee praised the design of the study for its considerable flair and sophistication, and the insightful, innovative and evocative write-up. The study was an extremely theoretically engaged study, based upon fieldwork in the UK and Brazil and gave a rich empirical analysis. The committee felt it made a genuine contribution to academic geography in social and cultural geography.

Emma Bonny, University of Nottingham, was highly commended for her dissertation entitled The landscape and culture of allotments: a study in Hornchurch, Essex. The committee were impressed with how deftly she weaved existing literature with original research findings. The findings were based on high quality, in-depth multi-method qualitative research. The discussion of the research was both engaging, innovative and developed ideas within existing cultural geography literature on allotments.

The winner has received £100 and the runner-up £50. Both have also been given a one-year free subscription to the journal Social and Cultural Geography courtesy of Taylor & Francis. In total we received 18 submissions for the prize. These spanned the breadth of social and cultural geography interests and we look forward to continuing with the prize in 2011.

Emma Roe & Gail Davies

RGS/IBG Annual Conference news

The Annual International Conference of the RGS-IBG starts on the 1^st of September 2010 at the Society in London. This 3-day event attracts over 1,000 geographers from around the world. The meeting this year is chaired by Neil Wrigley, University of Southampton, and the theme is ‘Confronting the Challenges of the Post-Crisis Global Economy and Environment’.

The SCGRG is delighted to sponsor and co-sponsor 12 events at the 2010 RGS-IBG Annual Conference. It is the sole sponsor for three sessions on ‘Geography and the Future’ organised by Ben Anderson and Peter Adey on Friday, and two paper sessions on ‘Geography and Twentieth Century British Poetry’ and a poetry reading organised by Amy Cutler. The full details of all SCGRG sponsored sessions are listed on the SCGRG conference page. We hope that you will give the organisers and presenters your support.

The Social and Cultural Geography Research Group AGM will be held during the conference in the RGS-IBG Tea Room on Friday from 13:10. A full agenda will be circulated at the meeting. All are welcome.

Research Group Guests

Please note, due to travel delays after the AAG, the deadline for research guests has been extended. Research group decisions need to be with the RGS by the 10th of May, so please notify the SCGRG by the 7th of May if you would like to propose a guest.

The SCGRG are now accepting applications for Research Group Guests. The SCGRG is able to award complimentary registration for the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2010 for a total of six days.

These passes will be awarded on a competitive basis and are available to non-geographers based in the UK, and from both geographers and non-geographers from other overseas who may have difficulties in paying their registration fee. If you are interested in applying for complimentary registration, please apply directly to Gail Davies by the 7th May 2010.

Please include the following details: title, name and affiliation of proposed guest, email address of nominated guest, postal address including country, title of session(s) to which a contribution is being made, a couple of sentences explaining your reasons for proposing this guest to the annual conference.

Bursaries for SCGRG members

The SCGRG is delighted to announce the availability of a small number of bursaries for SCGRG members to attend the forthcoming conferences on ‘Salty Geographies’ and ‘Urban Green Space’.

‘Salty’ Geographies: Subaltern Maritime networks, spaces and practices is a three-day conference for academics, postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students, organised by David Featherstone and William Hasty (University of Glasgow). It will be held at the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, October 7th-9th 2010.
The ‘Urban Green Space’ event is a one-day interdisciplinary colloquium for post-graduates and early career researcher, hosted by CUDEM (Centre for Urban Development and Environmental Management) at the School of the Built Environment, Leeds Metropolitan University. It will be held on 2nd June 2010 and is organized by Karen Horwood and Nadia Von Benzon.

The bursaries are open to all SCGRG members, with preference for support going to those without access to funding and those taking an active part in the conference. Please direct enquiries about bursaries to Gail Davies, copying your message to the relevant conference organiser.

2010 RGS Conference Sessions

Thanks to everyone who submitted sessions for sponsorship to the SCGRG for the 2010 RGS conference. We were delighted with the quality and range of sessions proposed. The sessions with the SCGRG name on them next year are likely to be the following: