Category: Conferences

Call for Session Sponsorship – RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2024

The RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) would like to invite expressions of interest for sponsored sessions for the RGS-IBG 2024 Annual Conference, which will take place in London and online from the evening of Tuesday 27th to Friday 30 August.

The theme for the 2024 Annual Conference, chaired by Professor Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham, UK), is ‘Mapping’. You can find out more about the conference at: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference.

SCGRG is keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme, as well as make room for a wide range of other issues and topics. We welcome sessions which will be of wide significance and interest to social and cultural geographers, will meaningfully contribute to ongoing debates in social and cultural geography, and demonstrate substantive, methodological or theoretical novelty.

Please take note of the guidelines for session organisers: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/call-for-sessions-papers-and-posters/guidance-for-session-organisers

Please submit your expressions of interest for SCGRG sponsorship by 5pm GMT on Wednesday 14th February 2024 through: https://forms.office.com/e/iTB8EqtPK9 
We will endeavour to inform applicants of the outcome by Friday 23rd February 2024.

Questions about SCGRG sponsored sessions should be directed to the SCGRG conference officer Rishika Mukhopadhyay: r.mukhopadhyay@soton.ac.uk.

RGS-IBG 2023: Sponsored Sessions

The following are the sessions sponsored by SCGRG at the RGS-IBG 2023 Annual Conference in London.

Feeling at Home in Non-normative Living Spaces

Organisers: Andrew Power (University of Southampton), Sophie Bowlby (University of Reading)

Presenters: Melanie Nowicki, Katherine Brickell, Ella Harris, Peter Hopkins, Robin Finlay, Matthew Benwell, Josefina Jaureguiberry Mondion, Beverley Clough, Henrietta Zeffert, Beverley Clough, Henrietta Zeffert, Aline Desmas, Janet Bowstead

Summary:

This session sought to explore the often difficult processes of home-making that people undertake in settings that do not fit with normative home environments. The call for papers for this session generated significant interest, with a wide range of good quality submissions to present papers (19).  Following a difficult selection process, we selected nine papers for inclusion as well as a discussant slot to explore cross-cutting themes, led by Andrew Power. The two parts of the session (before and after morning coffee) were very well attended by scholars across SCGRG and beyond, with interesting presentations and debate. The non-normative settings presented in the papers ranged widely and included the dwellings of refugees, homeless people, and temporary residents occupying remittance houses. Each paper focused on the novel home-making practices of their respective residents, albeit often at the margins, including cosplay by autistic young people. One paper covered the feminist legal geographies of home-making, which helped to enhance the conceptual engagement with the topic.  We felt that we had hit upon a topic of significance. The methodologies used in the studies that were reported were varied (virtual and face-to-face ethnographies and interviews, conceptual analysis) although not unusual within social and cultural geography. The topic of living in non-normative ‘homes’ is one that clearly brought together the theoretical interests of researchers examining apparently diverse topics. The questions and discussion showed a lively interest in the opportunity for theoretical cross-fertilisation amongst presenters and attendees and an interest in sharing findings and approaches. We hope to facilitate this with some form of publication such as a special issue or book arising from the sessions.

Spaces and Subjects of Impotentiality

Organisers: Vickie Zhang (University of Bristol & Guangzhou University), Thomas Dekeyser (Royal Holloway, University of London), David Bissell (University of Melbourne)

Presenters: Gediminas Lesutis, Paul Harrison, Farai Chipato, Alex Cullen, William Jamieson, Victoria Jones, Vickie Zhang, Merle Matthew Davies, Jonathan Pugh

Summary:

The first session opened with a brief introduction by the chair, Thomas Dekeyser, who summarised the impulse behind organising the session as the desire to offer a supplementation to, and modest questioning of, the prevalence – in geographical thinking – of ‘potentiality’ and ‘capacity’ as necessarily possible or desirable. In anticipation of the nine presentations, he formulated three modes of impotentiality: a) as an originary ontological status for (certain) being; b) as a collective structure of feeling characteristic of our contemporary political moment of sensed disempowerment; and c) as localised affective experiences. Picking up on the first of these modes, Paul Harrison kicked off the session with a challenge to ‘lively work’ in new materialism and posthumanist thought, proposing impotentiality as a way of avoiding the lure of redeeming existence. Farai Chipato located impotentiality within the ontological status of black subjectivity, and offered thoughts on how one might, methodologically, look towards attending to such spaces of impotentiality. Gediminas Lesutis and Alex Cullen each approached impotentiality as a feeling of incapacity in the face of wider political forces, examining – respectively – the impossibility of redress in Kenyan mega-infrastructures, and the impoverishment of radical climate action.

We were very pleased that the RGS-IBG were able to include a hybrid session, which meant presenters more distantly located could speak. Things kicked off with a pun with William Jamieson’s exploration of the paradoxical omni(m)potence of Singapore’s territorial expansion, refracted through Marxist analogies of growth and accumulation. Merle Davies Matthew incisively critiqued the politics of the hopeful gesture to potential often made in critical scholarship, questioning its politics by identifying its shared characteristics with the more obviously problematic capitalist versions of attunement to potential. Victoria Jones delivered a moving performance presentation on the underperformativity of emotion for furloughed workers in the UK, whilst Jonathan Pugh and Vickie Zhang both spoke to the idea of non-relational subjectivity, albeit through different conceptual traditions – in Caribbean studies and via continental philosophy respectively. 

We were inspired to see the different versions of impotence emerging in the papers across the two sessions – from critiques of worlding, liveliness and potential, to impotentiality as incapacity to act, as immobility, futility, affective performance, historical inheritance, misplaced attachment, and more. We thank the presenters for their insightful presentations and look forward to engaging with the potent and forthcoming work being undertaken in the orbit of impotentiality.

Session Summary: “Seasonal Cultures: Elements of Change”

Organisers: Hester Parr (University of Glasgow), Shawn Bodden (University of Glasgow), Hayden Lorimer (University of Edinburgh)

Presenters: Helen Wilson, Michelle Bastian, Shawn Bodden, Rowan Jaines, Maximilian Hepach, Frederick Hubble, Felicia Liu, Pablo Arboleda, Scott Bremer, Caitlin DeSilvey

Summary:

At this year’s RGS-IBG conference, we hosted two sessions on the theme of Seasonal Cultures. Our interest in seasonality and experiences of seasonal change took on additional significance within the context of the Chair’s theme of Climate Changed Geographies: in a series of terrific presentations, our sessions’ speakers described how learning to live amid disruptions to familiar seasonal rhythms and the emergence of new weather patterns has produced changing social, cultural, emotional and affective geographies of environmental life. A major theme across a number of the presentations was the importance of local and intimate seasons for understanding the changing cultural geographies of climate change. Presenters shared examples of how gardens, apple trees and bird migration can become sites of intimate encounter with the threat of climate change, but also of struggles to read local environments to discover ways to preserve cherished forms of life. A closely linked discussion emphasised the value of understanding seasons as sense-making in the face of disruption, anxiety and feelings of ‘global weirding’. Through rich examples from a range of geographical locations, such as accounts of a new ‘haze season’ in Southeast Asia or Norwegian beekeepers’ modification of seasonal repertoires of practice, presenters addressed ways in which communities interpreted, named and responded to changing patterns of weather and atmosphere. A final major interest was the digital mediation of seasonality. Public perceptions of seasonal patterns and disruptions can be shared through social media platforms, offering insight into experiences of climate change as well as opportunities for innovative, participatory and creative-led research methods. This is also reflected in the development of new forms of popular digital media to simulate seasonal atmospheres, such as Yule Log videos and other ‘ambient’ media. Seasons are not simply times of year we find ourselves in: people watch, learn from, respond and even seek to make them. The Seasonal Cultures sessions suggested new avenues for studying changing experiences of seasonality and opened up a number of key questions about how to learn from those particularly affected by seasonal change—be it through their profession, location, or mental health—and how to build new forms of supportive seasonal life together.

Mapping for a changing world: qualitative, arts-based, participatory methods

Organisers: Heather Miles (University of Manchester), Barbara Brayshay (Royal Holloway, University of London), Mike Duggan (King’s College London)

Presenters: Alice Gorman Eveleigh, Buck-Matthews, Ersilia Verlinghieri, Chiara Chiavaroli, Rachel Andrews,  Jina Lee, Heather Miles, Clare Qualmann

Summary:

The Mapping for a Changing World double session sought to showcase, and consider challenges and further development, of diverse and innovative mapping approaches. Different mapping approaches can focus on contrasting forms of data and knowledges, often simultaneously and as such are an important transdisciplinary method. The mapping approaches are valuable methods for social and cultural geographers to use together, with other geographers and other disciplines, and with other communities, when these collaborators have contrasting practices of knowledge-making. The mapping approaches explored in the sessions included creative arts-based mapping, deep mapping, GIS and qualitative GIS, body mapping, participatory creative mapping and walking approaches.

As such, our presenters and audience came from a range of different backgrounds, including different academic disciplines as well as practitioners outside academia, and from a range of mapping traditions, from GIS to art. The sessions attracted a large number of attendees (around 30) and each presentation, workshop and the end of session discussion prompted many audience questions and contributions. The discussions included the topics of positionality, project and map legacy, and how such projects can shape policy.

The double session provided both presenters’ reflections on using their different mapping methods (Session 1), as well as providing attendees with practical experience in using a creative and a walking method of mapping (Session 2). The creative aspects of the session reflected the recent increased uptake of creative methods in geography and explored the distinctive contribution such methods make to understanding people’s experience of place, space and environmental processes and practices.

The critique of critique: new perspectives on the future of critique

Organisers: Victoria Ridgway (Durham University), Philip Conway (Durham University)

Presenters: Victoria Ridgway, Philip Conway, Mark Jackson, Gediminas Lesutis, Maria Rusca, David Seitz

Summary:

This session discussed various modalities of critique, the possibilities to do critique otherwise or to let go of critique altogether. Several papers traced brief genealogies of critique, which emphasized its position as a prominent feature of the edification of the Enlightenment and its related subject positions, as well as its conflation with negative modes of interpretation that debunk and reveal. Participants’ engagements with the question of the ‘critique of critique‘ or ‘critique after critique’, mainly varied along the line of the possibility to carry on with critique, and the general critical ethos that supports much of academic work today. While some argued in favour of bettering critique either through more ambivalent, rigorous or ethically informed modes of interpretation, others argued for the subversion of critique through an engagement with more collective and caring modes of knowing. The papers contributed to advancing our understanding of what it means to be critical in cultural and social geography. They specifically engaged with the questions of what doing critique otherwise would look like, and how shifting our understanding of how different modes of criticism are already deployed outside of academia can help us better understand how people relate to the world. Furthermore, the discussion engaged through this session directly spoke to recent debates within cultural geography which question the mobilization of hope and affirmation in critique and politics, by opening this debate for further considerations of what more ambivalent modes of criticism could resemble.

Sounding Elements I & II :Listening to weathers, waters, atmospheres, and Listening across scales, measurements

Organisers: Samuel Hertz (Royal Holloway, University of London), Indira Lemouchi (Royal Holloway, University of London), Sasha Engelmann (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Presenters: Samuel Hertz, Indira Lemouchi, Sasha Engelmann, Nicola Di Croce, Eleni-Ira Panourgia, Carla J. Maier, Ivo Louro, Kat Austen, Kaya Barry, Margarida Mendes, Alex De Little

Summary:

The two sessions comprising our SCGRG-sponsored block ran successfully—with both sessions having an impressive turnout—and to an enthusiastic and engaged audience. Totalling nine presentations from 11 presenters over the two sessions, the block offered a wide range of experimental responses to concepts of sonic materialism and the elemental, fusing fields such as activism, public policy and data science to artistic responses in the form of architectural installations, field recording and dance film. Researchers and artists framed the ways in which sound offers new perspectives on grappling with changing landscapes, and in particular offered examples of how a sonic elementalism/sonic materialism may function as a geographic method itself.

The common trait shared amongst all presentations in the two sessions was an acknowledgement of sound’s potential to uncover new relationships between the practical effects of anthropogenic climate and environmental change, and the broader cultural and geographic ontological viewpoints that can be derived from participatory and experiential sonic methodologies. The presentations gracefully reinforced each other through a complex and

diverse set of practices, and both shared points of reference as well as shared terminologies suggested a strong conceptual and practical coherence between the previously undiscussed practices among the two sessions. Topics discussed included atmospheric acoustics of traditional Portuguese windmills, to workshops on inter-scalar listening, hacked instruments for listening to water as well as landscapes of drought.

The presenters and the conveners alike were very enthusiastic about each other’s presentations, and there was an immediate conversation following the end of the second session on developing further work in the form of a publication or special issue. The conveners are planning to meet at the end of September to discuss further possibilities and potential avenues within which to continue these exciting and generative conversations.

Indigenous ontologies, decoloniality and the naming of difference

Organisers: Mat Keel (Louisiana State University), Mitch Rose (Aberystwyth University)

Presenters:  Emily Hayes, Kate Maclean, Dumisani Moyo, Mariana Reyes, Mitch Rose

Summary:

The aim of the session was to explore new geographic work on indigenous ontologies. In particular we asked authors to explore the potential paradoxes imminent to the study of ingenious thought – i.e., the problem of acknowledging the radically different thinking of others without falling into the trap of essentialism. This was a theme that came through many (if not all the papers). For example, Emily Hayes’ paper explored Viveiros De Castro’s concept of multinaturalism and its antecedents in 19th century geographical thought. Kate Maclean, meanwhile, focused on the complexities of indigenous political identity, particularly when it intersects with political economies that exclude the experience of indigenous women. Similarly, Mariana Reyes examined two Brazilian museums – the Museum of Tomorrow and the Rio Art Museum – to illustrate the singular and reductive manner that indigeneity is represented within a museum space. In a slightly different vein. Dumisani Moyo, drew upon Mdembe’s notion of ‘necropolitics’ to query the appropriateness of concepts such as ‘indigeneity’ to characterize economic practices that are also exploitative. And Mitch Rose queried the alternative future that is often promised by work on indigenous ontologies, as well as critiqued the overall idea that there can be ‘better’ or ‘worse’ ontologies. All together the papers brought some critical questions to bear on the notion of indigeneity as well as its mobilization in various decolonial practices. Indeed, for many papers, the concept of indigenous ontologies – while useful for engaging how others think – also had the danger of reinforcing the strong ontological divides which are a hallmark of Western conceptions of difference. 

More-than-human archives: reflecting on geographers’ archival interventions

Organisers: Lena Ferriday (University of Bristol), Austin Read (University of Bristol)

Panelists:

Lena Ferriday, Austin Read, Jessica Lehman, Catherine Oliver, Merle Patchett, Hayden Lorimer

Summary:

This panel session on more-than-human archives and geography’s archival interventions prompted a rich and interesting discussion, featuring four mini presentations by each of the panellists where they presented a more-than-human archive that they work with, followed by a wide-ranging discussion involving the audience. The session drew upon and developed several key themes of cultural and social geography, including:

  1. Corporeality. The presentations and following discussions foregrounded, in multifaceted ways, the presence of raced, gendered and specied bodies in the archive. What emerged through the session was that geographical engagements with the archive are particularly crucial for sensing the fleshy, corporeal more-than-human bodies that both do archival work and are present in the archives. 
  2. Labour. The session focused both on the labour of the archival researcher and the other kinds of labours that make their research possible – in the session we heard about the labour of archivists, oceanographers, chickens, birds of paradise and rocks. This discussion of labour was conceptually rich and theoretically adventurous – for example, prompting musings about whether if a chicken egg is an archive, is a chicken an archivist? What emerged here was that cultural geographic approaches to more-than-human archives, then, are perhaps particularly useful for reflecting both on method – the work it takes to do historical research – and for analytically foregrounding the different forms of more-than-human work that the archive can lead us to. 
  3. Power. The session focused on the importance of taking a critical approach to archives, given that archives and archival work are both always-already saturated with power. We’ve also had been cautioned about taking an overly celebratory approach to “alternative” archives – even creative and insurgent archives have territorialising functions, silences and gaps. What emerged through this session was the importance of not trying to escape silences, instead paying attention to them by foregrounding the patches and the gaps in our knowledges and archival sources. We heard from multiple critical geographies, including affective and postcolonial geographies, but feminist analyses emerged as particularly essential. Feminist fieldwork ethics seems to inform how many social and cultural geographers are approaching the archive, foregrounding awareness of situated knowledges, of strong objectivity that does not fetishize “truth” or authority whilst remaining committed to the integrity of careful research and of notions of care and caregiving.  
  4. Particularity. The session celebrated source-led commitment to materials – including map collections, eggs, and feathers. They also reminded us of the importance of beginning with particular histories rather than abstract ontologies. Each panellist drew on passion, love or some other form of affective connection when present the archive that they work with.

In sum then, the session contributed to social and cultural geography by staging a broad discussion about one of its key methods – archival research – that opened expansive, creative dialogue on some of social and cultural geography’s key concerns, including questions of gender, power, race, affect, humanism, materiality, care, knowledge, and many others. 

SCGRG sponsored sessions at RGS-IBG 2022

This is a summary of the sessions sponsored by SCGRG at this year’s conference. For more information please see the conference programme available here https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/programme/

Session number Session title Session Organisers Format 
243, 251 Plural Environments and the Interdisciplinary Study of Disaster Amy Johnson et al In-person 
82 The ‘Green Shoots’ of Recovery: Signposts from Everyday Life in a Global Pandemic Rebecca Collins, Katharine Welsh Online 
181, 216 Geography’s Hidden Animals/Hidden Animal Geographies Hannah Dickinson, Catherine Oliver Hybrid 
86 Cultural and Social Geographies of Infection Prevention and Protection within interspecies communities (viral, microbial, plant, animals) Charlotte Veal, Emma Roe Hybrid 
214, 226 (Re)Imagining Crisis and Recovery: Social and Cultural Responses to Climate Change Amy Robson, Charlotte Veal In-person 
287 Food for thought: The political potentiality of mutual aid networks of food provision Oli Mould, Jenni Cole, Adam Badger In-person 
30, 308 To speak of love… Paul Harrison, Anna Secor, Mikko Joronen In-person 

SCGRG RGS-IBG 2021 Sponsored Sessions

We’re very much looking forward to the upcoming RGS-IBG 2021 conference and our sponsored sessions. Information with links to our sponsored sessions can be found below:

Wednesday 1st September

9.00 – 10.40 BST

##conf1115 Imagined, imaginative, and imaginary geographies (1)

Chairs: Olivia Mason and James Riding

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/94/conf1115-imagined-imaginative-and-imaginary-geographies-1

11.00 – 12.40 BST

##conf1275 Legacies of austerity: Creative explorations of lingering austerity (1)

Chairs: Sander van Lanen and Sarah Marie Hall

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/409/conf1275-legacies-of-austerity-creative-explorations-of-lingering-austerity

1.20 – 2.20 BST

##conf1196 Animal Mobilities: Reconsidering Animal Geography and Mobility Studies (1)

Chair: Anna Guasco

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/205/conf1196-animal-mobilities-reconsidering-animal-geography-and-mobility-studies-1

3.00 – 4.40 BST

##conf1190 Non-representational geographies: approaches, methods and practices

Chairs: Amy Barron and Andrew Maclaren

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/198/conf1190-non-representational-geographies-approaches-methods-and-practices

##conf1217 Borders and Contemporary Social and Cultural Geography

Chairs: Ben Anderson, Tara Woodyer, Will Andrews and Osian Elias

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/241/conf1217-borders-and-contemporary-social-and-cultural-geography

##conf1254 Legacies of austerity: what, who, and when does it leave behind? (2)

Chairs: Sander van Lanen and Sarah Marie Hall

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/473/conf1254-legacies-of-austerity-what-who-and-when-does-it-leave-behind-2

Thursday 2nd September

9.00 – 10.40 BST

##conf1096 At home with Bourdieu (1)

Chairs: Adriana Mihaela Soaita, Chris Foye and Lois Liao

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/345/conf1096-at-home-with-bourdieu-1

##conf1105 Elemental borderscapes: materialities, politics, and encounters (1)

Chairs: James Riding and Carl Dahlman

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/75/conf1105-elemental-borderscapes-materialities-politics-and-encounters-1

3.00 – 4.40 BST

##conf1076 From Identity to Identification: Vernacularization of Asian Borders

Chairs: Po-Yi Hung and June Wang

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/313/conf1076-from-identity-to-identification-vernacularization-of-asian-borders

5.00 – 6.40 BST

##conf1034 Navigating, disrupting and re-working the borders of multiple citizenships (2)

Chairs: Kahina Meziant and John Clayton

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/56/conf1034-navigating-disrupting-and-re-working-the-borders-of-multiple-citizenships-2

Friday 3rd September

11.00 – 12.40 BST

##conf1134 “I’m a Geographer”: Stories of academic identity

Chairs: Emma Waight, Becky Alexis-Martin and Gail Skelly

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/122/conf1134-im-a-geographer-stories-of-academic-identity

##conf1135 Monuments, Memory, #Memes

Chairs: Martin Zebracki and Jason Luger

https://event.ac2021.exordo.com/session/123/conf1135-monuments-memory-memes

Postgraduate Forum Twitter Conference – apply to present

The Postgraduate Forum Twitter Conference will be taking place from Tuesday 25 to Thursday 27 August.

What is the PGF Twitter Conference?

This conference is an opportunity for PhD students in geography and related disciplines to share their research with the wider geography community on Twitter.

The PGF recognise that many people will have been preparing materials for conferences that have now been postponed or cancelled, and so they decided to run this event in the absence of such conferences (for example, the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference). If you have work you’d like to share which you had planned to present at any conference, or indeed any new findings you’d like to share with the academic world, please consider applying to present!

How does it work?

Participants will be grouped into sessions with others carrying out research in a similar field. You’ll be given 15 minutes to share 5 tweets which showcase your work, and 15 minutes to respond to any comments in a ‘live’ Q&A. With just 280 characters per Tweet, you’ll need to think about creative ways of demonstrating your findings, for example by creating a short video or GIF to accompany your text. If your application is successful, you will be sent a detailed presenters’ guide to ensure you’re well prepared to share and discuss your research with as wide an audience as possible!

The deadline for submissions is Friday 24 July.

For more details, please visit the PGF website at https://rgspostgradforum.org/rgs-ibg-postgraduate-forum-twitter-conference-2020.

Webinars, conferences and podcasts on doing research during a pandemic

The below webinars from the UK Data Service offer guidance on the different kinds of data available for investigating particular geographical issues in the UK (political behaviour, mental health, religion, etc), and how to access and approach these data sets. There are also many live events online discussing how research methods and approaches might adapt to the new situation we find ourselves in – such as the NVivo conference below – that might be of interest. It’s also worth checking out the National Centre for Research Methods mini-podcasts series, in which they share methodological developments, research findings and ideas, and discuss their potential and actual impact.

NVivo virtual conference, 23rd September 2020

Hear from experts and doctoral students on how they are adapting their research (or not) due to the changed research landscape during Covid-19. Registration opens July 2020.  https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/nvivo-virtual-conference

UK Data Service

Dissertation projects: Introduction to secondary analysis for qualitative and quantitative data

Slides available here

Key issues in Reusing Data

https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/media/622714/web_reusingdata21may2020.pdf

Finding Data in the UK Data Service

Slides available here

Using UK Data Service in dissertations

Webinars

The following webinars discuss a variety of geographic issues that have used different data sets:

Investigating political behaviour in the UK – what data can I use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjeEK8LrZNg&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=12&t=0s

Investigating Religion in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZkRm6yFwU&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=15&t=72s

Investigating mental health in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhSu0-IqwuE&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=24&t=0s

Investigating obesity in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znr5r153R54&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=44&t=0s

Research using Youth and Young Adult Data in Understanding Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r66TKL5sbzg&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=52&t=0s

Geography and Longitudinal Data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw_6QA_KfCs&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=54&t=0s

Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZLd1uBON8I&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=72&t=0s

Introduction to data on ethnicity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-TA0AIJh1U&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=88

Introduction to data on ageing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5N12075QNM&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=94

Podcasts

The following National Centre for Research Methods podcasts provide useful resources on online methods: 

Making space for Big Qual: New ideas in research methods and teaching. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=59&title=Making

Teaching Big Qual: Benefits and challenges for students and teachers. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=60&title=Teaching

Mind the gap: Why skills are key to data reuse. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=54&title=Mind

Mind the gap: Why skills are key to data reuse. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=54&title=Mind

Using Social Media in Research. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=24&title=Using

Call for RGS-IBG 2020 sponsored sessions

The RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) would like to invite expressions of interest for sponsored sessions for the RGS-IBG 2020 Annual Conference, which will take place in London from Tuesday 1 to Friday 4 September 2020.

The theme for the 2020 Annual Conference, chaired by Professor Uma Kothari, is borders, borderlands and bordering.

SCGRG is keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme but also those sessions that engage with broader issues of contemporary concern to social and cultural geographers.

You can find out more about the theme at: https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/chair-s-theme/  

 When designing your session proposals please take note of the following:

  1. A session cannot occupy more than two timeslots on the conference programme unless this has been pre-arranged with the RGS team. Those seeking more than one timeslot should consider co-sponsorship (i.e. splitting sponsorship so as to have a sponsor for each time slot).
  2. Each attendee can only make two substantive contributions to the conference programme (e.g. as paper presenter, panel member, discussant). A substantive contribution is defined as one where the individual concerned needs to be present in the session room, and so can include session organiser if attendance is necessary. For individuals proposing multiple co-authored papers, an alternative presenter must be clearly nominated at the time of submitting the session/paper.

You can find the RGS guidelines for session proposals at: 

https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/programme-(1)/guidance-for-session-organisers/  

You are welcome to propose joint sessions to be co-sponsored by another research group.

Please send expressions of interest including the below information by Friday 3rd January at 6pm. We will inform applicants of the outcome by 10th January.

 (i) Title of session;

(ii) Name of Co-sponsoring groups, if applicable

(iii) Name and Contact Details for Session Convenors

(iv) Abstract, outlining scope of session – 200 words max.

(v) Number of session timeslots that are sought – please note:  this year a session may not occupy more than 2 time slots unless this has been pre-agreed with the RGS.

(vi) Indication of session format

 Proposals for, or questions about, SCGRG sponsored sessions should be sent to Will Andrews w.andrews@bangor.ac.uk

SCGRG AGM 2019 and Committee vacancies

The 2019 AGM of the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) will take place at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference in London on Friday 30th August at 13:10 (Venue forthcoming).  All are welcome to attend.

We have six vacancies for Committee positions as current post-holders complete their terms of office:

Chair

This post is a three-year term (in the first instance) and the role involves coordination of the group’s activities.  Each year the chair prepares the annual report with the Secretary and the Treasurer, and provides an interim report at the AGM in August/September.  The Chair normally attends the RGS-IBG Research Groups Committee at the RGS, normally in October and March.  The chair will usually be involved in SCGRG’s wider committee activities i.e. part of the judging panel for our undergraduate dissertation prize.   

Education Officer

This post is a three-year term (in the first instance) and the role involves leading the research group’s education-related activities.  The education officer will liaise with the RHED officer of the RGS-IBG, and other research groups where appropriate, to coordinate the development of education and outreach events and resources.  The education officer will also liaise with the Early career and mentoring Officer to assist with the development of events, resources, and networks to support members.  The education officer would usually be involved in SCGRG’s wider committee activities i.e. part of the judging panel for our undergraduate dissertation prize.

Conference Officer

This post is a key and important role for the group. The conference officer leads the coordination the group’s sponsorship and organisation of sessions at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference each year and other events and activities. The role involves compiling call for sessions proposals, liaising with session proposers, and organising the vote on the proposals by the committee.  The conference officer would usually be involved in SCGRG’s wider committee activities i.e. part of the judging panel for our undergraduate dissertation prize.

Ordinary Committee Member (x 1)

This post is a three-year term (in the first instance).  While without specific responsibilities, ordinary committee members would usually be involved in the SCGRG’s wider committee activities i.e. part of the judging panel for our undergraduate dissertation prize.  Ordinary committee members may also be asked to provide support for named roles.

Postgraduate Representatives (x 2)

This post is a one-year term (in the first instance) and the role involves liaising with the RGS-IBG Postgraduate Forum, engaging with postgraduate issues through our SCGRG postgraduate blog and working with our other postgraduate representative(s) on related events and activities. The PG representative would usually be involved in SCGRG’s wider committee activities, i.e. part of the judging panel for our undergraduate dissertation prize.

Nominations for successors (who must be a Fellow or Postgraduate Fellow of the RGS-IBG) are now open. Nominations must be in writing to the Chair (Prof. Harriet Hawkins – Harriet.Hawkins@rhul.ac.uk) and Secretary (Richard Scriven – r.scriven@umail.ucc.ie) with the name of two nominators (these need not be Fellows of the RGS-IBG or existing committee members).  The deadline for nominations is Friday 23rd August 2019.  The elections will be conducted at the AGM itself.

Further opportunities to be elected to a named role or as an ordinary committee member may become available during the AGM itself. We’ll also be discussing different ways that our wider membership can get involved with SCGRG.

If you have any questions about any of the above posts or about SCGRG more broadly, please e-mail Harriet and Richard.

Social and Cultural Geography sponsored sessions at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference 2019

We are pleased to announce our list of sponsored sessions for the forthcoming Royal Geographical Society annual conference that will take place 27th – 31st August 2019. This year we are sponsoring 12 sessions for the annual conference. If you are interested in submitting a paper to a session for the conference, please contact the session conveners.

Postgraduate Snapshots of Trouble and Hope

Will Jamieson, Royal Holloway, University of London William.jamieson.2017@live.rhul.ac.uk
Amy Walker, Cardiff University walkerA13@cardiff.ac.uk

Abstract:
We live in troubling times, and in troubled places. Indeed, politically, economically and ecologically, trouble has acquired an inconceivable planetary dimension, cumulating with significant social and cultural transformation. When we situate these troubling times in spaces and places, they open up possibilities of rupture, alterity, and hope. If ‘staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present’ (Haraway 2016: 1), how can we as geographers make our concepts and theories ‘present’ to the trouble at hand? This session intends to explore ways in which Postgraduate Social and Cultural Geographers are ‘staying with the trouble’ to uncover these spaces of hope, possibility, and rupture, which lie embedded within existing social orders and cultural practices. Presenters are encouraged to explore how we can think through and with geographies of trouble and hope, and how we can make this dialectic present to surpass the impasse of our troubling times.

Each presentation will be centred round a single ‘Snapshot’ (whether an image, artefact, quotation, soundbite, field diary entry, or mini-video clip) which will form the focal point for 8-10 minute contributions. The Snapshot is intended to be either a literal or metaphorical prompt through which the topic of the presentation can be represented. As such it is envisaged that the snapshot will be the main artefact around which each contribution is orientated. We thus encourage participants to think critically about and fully utilise the trajectories, tensions, and textures of their snapshots as a means of enlivening understandings of their chosen topic.

‘Building better worlds’: utopian and dystopian speculative fictions

Richard Scriven, National University of Ireland Galway, r.scriven@umail.ucc.ie

Abstract:
Speculative fiction – including science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural fiction – articulates a vast range of human hopes and troubles through metaphor, analogy, and imagination. In different media and embodied practices, creators and audiences (co)produce new beings, planets, and landscapes replete with utopian and dystopian tropes. Reality is reflected and refracted in the compassionate humanity of Star Trek, the struggles of good and evil in Harry Potter, the post-apocalyptic challenges of the Fallout video games, and in countless other universes. This session explores speculative fictions as layered terrains that interweave contemporary and historic social, cultural, and political concerns with imaginative capacities. Papers are invited that critically engage with these topics, including (but not limited to) the representations of socio-political issues, the generation of new worlds, the disruptive faculties of fiction, gender and identity portrayals, the innovation of fanfics and cosplay, the solidarities of conventions and fan groups, and the relevance of escapism. Contributors are encouraged to creatively present their papers through the use of performance, participation, materials, and audio-visual cues.

The geographies of loneliness and solitude

Eleanor Wilkinson, Southampton University
Sarah Marie Hall, Manchester University
Alison Stenning, Newcastle University

Abstract:
This session seeks to provide a critical, geographical reflection into the so-called ‘epidemic’ of loneliness. Loneliness has been positioned as a pressing health concern, depicted as a risk to both physical and mental wellbeing, but also as a socio-economic issue of inequality. The rise in solo living, geographically distant kinship networks, and declining community bonds are all seen as potential factors that have resulted in this rise in loneliness. People are seen to be living increasingly isolated and detached lives, and this is something which people may increasingly be reflecting on and working to mitigate in their everyday lives. In this context, in 2018 the UK government published the first ‘strategy for tackling loneliness’, which set out ‘to build personal and community resilience’. Yet missing from this strategy is the role that austerity measures may have had in intensifying loneliness. Austerity has resulted in the closures of social infrastructures that offered the potential for connection, such as libraries and children centres, and has also led to housing and welfare reforms that have displaced people from the communities in which they once lived.

The session will also seek to move beyond framing loneliness as a ‘problem’, to examine what Denise Riley has termed ‘the right to be lonely’. Central here is the idea that to be alone is not the same as to be abandoned. In the context of the remaking of domestic and local spaces in austerity, for example, some are being expected to share everyday space in ways that are experienced as uncomfortable or undesirable. What might it mean to desire solitude, and what if our problem might not be disconnection, but too much closeness? This session will reflect upon how solitude may be an integral part of people’s mental wellbeing and ask how this broader discussion of the geographies of solitude might speak back to dominant policy concerns around loneliness.

In these ways, this session seeks to think about geographies of loneliness and solitude both as spaces of trouble and as spaces of hope. We welcome submissions that explore geographies of loneliness and solitude, connection and disconnection, at a variety of scales and in a range of geographical contexts.

Collective Feelings and Contemporary Conditions

Ben Anderson, Durham University, ben.anderson@durham.ac.uk
Helen Wilson, Durham University helen.f.wilson@durham.ac.uk

Abstract:
How can we sense, diagnose, and present the multiple ‘collective feelings’ that constitute contemporary conditions? What particular challenges do collective feelings pose for conceptualisation, research, and (re)presentation in the social sciences and humanities in the midst of ongoing interest in spaces of affect and emotion? The sessions will explore these questions at a time of apparent ‘crisis’ during which large-scale, societal moods are frequently invoked by commentators as causes of a range of today’s geographies of ‘trouble and hope’. For example, the emergence of various populisms and events, including the election of Donald Trump and Brexit, have been explained in relation to the feeling of being ‘left behind’, hope for something better, or rage at disempowerment, whilst climate change has been connected to a widespread sense of futility and hopelessness mixed with denial. In relation to the widespread claim of the role of collective feeling, the session has two aims. First, to map the relations between specific collective feelings and conditions (including but not limited to the ascendency of the right, crises of liberalism, precarity, transformations in racial capitalism and settler colonialisms, climate crisis and species loss) and events (including but not limited to Brexit, the election of Trump, and the advent of new social movements). Second, to stay with the challenges of conceptualising collective feeling in the midst of the emergence of concepts such as atmosphere, mood, and structures of feeling.

Hypersurfaces: exploring the geographies of multi-dimensional bodies

Mark Holton, University of Plymouth mark.holton@plymouth.ac.uk
Catherine Wilkinson, Edge Hill University catherine.wilkinson@edgehill.ac.uk
Samantha Wilkinson, Manchester Metropolitan University samantha.wilkinson@mmu.ac.uk

Abstract
The intimate turn in Geography has renewed engagement in bodies as visceral spaces of encounter that contain complex material, symbolic, emotional and affective dimensions (Price, 2013). Yet, while bodies are often demarcated – presenting the edges as margins, or a kind of hinterland – we question whether these edges could, in fact, represent frontiers, opportunities to extend the body beyond its ‘fleshiness’. We term this ‘hypersurface’ – the multiple and unspecified dimensions of the body’s edges through which corporeal practices are performed – to enquire how bodies’ materialities (skin, hair, nails etc.) can exist in, on and beyond the body in different and competing ways. We invite opportunities to think critically about how the features of the body that exist on, around or beyond its surface(s) might characterise, define and categorise identities and positionalities. These dimensions include – but are not limited to – skin, head/body hair, nails teeth etc. and how these inscribe (e.g. tattoos, scarring, make up etc.) and augment (e.g. hair/nail extensions, teeth veneers etc.) the body. Moreover, bodily absences (e.g. through alopecia, medically-induced hair loss, or congenital limb absence, amputation and prosthesis) carry equal importance, specifically in challenging perceived ‘acceptable’ dimensions of the body (Wilkinson et al., 2018).

We invite contributions that explore:
• How/whether the body’s surface/materialities contributes to intimate, emotional and affective geographies.
• In what manner bodies are performed at the edges of the body (e.g. hair/beauty practices etc.).
• The social construction of bodily routines (e.g. hair removal, make up application, body covering/exposure etc.).
• In what way the body’s surfaces might position identities in society (e.g. cultural practices etc.).

Alternative Spaces of Learning

Menusha De Silva, Singapore Management University menushads@smu.edu.sg
Orlando Woods, Singapore Management University orlandowoods@smu.edu.sg

Abstract:
Learning is a continuous, life-long process. It engages with diverse ways of knowing. In comparison, education is the formalisation of learning, and is rooted in hegemonic understandings of knowledge. Education is but one form of learning, to which many alternatives exist. For most individuals, formal education and informal practices of learning are integrated into one holistic framework of understanding. Yet, whilst the geographies of education have tended to focus on formal spaces of education (notably, state-funded schools and universities), they do not fully capture the range of learning spaces and experiences that are defined and shaped by our subject positions and journeys through life. In this session, we aim to broaden the geographies of education by exploring “alternative spaces of learning” within and beyond spaces of formal education. We invite papers that engage with the following questions:

• What constitutes alternative spaces of learning, in terms of pedagogies, students, temporalities?
• How can alternative spaces of learning offer hope to individuals in troubled times?
• How do these spaces problematize and/or align with hegemonic understandings of learning?
• Do understandings of alternative education and learning vary geographically?
• What are the spatialities that emerge from these contestations of global and/or localised understandings of learning?

Crafting Alterity: Hopeful Geographies of Creativity and Making

Rebecca Collins, University of Chester, rebecca.collins@chester.ac.uk
Dr Thomas Smith, Masaryk University, smith@fss.muni.cz

Abstract:
The geographical literature on craft and creative practices continues to grow apace (e.g. Price & Hawkins, 2017; Carr & Gibson, 2017). With this session, we seek contributions which trace the transformations brought forth by material engagement in various sites of vernacular and everyday creativity – not least transformations in understanding our being-in-the-world, material affordances, meaningful work, and alternative conceptions of embodied sustainable practices such as maintenance and repair.

Potential considerations include:
• Which practices do diverse craft spaces and communities encourage (or not) to counter unsustainable modes of living?
• Given that craft has been highlighted as key to grappling with the value-action gap in sustainability research (Coeckelbergh, 2015), what role can embodiment and skill play in sustainability transitions (see Royston, 2017)?
• What scales, temporal and spatial, are relevant in such (often slow and place-specific) practices, given the urgency of our ecological predicament?
• Amidst a growing recognition of certain crafts as endangered ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (HCA, 2017), and in tandem with the ‘dematerialisation’ of societies in the global North, how do skills linger in the landscape, and how does this affect socio-cultural resilience (Carr, 2017)?

We particularly welcome methodologically innovative research grounded in the messy materiality of the workshop, as well as heretofore lacking perspectives from beyond the global North.

More-than-human haunted landscapes: trace-ing binaries of hope/desolation

Adam Searle, University of Cambridge aeds2@cam.ac.uk
Jonathon Turnbull, University of Cambridge jjt44@cam.ac.uk

Abstract
Landscapes bear traces of hope and desolation. They are at once the physical manifestation of geologic time and the coming together of living and nonliving things, reminders of the past through iterations of the future. These traces haunt landscapes, they are active and inter/active of what Derrida would name hauntologies, methodological invitations to consider what is through attention to what isn’t. Landscapes are haunted in multifarious ways (e.g. through extinction, nuclear disaster, contamination) and the traces of haunting events refute the concept of singularity in meaning. What do haunted landscapes have in common? Their traces are material, for example, through geological imprints or altered ecological relations; but they are simultaneously virtual, culturally and affectively powerful, troublesome and stimulating. Haunted landscapes allow the binary of hope/desolation to function, often bringing promise with despair, engendering a dialectic between utopia and dystopia. With this panel, we invite papers interested in these traces which allow the binary of hope/desolation to function, asking how we can learn from each empirical haunting. In particular we encourage research at the intersections of human/animal/plant/geological worlds, and how the constellations of these shared existences inspire novel modes of understanding geographies of landscape, and the interrelations of existence and environment.

Geographies of alienation/alienating geographies

Jay Emery, University of Leicester jde7@le.ac.uk
Katy Bennett, University of Leicester, kjb33@le.ac.uk

Abstract:
This session aims to initiate a geographical research agenda focussed on the concept of alienation. We are often told by the media and political figures that certain demographics are alienated, and that political institutions or spaces are alienating. Moreover, these alienations are claimed to be generative of the populist politics and democratic ruptures of recent times. Harvey (2018), in a Marxian framework of alienation, has recently argued that alienation is so widespread as to be ‘universal’. Harvey suggests that neoliberal political economies are at the root of this ‘universal alienation,’ however, other geographers use alienation as a descriptor for the opposite or absence of belonging. Like belonging, the meaning of alienation can appear axiomatic and self-explanatory. Yet, despite apparently being at the centre of our current political and social malaise, alienation is rarely defined, theorised or examined as a concept or affective state. Aside Marx’s theorisations, little has been propositioned regards how alienation is formed, how it feels as an affective intensity or how it can be mediated. Acknowledging the clear geographical dimensions of alienation, this session engages directly with the chair’s theme by centring the supposed root of so much of the world’s troubles and barriers to hope.

The Geographies of Folk Horror: from the Strange Rural to the Urban Wyrd

Julian Holloway, Manchester Metropolitan University j.j.holloway@mmu.ac.uk
James Thurgill, The University of Tokyo jthurgill@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstract:
Over approximately the last decade, Folk Horror has seen increasing popularity in films, blogs, books and on internet fan pages. Folk Horror concerns itself with marginal and liminal landscapes that in various ways are active in the production of the horrific. Folk Horror’s landscapes are predominantly rural, coding the countryside as oppositional to modernity and capable of hosting ancient secrets ready to be revived or unearthed to the terror of the outsider. Folk Horror’s texts and practices revel in the idea that underneath the superficial solitude of the pastoral, malevolent forces work to promote acts of unspeakable violence. Beyond the landscape itself, the ‘folk’ of Folk Horror also deliver a sense of disquiet: its communities, with their forgotten or erased practices and rituals are central to the horrific, often committing atrocities themselves in order to satisfy the lore that protects the land.

The reach of Folk Horror arguably extends beyond the rural through the Urban Wyrd, wherein the cracks in the sheen of the cosmopolitan urban let forth the ghosts of occluded pasts and disturbing practices. This session therefore seeks to bring together those interested in Folk Horror, the Strange Rural, the Gothic countryside or the Urban Wyrd.

Papers are invited on the following non-exhaustive list of topics:

• Defining and characterising Folk Horror geographies.
• Representing the rural in Folk Horror.
• The cultural politics of Folk Horror and its geographies.
• The folk of Folk Horror.
• The horror of Folk Horror, its affects and atmospheres.
• Survivals, remnants and the place of time in Folk Horror.
• The ‘revival’ in interest in Folk Horror, its significance and implications.
• Living with and in the ‘Strange Rural’.
• Geographies of Folk Horror beyond the rural – the Urban Wyrd.
• Hauntology and Folk Horror.
• Psychogeography and Folk Horror.
• Folk Horror and Nationhood.
• Soundscaping Folk Horror and Wyrd Folk music.
• Geographic readings of contemporary Folk Horror films, fiction, art and craft practices.

Time and Austerity: Troubled pasts/ hopeful futures?

Stephanie Denning, Coventry University, stephanie.denning@coventry.ac.uk
Sarah Marie Hall, University of Manchester, sarah.m.hall@manchester.ac.uk
Ruth Raynor, Newcastle University, ruth.raynor@newcastle.ac.uk

Abstract:
In September 2018, the UK Prime Minister Theresa May claimed that ‘austerity is over’. This announcement was made after a decade of austerity policies, the everyday effects of which geographers have explored. These sessions engage with the question of time and austerity: they consider how, after the naming of an ‘end,’ austerity will endure, and continue to be endured. We take stock of current research on austerity in human geography and consider where it is heading. In the first session, lightning talks and interactive displays will showcase creative practice approaches to austerity research including a play by Ruth Raynor, an everyday austerity zine developed with Sarah Marie Hall, and ‘poverty response’ photo voice by Stephanie Denning. These will generate discussion with session participants about the place of participatory, activist and socially engaged research in the geographies of austerity. For the second session, conference papers will question the multiple and complex durations of austerity. This will include projects that are in their preliminary stages of research, and those which focus on the future of austerity. Together these two sessions will enable us to explore time and austerity: bringing together hope and trouble in the past, present and anticipated futures of austerity.

Intergenerational and family perspectives on mobility, migration and care

Co-sponsorship sought from the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group, and the Population Geography Research Group.

Matej Blazek, Newcastle University
Ruth Cheung Judge, UCL
James Esson, Loughborough University

Abstract:
Intergenerational care is a central aspect in numerous forms of mobility. For instance, the care needs of ageing populations drive worker movement (Anderson and Shutes 2014; Connell and Walton-Roberts 2016). Negotiations over the appropriate allocation and distribution of care for children and the elderly underpin family migration and transnational family arrangements (Baldassar 2016) and reflect the way mobility is deeply implicated in the constant renegotiation of kinship norms. Notions of care and family are central to transnational policies in areas such as child protection (Hoang et al. 2015). Thus, the politics of inequality, interdependency, exploitation or progressive change often coalesce around how intergenerational care and mobility are experienced, governed, altered and negotiated (Maksim and Bergman 2009).

This session invites further examination of connections between care, transnational mobility, and intergenerational and family relations. It asks how material and intersubjective power relations – and social and physical spaces – are maintained, produced and transformed at the intersections between these forces. The session will speak to and draw connections between these issues in both global North and South. We invite papers analysing how intergenerational and family care – understood as culturally produced rather than universal notions – shape mobility within and across national borders; and how methodological and theoretical insights on the experiences of mobility can generate fresh perspectives on the politics of family relations and care. In doing so, the session hopes to bring scholarship on care, mobility and migration, and the family into closer conversation for fresh perspectives on troubled and hopeful politics.

Specific themes to address include, but are not limited to:

• In-family and intergenerational care commitments as drivers of insecure migration
• How immigration politics challenge or are challenged by the politics of care
• Racialised, gendered and aged experiences of mobility and immobility driven by family care
• Family ideals, life-course aspirations, and intergenerational contracts as central to theorising mobility and migration
• Multi-scalar links between the intimacy of intergenerational caring relationships and global mobilities and migrations
• Political economies of family care mobilities
• How spaces and places are materially and socially (re)made through care mobilities

 

Call for sessions – RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London 2019

*DEADLINE FOR SESSION PROPOSALS EXTENDED UNTIL MONDAY 17TH DECEMBER 6PM*

The RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) would like to invite expressions of interest for sponsored sessions for the RGS-IBG 2019 Annual Conference, which will take place in London from Wednesday 28 to Friday 30 August 2019.

The theme for the 2019 Annual Conference, chaired by Professor Hester Parr, is Geographies of trouble / geographies of hope.

SCGRG is keen to sponsor sessions that directly relate to the conference theme but also those sessions that engage with broader issues of contemporary concern to social and cultural geographers.

You can find out more about the theme at: https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rgs.org%2Fresearch%2Fannual-international-conference%2Fchair-s-theme%2F&data=01%7C01%7Cowenj4%40CARDIFF.AC.UK%7C403112669b9541145cd108d6597c53eb%7Cbdb74b3095684856bdbf06759778fcbc%7C1&sdata=sNA6RRrgk4vLZ2RYnP2OiJCCqzIJikfgkLBBeGUDY6c%3D&reserved=0

When designing your session proposals please take note of the following:

1.  A session cannot occupy more than two timeslots on the conference programme unless this has been pre-arranged with the RGS team. Those seeking more than one timeslot should consider co-sponsorship (i.e. splitting sponsorship so as to have a single sponsor for each time slot).

2.  Each attendee can only make two substantive contributions to the conference programme (e.g. as paper presenter, panel member, discussant). A substantive contribution is defined as one where the individual concerned needs to be present in the session room, and so can include session organiser if attendance is necessary. For individuals proposing multiple co-authored papers, an alternative presenter must be clearly nominated at the time of submitting the session/paper.

SCGRG is able to sponsor 12 timeslots and you are welcome to propose joint sessions to be co-sponsored by another research group.

Please send expressions of interest including the below information. We will inform applicants of the outcome by 22nd December.

(i) Title of session;
(ii) Name of Co-sponsoring groups, if applicable
(iii) Name and Contact Details for Session Convenors
(iv) Abstract, outlining scope of session – 200 words max.
(v) Number of session timeslots that are sought – please note:  a session may not occupy more than 2 time slots unless this has been pre-agreed with the RGS.
(vi) Indication of session format

Proposals for, or questions about, SCGRG sponsored sessions should be sent to Laura Prazeres:  Laura.Prazeres@st-andrews.ac.uk