RGS-IGB Postgraduate Forum Mid-term Conference 2018

Back in April, Royal Holloway, University of London had the pleasure of holding the RGS-IGB Postgraduate Forum Mid-term conference! Blessed with unseasonably beautiful weather, we welcomed nearly 100 PhD students and early career researchers to leafy Egham! It was great to have so many people make the journey to us from across the globe join us for a few days of amazing conference presentations, posters, workshops, keynote speeches and all around great company! (In addition to what we hope was great food and drinks and that 100% Instagram-able Founders pic!)

RGS-IBG Mid Term Conference 2018: Call For Papers

The next RGS-IBG Postgraduate Forum Mid-Term Conference is being held at
Royal Holloway, University of London over the 18th-20th April 2018.

Hosted by PhD students in the Department of Geography, this event provides a great opportunity for postgraduate students to present their research and discuss new ideas in a relaxed, friendly and supportive environment.

Postgraduates from all stages of their research are welcome to present, and the conference provides an ideal opportunity for first-time presenters, or those preparing for other conferences or their PhD Viva. If you want an opportunity to practice your presenting skills or to network with fellow postgraduate geographers, this event aims to foster a relaxed and informal space to discuss your research, offering a diverse and often interdisciplinary array of topics.

On top of a packed programme of paper and poster presentations, the registration fee (£60) will also include: workshops, keynote speeches, research working group meet and greet sessions, a drinks reception and three-course meal on the Thursday evening.

The call for papers is currently open, and the conference invites any submissions from postgraduate researchers from all areas of geography, proposals may focus around a specific paper or chapter, a research project or thesis more generally, or topics relating to research methods and fieldwork (whether successful or challenging).

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words along with four keywords, your full name and university, and your intention to present a poster or paper to rgsmidterm@rhul.ac.uk by no later than Friday 19th January 2018.

To find out more and apply please visit the conference website the http://www.pgf.rgs.org/mid-term-conference-2018/

Please follow  @RGSmidterm2018 for more information and regular updates.

If you have any additional enquiries regarding the conference, feel free to contact the organisers at: RGSMidterm@rhul.ac.uk

 

CFP: Labour and life: changing geographies of the workplace

Call for Papers for the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers Annual International Conference, 29 Aug – 1 Sep 2017, London, UK.

Session sponsored by the Economic Geography Research Group.

 

Labour and life: changing geographies of the workplace

 

This session will reflect on changes to capitalist work, its spatial constitution, and the consequent relations between labour and life. Classic accounts of the capitalist labour process emphasised disciplinary power, exercised through workplaces bounded in time and space, and producing a degradation of both work and workers (Braverman 1974; Wright 2006). Today, organisational theorists emphasise a capitalist ‘biocracy’ in which a range of life abilities are ‘put to work’ through the blurring of boundaries between work and non-work spaces, times and identities (Fleming 2014; Gregg 2011). Far from heralding a new halcyon era of creative labour, for some these developments have gone hand in hand with growing precarity, intensified labour exploitation and a suffocating ideology of work.

 

These arguments over changing relations between labour and life need critical engagement. In particular, geographical scholarship usefully resists all-encompassing accounts of changing capitalist work cultures, instead focusing on how the organisation and experience of work are shaped by particular and varying workplace geographies. The geographies of workplaces have been a recurrent but underexplored aspect of labour geographies (e.g. Castree 2007; Crang 1994; Henry & Massey 1995; Kanngieser 2013; McDowell 2009; McMorran 2012; Stein 1995). This session will foreground current scholarship in this area. The intention is for two ‘modules’ with four presentations in each. Potential foci for contributions include:

 

•  The theorisation of workplace geographies;

•  Workplaces as sites of discipline and / or biopower;

•  Workplaces as sites of pleasure and vitality;

•  Digital socio-materialities and the re-making of workplace geographies;

•  Workplace architectures and affective atmospheres;

•  Labour resistance and the politics of ‘anti-work’;

•  Gendered geographies of the workplace;

•  Creative methods for researching working life.

 

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Philip Crang, via email at p.crang@rhul.ac.uk, by 7 February 2017. We will endeavour to contact all abstract authors with a response by 13 February.

 

Convenors:

 

Adam Badger, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London. Email: adam.badger.2012@live.rhul.ac.uk

Philip Crang, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London. Email: p.crang@rhul.ac.uk (corresponding convenor)

Katy Lawn, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London. Email: katy.lawn.2015@live.rhul.ac.uk

 

CFP: Networks of Knowledge: Communicating Geographical Knowledge in the Long Nineteenth Century

Call for Papers
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, London, 29 August–1 September 2017.

Networks of Knowledge: Communicating Geographical Knowledge in the Long Nineteenth Century

Sponsored by the Historical Geography Research Group

Convened by: Benjamin Newman, Royal Holloway, University of London & Royal Geographical Society (w. IBG) & Innes M. Keighren, Royal Holloway, University of London.

The long nineteenth century witnessed a spike in the production and dissemination of geographical knowledge—a consequence of imperialism and scientific exploration on the one hand, and of improvements in the technologies of print and visual illustration on the other. Whether in the guise of thrilling accounts of heroic “discovery”, or more mundane records of empirical observation, such geographical knowledge was communicated to growing popular and professional audiences through books, periodicals, illustrated lectures, and exhibitions. The development of geographical societies and disciplinary periodicals during this period facilitated the dissemination of knowledge through institutional networks.

In recent years, historical geographers and historians of science have been concerned with the role of institutional networks in the circulation and consumption of knowledge, and with how local circumstances influence the mobility and reception of ideas (Finnegan, 2016; Keighren, 2010; Ogborn, 2010; Rupke, 1999; Secord, 1999; Withers, 2010). It is in relation to such work that we invite historical geographers and allied scholars to present current research concerned with the dissemination of geographical and related knowledge. We welcome papers that consider, among other things, geography’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century print culture, its performed oral traditions, and the technological advancements that encouraged the spread of knowledge to domestic and international audiences, both lay and specialised. Papers dealing with the role of speech, print, image, and object are particularly welcome.

Please submit abstracts (250 words max) to Ben Newman (benjamin.newman.2010@live.rhul.ac.uk) and Innes Keighren (innes.keighren@rhul.ac.uk), along with a title and author details, by 10 February, 2017.

Regional Identity in Europe (or England!) at the RGS-IBG International Conference

A week ago, I chaired my first ever session at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference, which this year was held at the University of Exeter.

As a part-time Masters student, the initial response within the Faculty of me applying to run a session was a mixture of “You’re Brave/I would never have done that as a MA student!”, and whilst, yes it has had a few fraught moments over the past seven months or so, I can only firmly recommend it to Royal Holloway’s new intake of Masters students.

My own particular research area of Cornish Culture & Identity can often seem a bit like ploughing a lone furrow, as I am diverging greatly from a lot of the excellent research going on in our own immediate community – however, by looking at my immediate context and connecting it to present events around Europe – in particular Scotland, Catalonia and Veneto – I was able to attract a wide and diverse range of speakers for my session entitled ‘The Contemporary Growth of Regional Identity in Europe’.

Unfortunately, as these things often turn out, as the day of the session drew closer, several of my overseas speakers contacted me to withdraw, which left the session without papers on the important situations regarding devolutionary or independence movements in the North of England and Veneto. Consequently, I drew on my links with the burgeoning Cornish academic community, and my session was transformed into an affirming range of papers which dealt with the contemporary sense of what Hechter (1999) termed as ‘Internal Colonialism’, which has gained greater impetus since April 2014 when Cornwall was designated with National Minority Status under the Council of Europe Framework Convention.

The other major consideration with the RGS-IBG International Conference is its sheer scale – it is a conference attended by over 1,400 delegates from all around the world, and around 25 sessions run at the same time, hence you are competing strongly for an audience – unlike on previous occasions when I had made presentations on my research elsewhere where there was only ever one auditorium! I was absolutely delighted that the session drew a large audience of students and academics from all four corners of the globe, and it was exciting to see that Cornish Culture & Identity, plus the inherent sense of ‘difference’ between Cornwall and England was receiving such high profile attention.

Aspiration for One and All? Andrew Climo from the University of Oxford spoke about Cornwall’s historic devolution demands; summarising the fact that up to the late 1990s, calls for Cornish devolution were inchoate, but in 2002, the Cornish Constitutional Convention published its prospectus called Devolution for One and All, which acted as a nexus for the various competing views on future governance. His paper discussed what such a document might look like and how public engagement might be developed.

Julie Tamblin of ‘Learn Cornish in Cornwall’ then presented a historical overview on the three linguistic forms which characterize Cornish culture – Kernowek, Cornu-English and English and made connections between voices from Cornwall and Cornish voices writing back from the diaspora, showing the global influence of Cornish culture.

Mike Tripp, who recently retired from the Institute of Cornish Studies at the University of Exeter presented a paper entitled ‘Where there were two Cornishmen, there was a “rastle”: Cornish Wrestling & Identity’. Dr. Tripp’s paper covered the development of the sport into a widespread ‘traditional’ activity, deeply rooted in the local culture and, prior to the birth of Rugby Union, was Cornwall’s most popular sport. When, in the second half of the nineteenth century the Cornish economy suffered a catastrophic collapse that precipitated large numbers of people to leave Cornwall to find work abroad, the Cornish stuck together in distinct ethnic communities sustaining a strong sense of identity which manifested in the Cornish dialect and wrestling in Australia, South Africa and New Zealand

Finally, and very timely given the recent publication of his outstanding new book, Will Coleman, a bard of the Gorsedh Kernow presented an exceptionally lively paper entitled ‘Plen an Gwari: places of Play, Inclusivity and Resistance’. In this work, Coleman examined how in many places and cultures throughout history, performance has been used to articulate and strengthen the aspirations of minorities and to represent narratives resistant to dominant cultures. Driven by the ‘powerhouse’ of Glasney College in Penryn, the Gwari Meur culture of medieval Cornwall flourished for several hundred years and reached profound levels of artistry in its drama and literature. Related forms also developed elsewhere across Europe but “Cornwall was to do it better, and more intensively, than anywhere else” (Kent, 2010). The Gwari Meur culture was “a vital part of that strategy of resistance [… to Anglicization]” (Spriggs, 2004). It was international in its outlook yet intensely parochial in celebrating its sense of place. It was rebellious, unorthodox, irreverent, profound and a lot of fun. As a cultural totem the plen an gwari is the perfect foundation for the territory of Cornwall as we rebuild our inclusive, forward-looking and celebratory sense of Cornish nationhood.

To some Cornwall may be a county which is quite nice to go to on holiday. Delegates from around the globe left this session with a new sense of the immense pride that the Cornish have in their land. Gaging from questions that were directed to myself and my presenters, renowned focus on this particular ‘peripheral’ appendage of South-West England is about to take place…

Ben Gilby, MA Cultural Geography (Research) Part-Time (2nd Year)

RHUL GEOGRAPHERS IN EXETER

University of Exeter. Venue for the 2015 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference.

The Department of Geography will be well represented at this year’s RGS-IBG Annual International Conference in September. All told, 19 Royal Holloway geographers—MA students, PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and members of staff—will be in attendance, presenting more than 20 papers in a diverse range of sessions (detailed below).

		Session	Paper
Adey	Peter	Reimagining the mobility transition	Thinking through the mobility transition
Adey	Peter	Reimagining the mobility transition
Adey	Peter	Surveilling Global Space
Arends	Bergit	Suspending the Anthropocene (1) Impasse, Lost Futures, Déjà vu	Déjà-vu: the Anthropocene in the registers of contemporary artists
Boxall	Katie	Geographies of Amateur Creativities: Spaces, Practices and Experiences (1)
Boxall	Katie	Geographies of Amateur Creativities: Spaces, Practices and Experiences (1)
Boxall	Katie	Geographies of Amateur Creativities: Spaces, Practices and Experiences (2)
Cook	Simon	Current and emerging research in transport (1): Active travel and commuting	Towards active travel beyond walking and cycling: the potential of run-commuting for transport geography
Cook	Simon	Geographies of Sport (1): Everyday sport	Towards a geography of everyday sport: blurring boundaries, finding opportunities
Cook	Simon	Geographies of Sport (2): Everyday sport
Cook	Simon	Geographies of Sport (2): Everyday sport
Cook	Simon	Geographies of Sport (1): Everyday sport
Eades	Gwilym	Determinism, environment and geopolitics: an interdisciplinary conversation	Roundtable Open Discussion
Eken	Evren	Knowledge, governmentality and power	Governmentality, Geopolitics and Procedural Rhetoric in Video Games: A Practice Based Methodological Toolkit
Gilbert	David	The field formerly known as Urban Studies? (2) Rethinking the urban through its new manifestations	Without the City? Suburbia’s central place in rethinking the urban
Gilbert	David	Geographies of Amateur Creativities: Spaces, Practices and Experiences (2)	Making suburban faith: creativity and material culture in faith communities in West London
Gilby	Ben	The Contemporary Growth of Regional Identity in Europe (2): Regional Culture: Distinctiveness, Performance & Tradition
Gilby	Ben	The Contemporary Growth of Regional Identity in Europe (1): Trends In Devolution & Independence
Gilby	Ben	The Contemporary Growth of Regional Identity in Europe (1): Trends In Devolution & Independence
Harris	Ella	Producing Urban Life: Fragility and Socio-Cultural Infrastructures (3) Radical Infrastructures	The Artworks: Maintaining Uncertain Urbanisms
Harris	Ella	Future Fossils? Specimens from the 5th millennium “Return to Earth” expedition (2): From slum fragments to shattered hard drives	Container Architectures: Human Settlement Transformations in the Anthropocene
Harris	Ella	Urban Precarities (1): Precarity and urban imaginaries in declining, derelict and unregulated spaces
Harris	Ella	Urban Precarities (2): Precarity in Urban Places of Work and Residence: Experiences and Resistances
Hunt	Mia	Urban Precarities (2): Precarity in Urban Places of Work and Residence: Experiences and Resistances	Politics and practice in the corner shop: The compound precarity of ad hoc retailing
Hunt	Mia	Attentive Geographies: materials, processes, creations (1)	Knowing and Feeling: Practicing visual and material cultures in the corner shop
Hyacinth	Natalie	Geographies of Amateur Creativities: Spaces, Practices and Experiences (2)	Making suburban faith: creativity and material culture in faith communities in West London
Kleine	Dorothea	Development’s pasts and futures: A critical dialogue between (Latin American) Area Studies and Geography, Panel Session	Panel Discussion
Nikolaeva	Anna	Reimagining the mobility transition	A “Quirky project” or an “Industry”? Challenges of imagining a mobility transition
Nikolaeva	Anna	Reimagining the mobility transition
Nowicki	Mel	Urban Precarities (1): Precarity and urban imaginaries in declining, derelict and unregulated spaces
Nowicki	Mel	Urban Precarities (2): Precarity in Urban Places of Work and Residence: Experiences and Resistances
Nowicki	Mel	Urban Precarities (2): Precarity in Urban Places of Work and Residence: Experiences and Resistances
Sheargold	Robert	The Contemporary Growth of Regional Identity in Europe (2): Regional Culture: Distinctiveness, Performance & Tradition
Sheargold	Robert	The Contemporary Growth of Regional Identity in Europe (2): Regional Culture: Distinctiveness, Performance & Tradition
Sheargold	Robert	The Contemporary Growth of Regional Identity in Europe (1): Trends In Devolution & Independence
Squire	Rachael	Wet Geographies III (2): Water-worlds – Wet Geographies Panel Discussion	Wet Geographies III: Water-worlds – Wet Geographies Panel Discussion
Squire	Rachael	Wet Geographies I: Under the Sea: Geographies of the Deep
Squire	Rachael	Wet Geographies I: Under the Sea: Geographies of the Deep
Thornton	Pip	Algorithmic Practices: Emergent interoperability in the everyday (2)	Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction
Ward	Miranda	Geographies of Sport (1): Everyday sport	Towards a geography of everyday sport: blurring boundaries, finding opportunities
Ward	Miranda	Geographies of Sport (2): Everyday sport
Ward	Miranda	Geographies of Sport (1): Everyday sport
Ward	Miranda	Geographies of Sport (1): Everyday sport
White	Rosanna	Wet Geographies I: Under the Sea: Geographies of the Deep	Ceremonies of Possession: Performing sovereignty in the Canadian Arctic
Wood	Astrid	Reimagining the mobility transition	Moving forward by looking backward: Reimagining the mobility transition in the UK
Wood	Astrid	Reimagining the mobility transition

RHUL at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference

Lowther Lodge. © Victoria and Albert Museum

With the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference less than two weeks away, here is a run-down of papers being delivered by Royal Holloway geographers. For sake of brevity, the list does not include details of sessions which Royal Holloway geographers are chairing, convening, or acting as discussant (please see the full programme for details of those sessions).

Wednesday, 28 August

Session 1, RGS-IBG Lowther Room: Caroline Cornish, “Curating science in an age of empire: the Museum of Economic Botany at Kew”

Session 1, Electrical Engineering Building, Room 408: Xuejuan Zhang, “Heritage, Identity, Sense of Place and Dark Tourism in Sichuan Province after the 12th May 2008 Earthquake in China”

Session 2, Sherfield Building, Read Lecture Theatre: Katherine Brickell, Vandana Desai, and Katie Willis, “Intimacy and the city: Spaces and practices of consumption in Mumbai, Phnom Penh and Taipei”

Session 2, RGS-IBG Lowther Room: Louise Henderson, “Text, travel and translation: exploring the international circulation of David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa”

Session 3, Electrical Engineering Building, Room 403a: Katherine Brickell, “Towards Geographies of Peace? Researching Lay and Institutional Perspectives on Legal Reform and Domestic Violence in Cambodia”

Session 3, Electrical Engineering Building, Room 403a: Mary Cobbett, “Researching Kenyan Girls’ Perceptions of Gendered Violence”

Session 3, RGS-IBG Lowther Room: Felix Driver, “Keynote Paper – Geography, Museums & Collections: New Frontiers?”

Session 3, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Room 119: Weiqiang Lin, “Assembling a Great Way to Fly: Performances of Comfort and Affective Care in the Air”

Session 3, Skempton Building, Room 163: Tianfeng Liu, “‘Carps jumping over the dragon gate’? – Chinese migrant negotiation of British /Chinese immigration policy”

Session 3, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Room 119: Danny McNally, “Comforting Others: sociality and the ethical aesthetics of being-together”

Session 3, Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 207: James Thurgill, “The unpopular geographies of the Occult”

Session 4, Skempton Building, Room 060a: Anyaa Anim-Addo, “Steam, sail and small island rhythms”

Session 4, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Room 119: Laura Price, “Knitted spaces and the making of comforting geographies”

Thursday, 29 August

Session 1, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Room 122: Bakia Mbianyor, “Resource Geopolitics of Mining and its implications for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in the East Region of Cameroon”

Session 1, Electrical Engineering Building, Room 508: Sammia Poveda, “Training to fit a job vs training to enhance freedom: Computer skills, social activism in the youth”

Session 1, Skempton Building, Room 301: Helen Scalway, “Visualising Immunitary Geographies: Defensive structures, topological spaces and knotted relations”

Session 1, Sherfield Building, Pippard Lecture Theatre: David Simon, “Spaces, places and flows: Contemporary urbanization as a multiscalar process”

Session 2, Electrical Engineering Building, Room 408: Peter Adey, “Air’s Entanglements”

Session 2, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Room 122: Miranda Ward, “Writing Augmented Place”

Session 3, Electrical Engineering Building, Room 408: Klaus Dodds, “Stretching Across the Bering Strait: US-Soviet science, geopolitics and the Arctic (c. 1967-1973)”

Session 3, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Room 122: Felix Driver, “George Cons, Progressive Education and Geographical Film: A Lost History”

Session 3, RGS-IBG Sunley Room: Dorothea Kleine and Graça Brightwell, “Leveraging Buying Power: middle class views on ethical consumption and sustainable procurement in Chile and Brazil”

Session 3, Skempton Building, Room 163: Laura Prazeres, “Students on the move: geographies of international student mobility”

Session 4, Electrical Engineering Building, Room 408: Duncan Depledge, “Into the Arctic: the northward course of global capitalism”

Friday, 30 August

Session 1, Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 207: Harriet Hawkins, “Indecorous Abstractions”

Session 1, RGS-IBG Ondaatje Theatre: Innes M. Keighren, “Circling the Society: Women’s Geographical Frontiers in Edwardian London”

Session 1, Skempton Building, Room 301: Shaun Smith, “A privy without a door: The socio-politics of toilets in the slums of Kitale and Kisumu, Kenya”

Session 2, Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 164: Peter Adey, “Ambiance and Atmospheres”

Session 2, Sherfield Building, Room 7: Lisa Ingwall, “The benefits of using a qualitative approach for the valuation of ecosystem services”

Session 2, Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 164: Anja Kanngieser, “The sounds of our listening: ambiances of voices and commons”

Session 2, Sherfield Building, Room 7: Céline Tschirhart, Jay Mistry, et al., “Defining indicators with local communities: visual methods as a way of bridging the quantitative/qualitative frontier for addressing the emerging social-ecological crisis”

Session 4, Skempton Building, Lecture Theatre 164: Rupert Griffiths, “Reimagining the Margins – Creative Practice and the Infrastructural Landscapes of the Lower Lea Valley”

Session 4, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, Room 122: Stephanie Morrice, “Returning ‘home’?: The emotional geographies of the disaster displaced in Brisbane and Christchurch”

(In)Securities of Home at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2012

Katherine Brickell examines how ideas of home were dealt with at the recent RGS-IBG conference in Edinburgh, over on her blog.