Podcasts about Cultural geography

What do you do when after having a successful corporate career for many decades you turn 60 and retire? You go to Africa, of course. And you start bringing other executives with you to help them to reconnect with nature and become better leaders. Well, at least that's what Dr. Boy Van Droffelaar did. My guest today is a former corporate executive turned wilderness and leadership guide who, at 60, began leading leadership retreats in the African wilderness. He has done it for 10 years and led his last group when he was 70. With over 2,500 participants joining his transformative journeys, Dr. Van Droffelaar shares his insights on nature's impact, self-discovery, and the power of silence and presence. Join us as we dive into his journey from boardrooms to riverbanks and what he's learned about leadership, life, and love along the way!IN THIS EPISODE(00:00) What drives a man to reinvent himself at 60?(03:30) Nature's “billion-star hotel” – more than just a view(06:30) Alone in the wilderness: a moment of pure stillness(08:30) The “talking stick” lesson every leader needs to learn(12:00) Walking among giants: an unforgettable lesson of respect(16:30) Can nature reveal who we really are?(19:30) Age is just a number when you find purpose(23:00) Why true leadership begins with listening(29:00) Love and care: the hidden strength in leadership(32:00) A journey home: discovering what truly mattersOur Guest: Dr. Boy Van DroffelaarDr. Boy Van Droffelaar currently works at the Department of Cultural Geography, Wageningen University & Research. He does research in Quantitative Social Research and Qualitative Social Research. Their current project is 'The role of wilderness experiences in leaders' development toward authentic leadership'.Connect him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boyvandroffelaar/Your Host: YANA FRYYana is the founder of the Timeless Teachings Podcast. She is a global speaker, impact coach, wellness retreats facilitator, spiritual teacher, co-author of three books, award-winning poetess, and truth illuminator who inspires, empowers, educates globally.Yana has been interviewing thought leaders and change makers since 2015 . You can find more of her thought-provoking interviews on YanaTV, an online talk show that amplifies the voices of impactful, influential and conscious people of Asia.CONNECT with YANA ►Linktree: https://linktr.ee/yanafryLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanafry  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yanafry—-Timeless Teachings by Yana Fry has been ranked as a top 3 podcast in Singapore. We talk about human advancement, self-mastery and achieving your full potential.

Saturday Morning Sit-Down Conversation, host Glenn van Zutphen and co-host, award-winning author Neil Humphreys discuss the latest trend of combining geography, data science, climate change and migration patterns with Dr. Parag Khanna, the Founder & CEO of AlphaGeo. AlphaGeo uses advanced machine learning techniques to compile a comprehensive library of more than 50 billion datapoints comprised of nearly 100 engineered features across over 40 million indexed locations to help anyone understand the upcoming risks and how to build-in adaptation and resilience.  alphageo.ioSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode, my guest is , a friend and scholar who recently completed his PhD in Cultural Geography from The University of Edinburgh where his research centered on themes of displacement and memorial walking practices in the Highlands of Scotland. A child of Greek political refugees on both sides of his family, Christos' work looks at ways in which ceremony and ritual might afford us the capacity to integrate disconnection from place and ancestry. Further, his research into pre-modern Gaelic Highland culture reveals animistic relationship with mountains which disrupt easy definitions of colonialism and indigeneity.Show Notes:Summoning and Summiting a DoctorateThe British Empire & EverestThe Three Roots of FreedomHillwalkers and HomecomingThe Consequences of Staying and LeavingThe Romans Make a Desert and Call it PeaceFarming EmptinessLandscapes as MediumsRitualized Acts of WalkingHomework:Christos Galanis' Official WebsiteTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Christos, to the End of Tourism podcast. Christos: Thank you, Chris. Chris: Thank you for joining me today. Would you be willing to let us know where you're dialing in from today? Christos: Yeah, I'm calling in from home, which at the moment is Santa Fe, New Mexico in the United States. Yeah, I moved out here for my master's in 2010 and fell in love with it, and and then returned two years ago.So it's actually a place that does remind me of the Mediterranean and Greece, even though there's no water, but the kind of mountain desert. So there's a familiarity somehow in my body. Chris: Sounds beautiful. Well I'm delighted to speak with you today about your PhD dissertation entitled "A Mountain Threnody: Hill Walking and Homecoming in the Scottish Highlands." And I know you're working on the finishing touches of the dissertation, but I'd like to pronounce a dear congratulations on that huge feat. I imagine after a decade of research and [00:01:00] writing, that you can finally share this gift, at least for now, in this manner, in terms of our conversation together.Christos: Thank you. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life in terms of a project. Yeah. Nine years.Chris: And so, you and I met at Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School many years ago. But beyond that from what I understand that you were born and raised in Toronto and Scarborough to Greek immigrants, traveled often to see family in Greece and also traveled widely yourself, and of course now living in New Mexico for some time. I'm curious why focus on Scotland for your thesis? Christos: It was the last place I thought I would be going to. Didn't have a connection there. So I did my master's down here in Albuquerque at UNM and was actually doing a lot of work on the border with Mexico and kind of Southwest Spanish history.I actually thought I was going to go to UC San Diego, partly because of the weather and had some connections [00:02:00] there. And two things happened. One was that you have to write your GRE, whatever the standardized test is you need to do for grad school here in the US, you don't have to do in the UK. So that appealed to me.And it's also, there's no coursework in the UK. So you just, from day one, you're just doing your own research project. And then I wanted to actually work with what Was and probably still is my favorite academic writer is Tim Ingold, who was based in Aberdeen up in the north of Scotland and is kind of that thing where I was like, "well if I'm gonna do a PhD What if I just literally worked with like the most amazing academic I can imagine working with" and so I contacted him. He was open to meeting and possibly working together and so I was gonna fly to Scotland.I was actually spending the winter in Thailand at the time, so I was like, if I'm gonna go all the way to Scotland, maybe I should check out a couple more universities. So, I looked at St. Andrews, which is a little bit north of Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh, then visited all [00:03:00] three schools, and actually just really fell in love with Edinburgh, and then in the end got full funding from them. And that took me to Scotland. And I didn't know what was in store for me. I didn't even follow through on my original research project, which had nothing to do with Scotland. The sites that I was actually proposed to work with was on the Dine reservation out here in Arizona. There's a tradition, long tradition of sheep herding and there's a lot of, some friends of mine have a volunteer program where volunteers go and help the Diné elders and herd their sheep for them and what's happening is they're trying to hold on to their land and Peabody Coal, a coal mining company, has been trying to take the land forever and so by keeping on herding sheep, it allows them to stay there.So I was actually kind of looking at walking as forms of resistance and at that time, most undocumented migrants trying to enter Europe were walking from Turkey through Macedonia. So I was actually going to go there. And yeah, once I kind of hit the ground, I realized that that's way too ambitious.And I [00:04:00] decided to focus on this really strange phenomenon called Monroe Bagging in the Highlands of Scotland, where people work all week in their office, Monday to Friday, and then spend their weekends checking off a task list of 282 mountains that they summit. There's 282 of them and they're categorized that way because they're all over 3, 000 feet, which for us in North America, isn't that high, but for the Scottish Highlands, because they're very ancient, ancient, worn down mountains is pretty high.And also the weather and the climate and the terrain make it pretty treacherous out there. So it's, it's not an easy thing. Yeah. And I just thought this is a really weird, strange way to relate to mountains and to land. And it seems like a very British thing to do. And I kind of just got curious to figure out what was going on and why people would actually do this.And it came from a very, actually, critical perspective, to begin with. As things unfolded, that changed a fair amount in terms of getting to know people. But, yeah, that was Scotland. And, I think looking back, I think [00:05:00] I was called there by the mountains. I can give the bigger context maybe later on, but essentially one of the main mountain called Ben Cruachan, in Argyle that I ended up most working with and kind of going in and doing ceremony for, and with. I ended up later meeting my what would become my wife and married into her family and on one side of her family, they are literally the Macintyres who are from that mountain. So yeah ended up kind of going there and marrying into a lineage of a mountain that was the center of my my dissertation.So in the end I think I was called there. I think I was called to apprentice those mountains. And then I feel like my time ended. And I think this dissertation is kind of the story of that relationship with that courtship.Chris: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for that beautifully winding answer and introduction. So, you know, a lot of your dissertation speaks to kind of different notions of mountain climbing, summiting, hiking but you also write about [00:06:00] how our cultural or collective understandings of mountains have defined our ability to undertake these activities.And I'm curious, based on your research and personal experience, how do you think mountains are understood within the dominant paradigm of people who undertake these practices. Christos: Yeah, good question. I would say, I know I don't like to speak in universals, but I could say that one universal is that, as far as I can tell, all cultures around the world tend to not only revere mountains, but tend to relate to mountain peaks as sacred.And so in most cultures, at least pre modern culture, you will always find a taboo around ever actually climbing to the top of a mountain, especially a significant mountain. So ways that you might worship a sacred mountain, for example, you know, in Tibet is to circumnavigate. So hiking, walking around a mountain three times or walking the perimeter of a mountain, kind of circling [00:07:00] around and around the summit.But it would be absolutely abhorrent to actually ever climb to the top. So one thing I was interested in is what happened, what shifted, where in the past people would never think of climbing a mountain summit to that becoming almost the only thing that people were focused on. And I didn't know this, but out of all countries, the country that most intensely kind of pursued that practice was, was England, was Britain, actually.So it's really fascinating. There's this period, the Victorian era, where basically Britain is invading other countries such as Nepal, India, into China, into Kenya, parts of Africa, South America certainly here in North America and the Americas and of course mountain ranges serve as pretty natural and intense frontiers and barriers, especially back then before. You know, industrial machinery and airplanes and things [00:08:00] like that, you're going over land. And so to be able to get through a mountain range was a pretty intense thing. Really only became possible with kind of Victorian era technology and because they were able to penetrate these places that people really couldn't have before it was a way of kind of proving modern supremacy or the supremacy of kind of modern secularism.Because even in places like Sutherland and the Alps, the indigenous Swiss also considered like the Alps sacred, the mountain peaks and wouldn't climb them. And so as the British kind of came up into these mountain ranges. They had the idea of proving that essentially there were no gods on these mountaintops.There was nothing sacred about them. It's just a pile of rock and anybody can climb up and nothing's going to happen to them. And so they really started setting out to start summiting these mountains. And it was mostly military engineers. There's a big overlap between kind of military engineering and surveying and [00:09:00] map making and this kind of outdoor kind of Victorian kind of proving your manhood against nature kind of thing.And so it's a strangely poetic and very grief soaked proposition where increasingly humans had the technology to penetrate anywhere on the planet, you know, more and more. And maybe I'll just go into the story of Everest because it was perceived that the, the earth had three poles.So the North pole, the South pole, and Everest is the highest peak on the whole planet. So there was this race to set foot on the North Pole on the South Pole and on Everest. I don't know much about the North and South Pole expeditions I think they were first but Everest was kind of like yeah I think Everest was the last literally the last place on earth that humans weren't able yet to physically step foot on. And so the British set out to be the ones to do it after World War one. And there's another overlap where most of the men that were obsessed with mountain summiting after World War I had [00:10:00] been through the horrors of World War I and had a lot of PTSD and shell shock and kind of couldn't reintegrate back to civilian life.They kind of needed that rush of risking your life for some kind of larger goal, which warfare can provide. And, slowly they kind of got better technology and eventually by, I think it was maybe 1952, 1953, they finally conquered Everest. And it's almost like the moment that they penetrated this last place of wilderness that was holding out the British Empire started collapsing, which the timing is quite fascinating. You know, they lost India and Pakistan. And as soon as you kind of are able to dominate everything, there comes this nostalgia immediately for wild places. And this is where Scotland comes back in. Where, Scotland, the Highlands have been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.There's nothing wild about them. There were villages everywhere. But what happened through the [00:11:00] 16, 1700s was the Gaelic population, the indigenous population were ethnically cleansed. And then kind of the lands that follow for maybe 100 years. And then when the English started coming in, they were like, "Oh, this is wilderness.These mountains have never been climbed before. We're going to be the ones to conquer them because we're the superior race." And they did so, and when I chose the the title of my thesis used this little known word, Threnody, which is actually from Greek, Threnodia, which translates something as like a song of grief or a song of lament.And I think for me, this incessant kind of like summiting of mountains and risking and sometimes losing your life to penetrate these places where you actually don't retain control, or it's very hard to retain control, right, because of like storms in the weather, that it's almost like a kind of mourning for the loss of the very things that this technology has kind of erased or has compromised.So it's almost, I can't even put into words the feeling around it, but it's almost like, [00:12:00] You're doing the thing that's destroying something, but you have the impulse to keep doing it as a way of connecting to the thing that's being lost, if that makes sense. And I can imagine, you know, maybe all the work that you've done around tourism might have a similar quality to it.There's, I don't know, there's like a melancholy that I experience interviewing and going out with these people that I don't think they would ever be conscious of or even name, but there's a longing for something that's missing. And so that's where also this kind of song of lament theme comes into my, into my dissertation.Chris: Yeah, it's definitely something that shows up over and over again in these conversations and thank you for putting it into such eloquent words is that. I think it really succinctly speaks to the, the condition or conditions at hand. And I guess I'm curious you know, in regards to what you just said about notions of freedom [00:13:00] that are often experienced in touristic experiences or contexts and some of your dissertation centers around the freedom that your friends and hill walking acquaintances experienced there in the Highlands and freedom can often seem like a kind of recurrent trope sometimes in describing the tourist's reasons for travel.And surely outside of a trope for many people's reasons for travel you know, especially in the context of migration. Beyond the surface, we can wonder about the inheritance of ancestrally or ancestral indentured servitude, the commons and the lack thereof in our time and also like a kind of communion or relationship with what you refer to as other than human worlds. And I'm curious what kind of contradictions or insights came up for you in regards to the supposed freedom that was either found or sought after by the Hillwalkers you encountered.[00:14:00] Christos: Thank you. Yeah, I think before I started going deep into this, I probably, I probably shared most people's notion of freedom, which most of us don't ever really sit and wonder that deeply about.But there's a section of my dissertation where I go deep into freedom and I actually look at three different cultural and kind of etymological or linguistic lenses through which to understand freedom. And there's two that the people I interviewed, I think, were most practicing. So the word freedom itself comes from the Germanic, and it's two words.It's broke frei, which is "free," "to be free." And dom, translates kind of as "a judgment." So if you know like doomsday or the doomsday book. What the doomsday and judgment day actually mean the same thing It's just doom is like the older Germanic word for judgment. Okay, and so freedom can kind of translate as like freedom from judgment freedom from constraint and it has this quality of like spatially removing [00:15:00] yourself or getting distance from something that might constrain you, so you mentioned indentured servitude and slavery, which are as old as human civilization across the world.And all these different things that, basically, we are more or less constrained by, whether it's, family, the state, our living conditions, poverty, excess wealth, you know, all these things that might, or the expression of our true life force. And so for a lot of the people that I was working with, that was certainly what they would describe, you know, like I work in an office as a manager Monday through Friday in Edinburgh, and then it's only on the weekends that I get out into the hills and I truly feel alive and free, right? Because I'm in this vast expanse and, I mean, It's not my climate. I'm Greek by both sides. Wet, soggy moss and mold and endless rain and drizzle and cold and dark is not my thing, but it is visually stunningly beautiful. And you know, [00:16:00] and I'm sure we all know the experience of getting up to a peak of something and that sense of kind of almost being removed from the everyday and that sense of like maybe connecting to something higher or bigger.So that sense of freedom is obvious. The other, another lens is through Latin liberty or libertas, which comes from ancient Roman society, which was a heavily hierarchied society where up to 60 percent of people were actually slaves. So, there's a big distinction between those who are free and those who are slaves.And so the idea of liberty, and this also came up with my informants is the idea that you have to compare yourself to another and the more freedom you have compared to someone else, the better it feels. And I think of that as all the mechanics of like air airports and you know, first class lines and first class seating.I had the experience once flying because flying from New York through back to [00:17:00] London to get back to Edinburgh. And for the first and only time in my life I was bumped up to first class for some reason, I don't know why. But it was on, I don't know, one of the newer kind of jumbo jets, and the difference between economy class and first class in many ways is pretty profound.At the same time, it's ridiculous because you're all sitting in the same tube. But I remember the feeling that happened once we took off and they drew the curtain between the first class and everyone in the back. And it was this experience where everyone back there just disappeared.It's just kind of like, you can't see them, they're out of sight, out of mind, and you're just up front. You can lay down completely horizontally in these chairs, you have real glass, glassware and real cutlery, you know, and people treat you super, super nice. But like, in order to enjoy that, you need other people to not be enjoying that, right?So the idea of liberty kind of requires another, or it's almost a zero sum game where someone else has to be losing for you to be winning. And you know, I think of that with tourism, the idea that those of us from the North, you know, are stuck [00:18:00] at home in the winter while those with money, you know, can fly off to Mexico or Costa Rica and stuff like that.So that difference that like your experience is enhanced by other people's discomfort or suffering. And then I came across another lens, which comes from the Greek. So the Greek word for freedom is Eleftheria. And I didn't know the etymology, but one of my office mates in Edinburgh was from Greece, and we sat down with like a Greek etymological dictionary and I discovered that the Greek notion of freedom is completely different.It's almost counterintuitive, and it translates as something close to " loving the thing you were meant to love" or like "being the thing you were meant to be." And even more distinctly, the rios part in Eleftheria would translate into something like "returning to your home harbor after like a long voyage," and it's that, it's literally the experience of coming home, [00:19:00] which in a way is the freedom of not wanting to be anywhere else or to be anyone else, which is in some ways, I think to me, the most true freedom, because you don't want for anything, you actually love everything you are and everywhere you are, and you don't want to go anywhere else.So in that way, I think for me, cultivating a connection to place as an animist, you know, and I think that's a lot of what you and I I imagine experienced, you know, listening to Steven Jenkinson's many stories that keep circling around this idea of, you know, belonging is cultivating that place in you or that muscle in you that doesn't want to be anywhere else, doesn't want to be anybody else, but is actually satisfied and fulfilled by what is, which it's probably at the heart of most spiritual traditions at the end of the day, but to think of that as freedom, I think for me, really, really changed my perspective from, the idea of going around the world as I have and certainly in the past to experience all these different things and to [00:20:00] feel free and to be a nomad versus I would say the freedom I have here of loving Santa Fe and not imagining myself being anywhere else right now.Chris: Well, the theme of homecoming is definitely woven into this work, this dissertation, alongside hill walking.They seem, generally speaking, superficially very disparate or distinct activities, homecoming and hill walking. One is going and then it's coming. And I'm curious if you could elaborate for our listeners a little bit of what those terms mean, and where or how they come together in your work.Christos: Yeah. So the title of my dissertation, you know, is a "A Mountain Threnody: Hillwalkers and Homecomers in the Highlands of Scotland."So I set out to study hill walkers, which is basically a British term for going out for a walk or a hike where the focus is summiting some kind of peak, you know, whether a hill or a mountain, but that's what most people do there. When you set out on a walk, it's just assumed that you're going to end up going to the top of something and then [00:21:00] back down.What ended up happening is actually through Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School, I met several other Canadians of Scottish descent who had already or were planning on going quote "back" to Scotland to connect with their ancestral lands and their ancestors which is a lot of the work with Stephen's school and that, you know, that idea of connecting with your ancestry and with your roots and with your bones.And I kind of just started following along and interviewing people and talking with people that became friends just out of curiosity, because, you know, that's a lot of my background with being first generation Canadian and growing up in a huge Greek diaspora in Toronto and speaking Greek and going back to Greece multiple times and this idea of kind of being Canadian, but really home is in Europe and Greece, even though I've never lived there.So, there's a lot there, personal interest and eventually against my supervisor's advice, I was like, this might be an interesting [00:22:00] conversation to put these two groups together, these people who are spending their weekends summiting mountains in the Highlands and then these other people coming from Canada and the US and New Zealand and Australia who are going to the same mountains to connect with their ancestral, you know, lands and and people. And these two groups are probably the two biggest sources of tourism, like, in the Highlands, which is fascinating. Wow. Except that the one group, the Hillwalkers tend to imagine that they're in a pristine wilderness and that there's never been anybody there. And the homecomers like to imagine that the hills used to be covered in villages and their own people that were there for thousands of years and that they're reconnecting.So it's interesting how the same landscape is both imagined as being repopulated and also emptied. And that both groups are kind of searching again for this kind of belonging, right? This belonging through freedom, for this belonging through ancestry. The other piece that gets, [00:23:00] well, you know, we're interviewing this, we're doing this interview November 21st and we're, I think most people these days are pretty aware of what's going on in Israel and Palestine and this idea of home because to have a homecoming means there has to be somewhere out there that you consider your home.And that's such a loaded, loaded, loaded concept, right? Like many wars are fought over this idea of who a land belongs to, right? I mean, I know you and I have talked about both our families being from the borderlands with Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and those borders just change over and over and where you belong to what is home keeps changing depending on which war has happened, which outcome and things like that.And I think for those of us, I'll say in the Americas, who don't have deep roots here this idea of home being somewhere else other than where you live, is a very complex prospect because certainly when I go to Greece, people don't recognize me as being home, you know, they, they consider me a Canadian tourist. And at the same time growing up in Canada, I certainly never felt [00:24:00] like, "Oh, Canada is like my ancestral home. You know, it's, it's skin deep. My parents came over in the sixties. Right." So this idea of homecoming and, you know, maybe we can just riff on this for a bit. Cause I know you've explored this a lot. It's like, is it tourism or is it something else? Because a lot of people in Scotland, including people I interviewed, just laugh at these Canadians who come over and just start crying, standing over some rocks in the Highlands and who will buy some shitty whiskey at a tourist shop and feel that they're connecting with their roots and buy bagpipes and by kilts and all this stuff, whereas like most Scottish people don't wear kilts and don't blow bagpipes and don't necessarily drink whiskey all day, so there's these kind of stereotypes that have often been just kind of produced by the media, but it's almost like, other than that, how do people actually connect with the homeland, right?Like, what does it even mean to connect with a homeland? And one thing that I found that I think is one of the most powerful things is the idea of walking. So [00:25:00] this is why the comparison and the contrast with hill walking and homecoming is most people, when you go back to your homeland, there's something really central about walking in the footsteps of your ancestors, right?So walking around in the same village, walking the same streets, going to the same house, maybe even if it's not there anymore, going to... I remember going to my mom's elementary school in the little village that she grew up in the mountains of Greece and walking down the same hallways with her, and we went to the auditorium, and she, showed me the little stage where she would literally be putting on little plays when they were, like, in third grade and there's something about standing and stepping in the same place that is so fundamental. And so I'm kind of looking at homecoming through these kind of memorial or commemorative practices of walking. So it's not just walking, but walking and activating a landscape or activating the memories that are kind of enfolded in a landscape. And I've come to believe and understand that walking is a kind of almost magic technology that I [00:26:00] almost see it as really like opening up portals to other times and other places when done in a ceremonial kind of ritualized manner.So a lot of my work again, as an animist and kind of being as far as I know, the first in my field was just cultural geography, to kind of bring an animist lens to the field and kind of look at how, doing ceremony on a mountain, going into these glands and doing ceremony is more than just the material kind of walking, but is actually kind of connecting with these memories and these people in these places.In a way that's, I think, deeper than tourism and that's maybe the distinction between tourism and let's say homecoming on the surface that you might actually be doing almost the same thing, but I think there is this kind of animist lens to understand homecoming through where you let's say you bring a stone from home or you take a stone and bring it back home you know, like these kinds of Ritualize little practices that we do to connect with the place that I don't think tourists do in the same way, [00:27:00] you know?Because in tourism, you're often just trying to get away from where you live and experience something different, where this is trying to reconnect with something that's been lost or something that's in the past. Chris: Yeah, definitely. This leads me into a lot of different directions, but one of them is this question of animism that I'd like to come back to in just a moment but before we do, I want to ask you about. These heritage trips sometimes they're referred to as within the tourism industry, homeland returns which in most cases is a paradox or an oxymoron because most people are not returning to the places that they either were born in or lived in.They, typically, like myself, had never actually been there before. I'll just pull a little quote from your dissertation because I think it precedes this question in a good way. You write that quote, "the commissioner of Sutherland advocated for a state administered program of colonization in the Scottish Highlands, similarly arguing that the [00:28:00] Gaelic race and its inferior temperament presented an obstacle to the onward march of civilization. Locke set out a vision for the colonization, displacement, and reeducation of Gaelic Highlanders, where eventually, quote, 'the children of those removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers.'Locke's vision has broadly come true," end quote. And so, within the context of the wider spectrum and calendars and geographies that we've kind of been discussing, but more specifically in the context of Scotland, I'm curious if the people that you met there, either locals or visitors and especially in the case of those coming for a homecoming or heritage trip had an understanding of these things, of this history.Christos: No, that's what I found out. [00:29:00] What I've found in my lifetime, cause this isn't the only kind of project around this kind of theme that I've done. Maybe we'll get, I did another project with Mexican friends going back to Spain and kind of repatriating or reconnecting back through the kind of the displacement of the Spanish civil war.But what I've found is those of us of the colonies, that's kind of what I consider myself in ourselves, like people of the colonies. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that we're the ones that hold on to the stories and the memories and the people back quote "home" or in the "homeland" for the large part have moved on and don't really give much thought to these histories of displacement.It's almost, oh my God, it was strange to be in this country where most of the place names in the Highlands are Gaelic, and 98 percent of Scottish citizens cannot read or understand Gaelic, so partly it was this strangeness of being in a country where only two out of every hundred people could even understand the names of the places where they lived, even [00:30:00] though they had never left there and their people had never left there.And you know, if you let that sink in, it's like, let's say you and I being of Greek descent, imagine if 90 percent of Greeks couldn't understand Greek, you know what I mean? And couldn't understand the name of their own village. And well, there's, here's another angle to this in Scotland.When you want to learn traditional Gaelic fiddle, you go to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia in Canada because that's where the Highlanders who immigrated to Nova Scotia in the past kept the tradition pure and kept fiddle playing what it had always been. Whereas, you know in Scotland now, they're into hip hop and trap and drum and bass and stuff like this.And so if you're Scottish and you've never left Scotland in order to connect with the music of your ancestors you have to go to Canada, so most people that I interviewed and I think this is fair, you know to assume of most people Don't [00:31:00] think much about the ethnic cleansing that went on whichever side that they were on And it's kind of left to us in the colonies either to also let it go and move on and try to settle into these new lands or you kind of keep holding on to this memory of a place you've actually never lived, you know, and it's almost like both propositions are grief soaked.Both are kind of almost an impossible poem to hold because obviously there were people here before our European ancestors came. Obviously, we don't have these deep roots or memories or connections to this place. We don't have ceremonies or songs or much that's derived from this land, at least not yet.And yet many of us lose the language and the ceremonies and the traditions of the places where our ancestors came. It's almost like at least we still know where we've come from. Whereas to be in Europe, or at least in Scotland, and to have never left, but to nevertheless have also lost the connection with [00:32:00] your own ancestors and your own language and those places it's almost like a parallel process where there are people that get on the boats and leave, but there are people that are left behind. But it's almost like, regardless whether you leave or whether you stay, the fabric of that culture just gets completely rendered and torn apart by that displacement. And somehow, even though you never leave having so many of your people leave actually kind of compromises the ability to stay where you are, and to be connected to where you are. ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber!I interviewed one woman who had an ancestor who in Scotland, they call like psychic abilities, the second sight.So the idea of having kind of psychic premonitions or all of a sudden knowing that like your brother has died, even though he's in Australia, you know, that kind of thing. That people had that when I lived in Scotland and when they moved to Canada, they actually lost that ability. You know, so it's this idea that it's not that you carry almost these knowledges or abilities just in you, but it's actually comes from the connection [00:33:00] to the place.And once that connection becomes severed, you lose those capacities. And I've actually never said this out loud, but I wonder how much the people that stayed behind actually lost because of all the people that left, if that made sense. It's almost like, how does a culture stay resilient when almost everyone between the ages of like 20 and 40 leaves and never comes back.I think you could consider that this is all just stuff to wonder about. But like, for those of us that come from these kind of like largely settler countries like Canada and the U. S, we're still living through these questions. We're still living through these implications of like, how long do you hold on to the past? And at what point do you just kind of let go and move forward? And If you do so, how do you move forward in a place that you don't have any roots?Chris: You know. I remember going to see, going to my father's village in northern Greece for the first time some eight years ago, and knowing that I had [00:34:00] one baba or grandmother left there, and after searching for a few hours, she was hard of hearing at the time, finally found her, finally found the house and shared a delicious meal and traded photographs.I had no Greek or Macedonian language ability at the time. And then I was I called a taxi later on some, you know, at the end of the day to go back to the city, to the hotel, and standing in her garden there, she began to weep, right, without having said anything, even with the language barrier, I could understand what she was saying, and she was, she was mourning the migration of my family or my side of the family, or my father's side of the family to Canada, and then, her son and his family to Germany.And so, there's this question of what comes upon the people that quote unquote "stay." that's so often lost in the discourses [00:35:00] around migration, kind of always focusing on the individual, the migrant themselves, or the places that they arrive in.But do we just let it go? And how do we do that? I have this other quote from your dissertation that lands really strangely in this moment, in this conversation and it has to do a little bit with the kind of what I think you refer to as a national geographic imaginary.And so this is the response of the people in Scotland, in the Highlands embedded and engaged and indebted to these hill walking and homecoming industries. And so in your dissertation, it's written that "in February of 2017, an uproar on all sides erupted when, in a rare sign of bipartisan solidarity, both Mountaineering Scotland and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association attempted to pressure the Scottish government to abandon a [00:36:00] proposal to increase woodland cover, trees, from 17 percent to 25%. by 2050. The commitment to plant 10, 000 extra hectares of trees between now and 2022 was made in the government's draft climate plan. The protesting organizations argued that there had not been enough consultation and consideration given to the changes to the highland landscape that would come about by this tree planting initiative.And they were voicing their concern on whether, quote, 'adequate weight is being given to the significant changes this will have on the landscape of Scotland, and in particular, the dramatic open views and vistas which have come to signify to the outside world that which is unique about our country.'" End quote.And so this seems to be, to some degree, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but a manner of contending [00:37:00] with that past in a way that is, you know, perhaps ignorant of it. Or that is perhaps also faithfully serving the needs, the economic needs of the people, of the place.Christos: There's a lot there. I'm, what's coming to me, do you know this quote? It's from ancient Rome. It's a bit convoluted, but this is a Roman text talking about the colonization of Britain, so of the Romans conquering the Gaelic people in the Picts, but it's In a speech written by this Roman historian that he's attributing to like the Gaelic king, basically. So it's not, this wasn't actually said by a Gaelic king, it's just a Roman kind of putting these words in his mouth to kind of create like a battle scene, but but a lot of people quote this and it's from the Gaelic perspective referring to the Romans saying "the Romans make a desert and call it peace."[00:38:00] And that's kind of what's happened in Scotland is the villages were cleansed, literally. You know, the houses were burned down and knocked down. The people were forcibly, sometimes violently, thrown out of their homes into the cold. Many of them just had no prospects to be able to stay and move to Glasgow.And many of them, you know, came to Toronto and Saskatchewan and North Carolina and all this. And so after they left, these highlands kind of became empty, like this vast emptiness. And then once the Victorian English came into that landscape and started painting it and writing Victorian poems about it, this aesthetic of this, treeless, vast expanse became kind of that National Geographic kind of aesthetic of the mountain peak and the colorful heather and then the loch or the lake, kind of [00:39:00] reflecting the mountain.You can just imagine the scene, right? Of like the mountain peak being reflected in inverse in the lake, you know, kind of thing. It's just that perfect kind of symmetrical perspective photograph or painting. And then that kind of became the symbol of freedom and tranquility which is basically like a site of ethnic cleansing becomes a symbol of beauty.And then what happens is you keep managing the landscape to maintain that aesthetic, which is why you find the strangeness of, like, environmental groups arguing that planting trees is ecological vandalism, that you're ruining the ecology of a place because your trees are gonna get away in the way of these vast expanses.So it's it's this weird wondering on, like, how certain aesthetics become symbolic of something. And then you manage the land, to maintain that aesthetic. Even though it's [00:40:00] absolute death for the wild, the wildlife and even the people in that landscape, to maintain it in that way. The thing that might not be obvious to most people which wasn't I didn't know about this whole world before I moved there, but Scotland's one of the few if not only place in all of Europe where you can still be a feudal lord like they call it a laird, l-a-i-r-d, but it's like a lord where all you need to do to be a lord is you just buy land and if you have enough land you're you claim title of Lord Wow.And most people that are lords in Scotland these days are not even British. You have people from Saudi Arabia, from all over that have bought up the highlands in many ways. And they have these estates and you know, Balmoral estate, which is like the Queens, or I guess she's dead now. Now it's King Charles's estate.And what you do is maybe once a year you and all your rich friends from all over the world fly in [00:41:00] and do this traditional game hunt where you might be hunting deer, but more often you're actually hunting wild birds. You know, so grouse especially. If anyone's seen, I find it fascinating watching Downton Abbey, that TV series, because it's kind of, it covers a lot of the kind of that, that time in Britain.And there's an episode or two where they go into the Scottish countryside to go, you know, go hunting. So it's this weird aesthetic where you dress up in a certain way, kind of like an old time Scottish lord, and you go out on the land with dogs and you shoot down birds, and in order for the birds to live there you need the landscape to basically be wide open, because that's actually what they prefer.And so, this is why, again, for the context of that quote, you have an environmental group, and basically, rich, elite gamekeepers working together to keep the government from planting trees in this landscape because it's in both their interest to maintain [00:42:00] this landscape as an ecological wasteland, essentially that people can't sustain themselves off of or people can't live in So you're kind of farming emptiness if that makes sense in a way you're like cultivating emptiness. Yeah. For tourism. Which again I mean, you've been talking to so many people about this subject. To me, it's fascinating what tourism can be or what it can mean, you know, or like what need is trying to be fulfilled in these, in these landscapes that often get kind of territorialized as touristic, you know, because most people, when they travel, they don't go to walk around the suburbs of a city. There's only certain places that tourists are drawn to, right? Hmm. And so I'm always curious about why and what tourists are drawn to, you know, what is like almost like the resource there that is being extracted. In Chris: the context of your work, you know, largely in regards to, to landscapes and we've spoken a fair amount today about [00:43:00] landscapes as, as objects at the very least.But in, in your dissertation, you know, there was a line that struck me certainly I think coming from your animist tendencies and sentiments where you say that "landscapes are mediums and landscapes are a process," and I'm curious, as we kind of wind ourselves towards the end of our time together, if you could elaborate on this for our listeners a little bit, this, this idea of landscapes as mediums or as processes.Christos: Yeah, so I've done my, my PhD in the field of cultural geography, or sometimes called human geography, which is kind of like anthropology except kind of rooted in place, I'd say that's the big difference. It's not as popular here in North America, but in the UK it's much more popular. And probably the primary focus in that field is landscape, which I think most people might be familiar with that term in terms of like, maybe landscape [00:44:00] gardening or landscape painting.But when you get deep into it, which is kind of what grad school is, is you're like a big weirdo and you just get so deep into something so friggin specific that, you know, most people think you might think about once in your lifetime, but you end up spending nine years thinking about and writing about.It's almost like you can't perceive a place without some kind of filter, if that makes sense. It's almost like there's no such thing as just like a place or land that's just objectively out there. Like, I spent most of a winter, you know, down where you are in Oaxaca, but you having lived there for this long, like if you and I walk around in the streets of Ciudad Oaxaca, you're going to perceive so much more than I am, or at least many different things than I am, right?I'm going to be purely a tourist, I'm going to be reading on a surface level where you might have dozens of memories come up from your time living there and different things that have happened. And [00:45:00] so, in that way, like a landscape is almost, is always like a medium, meaning like our own perceptions, our own projections, our own memories are always affecting the way that we perceive a place.And so cultural geography, the field that I'm in, kind of looks at that. It looks, literally at the kind of the, the collision of culture and geography and like the politics of a place. You know, I was talking about like earlier about landscape management. You know, there are people that are choosing how to manage the landscape in the highlands, where to allocate money and where to cut money from.And all of those decisions are based on preferences of aesthetics and land use, in terms of landscape. So for anyone that's interested, it's a fascinating field to start looking at what we perceive in a place or in places [00:46:00] and how, what we perceive or what we wish to be there affects, you know, the politics of a place.And again, the contemporary crisis right now, Israel Palestine, this question of like, who belongs there? Whose land is it? What do you see in that landscape? For some people, they see an ancient Jewish homeland that these persecuted people are trying to return to and reclaim and for other people, they see, you know, an indigenous Arab people that are being displaced by outside colonizers and, you know, both in their way are right and wrong.I'm not going to wade into the politics of it, but the way that landscape is used as a medium, politically, economically, culturally, is a really fascinating subject, at least for me.Chris: Well, thank you for that, and to finish up with a question around pilgrimage, which Jerusalem being the quote unquote, "holy land" and where so many pilgrimages landed in in previous times and of course in contemporary ones as [00:47:00] well. I'm curious about what you could describe as ritualized memorial acts of walking. And I'd like to finish by asking what have been the most achieved and enduring acts of ritual that you've encountered? What lessons might they have to teach us in a time of hypermobility?Christos: Again, that's like a huge question. Okay, I'll try to be succinct if I can. I don't know why I'm drawn to these kinds of histories, but anywhere I go in the world, I tend to be drawn to, yeah, histories of displacement, I would say.It's a strange thing to be interested in for most people, but it probably speaks to the fact that I am the fourth generation of men to leave the country that I was born. You know, that's between both sides of the family, it's not all one lineage. But being of Greek descent, Greece has long been a country where people leave, you know?Like, right now, the [00:48:00] United States is a country where people come to, but to be claimed by a place where for hundreds of years now, so many people, whether by choice or circumstance, leave their home probably does something to you, you know? And so Anywhere I've traveled in the world, I tend to either seek out or be sought out by these kinds of histories, and so I referred a bit earlier to this project I did years ago where I was spending a lot of time in Mexico and ended up meeting what became a friend is an artist from Mexico City, Javier Arellán, and he was second generation Mexican.His grandfather was from Barcelona in Spain and was a fighter pilot for the Spanish Republic, so like the legitimate democratically elected government of Spain. And when Franco and the fascists kind of staged a coup and the Spanish Civil War broke out you know, he was on the side [00:49:00] of the government, the Republican army.And Barcelona was basically the last stand of the Republicans as the fascist kind of came up from the from the south and when Barcelona fell everyone that could literally just fled on foot to try to cross into France, nearby to try to escape, because knowing that if they were captured they would be imprisoned or killed by the fascists who had basically taken over the country now.But the French didn't want tens of thousands of socialists pouring into their country because they were right wing. And so rather than letting people escape they actually put all the Spanish refugees in concentration camps on the French border. And that's where my friend's grandfather was interred for like six months in a place called Argilet sur Mer, just over the French border.And then from there, Algeria took a bunch of refugees and he was sent to Algeria. And then from there, the only countries in the whole world that would [00:50:00] accept these left wing Spanish refugees was Mexico and Russia. And so about 50, 000 Spanish Republican refugees relocated to Mexico City. They had a huge influence on Mexican culture.They started UNAM, like the national university in Mexico City. And my friend Javier Grew up in Mexico city, going to a Spanish Republican elementary school, singing the Spanish Republican National Anthem and considering themselves Spaniards, you know, who happened to be living in Mexico. And so when I met him, with my interests, we, you know, overlapped and I found out that him and his wife were soon setting out to go back to that same beach in France where his grandfather was interred, in the concentration camp and then to walk from there back to Barcelona because his grandfather had died in Mexico before Franco died, so he never got to return home. You know, maybe like a lot of Greeks that left and [00:51:00] never did get to go back home, certainly never moved back home.And so we went to France and we started on this beach, which is a really kind of trashy touristy kind of beach, today. And we thought you know, that's what it is today, but we then found out talking to people that that's actually what it was back in the 1930s, 1940s was this touristy beach and what the French did was literally put a fence around and put these refugees on the beach in the middle of like a tourism beach literally as prisoners while people on the fence were like swimming and eating ice cream and, you know, and being on vacation.So even that site itself is pretty fucked up. A lot of people died there on that beach. And it was 15 days walking the entire coast from the French border back to Barcelona. And whereas Javier's community in Mexico city actually raised [00:52:00] funds for us and we're really excited about this idea of homecoming and going back home to Spain.We quickly discovered when we started talking to locals about what we were doing, they would stop talking to us and walk away and they didn't want anything to do with us. They did not want to know these histories. They didn't want to touch it. And what we found out is like Spain has never really dealt with this history.And it's such a trauma and nobody wants to talk about it. So again, it's this strange thing where it's like us from the Americas, you know, my friend from Mexico was wanting to return home and it was a strange trip for him because he thought of himself as a Spaniard returning home and these Spaniards were like, "you're a Mexican tourist and I don't want to talk to you about the civil war, you know?"And I think that really hurt him in a lot of ways because he almost kept trying to prove that he wasn't a tourist, whereas for me, I knew that I was a tourist because, you know, I have no history there.[00:53:00] In terms of pilgrimage, I've done other pilgrimages, other walks I won't get into now, but there's something about walking a landscape or walking a land as opposed to driving, obviously, or flying that the pace of walking, I think, allows you to interact with people and with places at a rhythm that is maybe more organic, maybe more holistic. I did do the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage in Spain, like I did that another 15 days as well. And for me there's nothing like walking. You know, there's, there's something that happens. To your mind, to your body, to your spirit when you're moving that I've never experienced through any kind of other travel.And unfortunately there are only so many places in the world where you can walk for days or weeks on end that have the infrastructure set up to do so. And I know that here in the Americas other than walking on busy roads, it's pretty hard to get long distances through walking.And so I think another thing that tourism has done is kind of cut off the transitional kind of walking and you just kind of fly off and just kind of plop yourself [00:54:00] down and then get extracted out through an airplane, but you don't have the experience of seeing the landscape change day by day, footstep by footstep, and experiencing the place at that speed, at that pace, which is, you know, a very slow pace compared to an airplane, obviously.Chris: Mm hmm. Perhaps, perhaps very needed in our time. Christos: I hope so. I think there's something about it. I think there's something humanizing about it. About walking. Chris: Well, I've asked a lot of you today, my friend. And we've managed to court and conjure all of the questions that I've, that I had prepared for you.Which I thought was impossible. So, on behalf of our listeners and perhaps all those who might come to this in some way, your dissertation at some point down the road, I'd like to thank you for your time and certainly your dedication.And I imagine a PhD, nine year PhD [00:55:00] research process can be extremely grueling. That said, I imagine it's not the only thing that you have on your plate. I know that you're also an artist a teacher, writer, and Kairotic facilitator. I'm saying that right. To finish off, maybe you'd be willing to share a little bit of what that entails and how our listeners might be able to get in touch and follow your work.Christos: Yeah, first I'll just say thanks for reaching out, Chris, and inviting me to do this. I've listened to your podcast and love these kinds of conversations around these topics of place and belonging. It's obviously deep in my heart and I said this to you earlier, other than my supervisors and my examiners, I think you're the first person to read my dissertation, so I appreciate that you took the time to read it and to draw quotes and to discuss it with me because, I think most people that have done a PhD know that it can be a pretty solitary process to go so deep into such a tiny little corner of like knowledge that for most people is not what they're interested in every day and to [00:56:00] share these stories. Thank you. So yeah, my website is ChristosGolanis. com. And part of what I do is working with this Greek term, kairos. So in Greek there are at least three words for time. One is chronos, which is like linear time. One is aeon, which is like kind of eternal time.And one is kairos, gets translated as kairos, which is like almost the appropriate time or ceremonial time. And my best definition of that is you know, there are some things that are scheduled, like you and I for months ago planned this particular time and this particular day to do this interview.But deciding, let's say, when to get married with your partner doesn't follow any kind of rational, linear timeline. That's more of a feeling. And so the feeling of like when some, when it's appropriate for something is what Greeks consider to be keros, like, you know, keros for something like it's, it's the appropriate time for something.So. What I do is I kind of counsel people to craft [00:57:00] ceremonies or rituals for big transitions in their lives to mark things in their life through ritual or ceremony. Like I said, for like a homecoming two weeks of walking the coast of Spain can be a ceremony, right, of kind of walking your dead grandfather back home. I think there's something about the impulse to go out into the world, to find something, to integrate something, to process something, right versus staying right where you are and kind of with community, with others. It's kind of ritually marking it, integrating it, and you know, it's cheaper, it's easier on the environment, and sometimes can, can go a lot deeper than going away and coming back, and maybe not much has changed.But it can be dealing with the transition of someone from life into death or a birth or a career change. And so basically using ceremony and ritual to really mark and integrate these significant moments in our lives so that we can be fully with them as they're happening or as they've happened in the past, but haven't been able to be integrated.So that's some of the kind of [00:58:00] work that people can do with me if you want to reach out through my website. Chris: Well I very much look forward to seeing and hearing your dissertation in the world outside of these small groups of podcast interviewers and academics. So, hopefully one day that's the case if there's any editors or publishers out there who enjoyed what you heard today and want to, want to hear more, please get in touch with me or Christos and we can, we can get that into the world in a good way.Christos, thank you so much brother. It's been a pleasure and I hope to have you on the pod again soon. Christos: All right. Thank you. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

THE ENGLISH: Laurie Taylor asks how the country house became ‘English' and explores changing notions of Englishness over the past 60 years. He's joined by Stephanie Barczewski, Professor of Modern British History at Clemson University, South Carolina and author of a new book which examines the way the country house came to embody national values of continuity and stability, even though it has lived through eras of violence and disruption. Also, David Matless, Professor of Cultural Geography at Nottingham University, considers the way that England has been imagined since the 1960s, from politics to popular culture, landscape and music. How have twenty-first-century concerns and anxieties in the Brexit moment been moulded by events over previous decades?Producer: Jayne Egerton

This episode features Anjeline de Dios, a cultural geographer and vocal artist from Manila, Philippines. Emma Lo talks with her about voices, disobedience, well-being, and sonic conceptions of space. They engage with how voices are shaped and how to connect with one's own voice.

On this episode of the pod, my guest is Penny Travlou, a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Cultural Geography and Theory (Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art/University of Edinburgh). Her research focuses on social justice, the commons, collaborative practices, intangible cultural heritage and ethnography. She has been involved in international research projects funded by the EU and UK Research Councils. For the past eight years, she has been working with independent art organisations in Colombia and most recently in the African continent to understand the commons from a decolonial perspective and to look at commoning practices within artistic forms while understanding the specificities of the commons rooted in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts. As an activist, she has been involved in a number of grassroots and self-organised initiatives on housing and refugees' rights in Greece.Show NotesGreek Elections and the Rise of the Ultra-RightExarcheia and the Student Uprisings of 1974An Olympic Tourism Plan for AthensMass Tourism Consumption in ExarcheiaGovernment Plans to Dismantle Local Social MovementsThe Greek Golden VisaAARG and Community Action Against GentrificationFortress EuropeWhen Will the Bubble Burst?Advice for Tourists; Advice for OrganizingHomeworkPenny Travlou University of Edinburgh WebsiteAARG! AthensPenny's TwitterTranscript[00:00:00] Chris: Good morning, Penny, from Oaxaca. How are you today? [00:00:04] Penny: Very good. Good afternoon from Athens, Chris. [00:00:07] Chris: So perhaps you could share with me and our listeners a little bit more about where you find yourself today in Athens and what life looks like for you there. You mentioned that you had local elections yesterday.[00:00:19] Penny: Yes, I am located in the neighborhood of Exarcheia but towards the borders of it to a hill, Lycabettus Hill. And I am originally from Athens, from Greece, but I've been away for about 20 years, studying and then working in the UK and more specifically in Scotland.So the last eight years, since 2015, I've been coming and going between the two places, which I consider both home. And yes, yesterday we had the elections for the government. So we basically got, again, reelected the conservatives, which are called New Democracy, which is a neoliberal party, but also government also with patriotic, let's say, crescendos and anti-immigration agenda.And at the same time, we have first time, a majority in parliament of the, not even the central, but the right wing, in the Parliament. So it's 40%, this party and another three which are considered basically different forms of ultra- right. And one of them is a new conglomeration, from the previous, maybe, you know, or your audience Golden Dawn, which is a neo- Nazi party, which was basically banned and it's members went to us to prison as members of a gang, basically.But now through, I don't want to go into much detail, managed to get a new party called the Spartans, which obviously you can think what that means, plus two more parties, smaller parties, which are inclined towards very fundamentally religiously and ethnic focus, meaning, you know, anti immigration.And then it's the almost like the complete collapse of the radical left that is represented by Syriza. The Communist Party is always stable. You know, it's the fourth party. So anyway, we, it's a bit of a shock right now. I haven't spoken with comrades. Not that we are supporters of Syriza, but definitely change the picture of what we're doing as social movements and what it means to be part of a social movement right now.So there will be lots of things happening for sure in the next four years with this new not government. The government is not new cause it's the current one, just being reelected, but the new situation in the Parliament. [00:03:02] Chris: Hmm. Wow. Wow. Well, perhaps it's a moment like in so many places, to begin anew, organizing on the grassroots level.You know, there's so many instances around the world and certainly in Southern Europe where we're constantly reminded of the context in which local governments and top-down decision makings simply no longer works.And that we need to organize on a grassroots level. And so I'm really grateful that you've been willing to speak with us today and speak with us to some of these social movements that have arisen in Athens and Greece, in Exarcheia around the notions of immigration as well as tourism.And so to begin, you mentioned that you've been traveling for the last half decade or so back and forth and I'd like to ask you first of all, what have your travels taught you about the world, taught you about how you find yourself in the world?[00:04:02] Penny: Very good question. Thank so much for raising it because I won't say about my personal history, but my father was, actually passed away a couple of years ago, was a captain in the merchant Navy. So for me, the idea of travel is very much within my family. So, the idea of having a parent travel, receiving letters before emails from far away places was always kind of the almost like the imagination of the other places, but also reality.So, when myself become an adult and moved to the UK specifically, to study and then work. This became my own work and my own life reality because I had dramatically to live between two places. So, it was almost this idea of not belonging and belonging. This concept from in both places, but also the specific type of research, because, I haven't mentioned that my day job is an academic. I am currently, equivalent in the United States will be associate professor in geography, but in the school of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. But the type of research I do request me to travel a lot. I'm looking on the idea of collaborative practices in emerging networks of artists, digital artists, specifically activists and trans-local migrants.So what it means actually to connect and to collaborate and to share knowledge and co-produce knowledges. Actually knowledge travels. So everything in my life, in the last two decades is around this, let alone that my own PhD was about tourism. I was looking on tourist images and myths, myths in metaphorically speaking of representations of Athens before the Olympic Games of 2004.So the journey and the travel and tourism is very much part of what I do in my day job, but also on other things I do personally. So what I learned through this is, first of all, maybe it's very common to say that without travel, knowledge doesn't travel.So, how we basically do things and flourish and develop ideas is through the sharing and sharing travels very much. So, movement is totally important. [00:06:37] Chris: I think that, for so many of us who have taken a critical eye and, and looked to the critical eyes around tourism and over tourism in the tourism industry, that there is this sense that things can be different and things must be different.To find a way to look towards, as you said, some sense of collaboration, some sense of interculturality, some sense of working together so that our earthly movements can produce honorable connections and meetings as opposed to just this kind of flippant and flacid kind of turns style travel.And so, I've invited you on the pod, in part, today, to speak about this neighborhood that you're in Exarcheia in Athens, in Greece. And you know, I imagine that many of our listeners have never heard of this, this neighborhood before, but many in Greece and many, many in Athens have, certainly. And I'm wondering if you could offer our listeners a little bit of background in regards to why Exarcheia is such a unique place and why it attracts so much attention politically in terms of social movements and also with tourists.Mm-hmm. [00:07:53] Penny: The history of Exarcheia is quite long in the sense with where it is in the very center of Athens. So if somebody basically get the Google map, you will see that the neighborhood is in walking distance from the Greek parliament. And Syntagma Square, which is another important square with regards to movements.It became very known in later years in the 2010s due to not only riots demonstrations that happened in what we now call the square movement. It started from Spain, to put it this way, and then to Greece, as well, in Athens. So Exarcheia is very central, but also it was since, postwar, it was a bohemic neighborhood.Lots of artists related to the left or at that point to communist party, et cetera, were living here, but also there were theaters, independent theaters, the printing houses. So we have a number still of Publishing houses that they are located in various parts of the Exarcheia neighborhood. So it has put its imprint into the Athenian urban history for quite a number of decades. And when I say Communist party, the communist Party was not legal at the time, when we say postwar. But, we had people inclined towards the left, like intellectuals, et cetera.Then with the dictatorship that happened in 1967-19 74, that's when first time really it gets, it's a real place in the political side of not only of the left, but also generally speaking of the political milieu and situation in Greece and abroad, and became very known due to the uprising, the student uprising against the dictatorship or otherwise, as we call it, junta in 1974, where here in Exarcheia is also the National Technical University of Athens, which is known also as a Polytechnic, where it was basically the uprising against the dictatorship with students basically rioting, but also died. So, it became an iconic part of the student movements since then in Greece. So, since the seventies.People can Google search or YouTube. They will see various documentaries dedicated specifically to that student uprising. And through that, after the dictatorship, one thing which was added in the Constitution and now has changed with this current government is that for a number of decades, it was what we call the asylum.That the police or the army cannot enter the university premises, and that's across Greece. So, students can occupy buildings. They can have, their own strikes, et cetera, without the police and or army entering. However, the Constitution changed a year ago. During the COVID period with the current government, the conservatives were basically they're not only say the police can enter if there is antisocial behavior happens within the university premises, but also that they will basically would like to have a police dedicated to university premises. Anyway, things are changing, but if we go back to Exarcheia and to your question, so since then the seventies, it became the neighborhood hub for the left and particularly for the radical left to congregate, to meet, to have social spaces.And also that a lot of demonstrations start from this neighborhood. And also since late eighties, became also the center of the anarchist and anti authoritarian movement. Since 2015, it was also a hub for those let's say groups, initiatives dedicated to offer solidarity to the newly arrived refugees in Greece and Athens due to the Syrian conflict. Yeah. So there is lots of facts related to why Exarchia has become iconic neighborhood with regards to social movements and definitely since 2015. The year of the election of the radical left as said, Syriza government at the time were attracted also more attention from abroad, from journalists and "solidarians," comrades, from international or transnational, social movements to come to Greece to see what was happening, to take part into the local movements and initiatives.But also it was the deep time of the austerity crisis. So, we have austerity crisis and refugee crisis at the time, ...and tourism! How did that happen?I was at that point here in 2015 is when I started coming in Athens and spending more time. And it was much more obvious that, first of all, before Athens, it was a completely different story with regards to tourism and specifically even before the Olympic games of 2004. People from abroad were coming, spending one or two days, nothing, just to visit the Acropolis and the other historical sites and museums and go to the islands. Was not basically considered as a beautiful city, as an interesting city. Or even as a modern city.So if somebody wants to see, let's say, "Rough Guides" of that period, the way the city was described was, I remember very well, I think it was a rough guide, "a cacophony." That it was extremely ugly. 2004 basically is the first time that there is a definitely dedicated clear plan from the top, from the government and local authorities to think of Athens as a tourist product.And they made some major plans. One is obviously that it's not about tourists, but it relates to tourism. It's the metro and it's the unification of the archeological sites and creating pedestrian zones, which makes it easier for people to walk through the different places. So slowly, we saw tourism getting, numbers like higher and higher.Interestingly, the austerity crisis that you expected there will be a "no" for tourism became actually an attraction for tourism, first, because things were getting cheaper. And the crisis created this, actually, this opportunity in that sense. And secondly, that even the radical left government, Syriza thought that tourism is an industry that can top up the economic issues related or the economic, the financial deficiencies of the country.So it created a series of possibilities for investment from people from abroad to invest in real estate that was matched with the beginnings of the short-let accommodation businesses, Airbnb and equivalent. So all these started slowly creating a fertile land of the right conditions for the tourist economy to flourish further. And to get tourist numbers up in such an extreme that in 2019, we reach full capacity in regards to accommodation. And I don't remember now that in numbers of millions of tourists who visited the country. So there's lots of factors which brought Athens to experience.And of course, Exarcheia, specifically mass touristification, because Exarcheia is in the center of Athens. Very easy to come. Secondly, attractive because it's a vibrant neighborhood, not only because of social movements, because the tourists who come are not all interested in the political scene of the area, but mostly it's about consuming this very vibrant nightlife economy.It's the art economy, which is related with the street art and basically night economy because it has a lot of cafes which have doubled. Nowadays is one of the most populated with Airbnb accommodation. Wow. [00:16:56] Chris: Wow, what a history. It seems, from what I've read, from what I've seen, that Exarcheia was, perhaps summarize it in a single word, a kind of sanctuary for many people over the decades.And and you mentioned the Olympics too, but certainly Barcelona as well had the Olympic Games in the last 30 years, and then you tend to see this similar result or effect or consequence after the Olympic Games in which the cities themselves in some cases are either abandoned in terms of infrastructure.And so all of the billions of dollars that went into them seems to have been only for that month of the Olympic Games or in the case of Athens or, or Barcelona, perhaps, that it's created this unbelievable kind of spiraling out of, of economic growth, if you wanna call it that.But certainly of gentrification, of exile and the increase in cost of living. Mm. And so in that regard, Penny, I'm curious, what have you seen in regards to the growth of tourism in Athens? How has it affected the people, the culture, and the cost of living there?Hmm. What have you seen on that kind of street level? Cause we can talk about it on an economic level, right? Where we're kind of removed from the daily lives of the people, but what do you see in regards to your neighbors, your family, your friends that live in that neighborhood with you?[00:18:18] Penny: Okay. I mean, first of all, I mean there is a lot of things that happen in Exarcheia and now it's clear there is also a strategy to completely dismantle the social movements. It's not like extreme to say that, but it's very clear and that's what the discussions now are focusing. And it's important to say that because in order to do that, one of the ways is to basically disrupt the spaces, disrupt the space that this happens. And Exarcheia is not metaphorically the location that the social movements and initiatives are and happen,but it is the first time that we see a plan, a strategy that if there is a future here, that through not anymore tactics, but strategies from the government and the local authorities, which also are conservative, in one sense.So, to give you an example, Exarcheia neighborhood is identified by its square. The square. When we talk about Exarcheia, we talk about the Exarcheia Square, specifically, when you want to talk about movements. Not the things were happening on the square, but it's identification of the movements.So, the government with the municipality decide that the new metro station in the Exarcheia neighborhood will happen on this square. So, through this, they block completely, they fence the square, so there's no activity in the square. So, this completely changes the landscape.To put it this way, the imaginary of this landscape for the local residents, but also visitors. So, if you check the images, you will see, which is a reality, is a five meter fence. So it's definitely changes. So, I'm saying that cause somebody from the audience say, but "yes, it's for the metro. It's for the benefit of the people."Of course it's for the benefit. But there were also Plan B and Plan C that was submitted by a group of architects and some of them academics from the university here to suggest that they are better locations in the area for the metro for various reasons. "No, the metro will def will happen in the Exarcheia Square."And there is now a number of initiatives that they were dedicated to solidarity to refugees now are moving towards struggles and resistance against the metro. Mm, wow. And how tourism comes in, because you have the blocking of a central square, for a neighborhood, which is its center and then you see slowly, more and more businesses opening, pushing out or closing down all the more traditional local businesses, for opening businesses more related to tourism, like restaurants that they have a particular clientele, you know, of the food they promote, et cetera, which definitely dedicated to this particular clientele, which is basically foreigners.The second thing that happens and has to do, of course, with gentrification. In the high rank of gentrification, we're experiencing aggressive gentrification, fast and changing the look and the everydayness of the neighborhood, is that since the Syriza, they make things much easier for foreign investors through what is called golden visa.Mm-hmm. The golden visa is that in order for a non-European, non-EU national to be in Europe. And you need a specific visa, otherwise you can be only with the tourist visa for three months. In order to obtain a longer term visa of five years, 10 years, is this we call Golden Visa, where you can invest in the local economy, like in London, I don't know, in Paris. Greece has the cheapest Golden Visa, which is until recently up to 250,000 euros. So imagine it's not a lot of money if you want to invest. So, people will start getting this visa by buying property, and obviously they want to make more money by converting these places into Airbnbs.Mm-hmm. They started with individuals like, let's say me that I decide to buy a property in Paris, but now we have international real estate developers, like from China, Israel, Russia, Turkey to say a few and Germany, where they buy whole buildings, right. And they convert them to Airbnbs, not only for tourists, but also for digital nomads. So, for your audience, for example, yesterday I was at an event and I was speaking to a young artist and the discussion moved, I don't know how to, "where do you live?" I said, "I live Exarcheia." He said, "I live in Exarcheia. I asked, "Where?" And he told me, "I live there. But I have big problems, because although I own the place through inheritance, I would like to move out to sell it, because the whole building, apart from my flat and another one has been bought by an international company and now my neighbors are digital nomads, which means I dunno who these people are, because every couple of weeks it changes. It's fully dirty. Huge problem with noise. Lots of parties. It's extremely difficult."So, imagine that this changed. There are stories of this, a lot. The other thing that has happened in Exarcheia is young people, in particular, are being pushed out because the rents, as you understand, if somebody who wants to rent it for Airbnb then thinks in this mindset and something that was until recently, 300 euros. A one bedroom flat. Now it ends up in 500, 600 euros, where still the minimum sa salary is less than 700 Euros. Wow. So people are being pushed out. I have lots of examples of people, and when I say young, not young in the sense of 20s, but also people in their forties that they are being pushed out. They cannot rent anymore, let alone to buy. To buy, it's almost impossible. Yeah. [00:25:04] Chris: Yeah. Almost everyone I talk to, doesn't matter where they live these days and not just for the podcast, but in my personal life, and of course with the people who I interview on the podcast, they say the same thing. This housing crisis, if you wanna call it that, because I don't know if it's an issue of housing, as such, but an issue of regulation, an issue of the lack of regulation around these things. And it's clear that so much of the issues around tourism have to do with hyper mobility and and housing. Yes. Or at least that's what it's become in part. Mm-hmm. And so I'd like to ask you, Penny, I know you're also part of an organization named AARG! (Action Against Regeneration and Gentrification) in Athens. Mm-hmm. And so participating in the resistance against these consequences.So I'd love it if you could explain a little bit about the organization, its principles and what it does to try to combat gentrification and of course the government and police tactics that you mentioned previously. [00:26:12] Penny: Well, now we are in a turning point because obviously what are we going to do? It's like "day zero."But we started in 2019. It's not an organization. It's an activist initiative. So, we don't have any legal status as an activist group, but came out of a then source of free space called Nosotros, which was located, and I explain why I use the past tense. It was located in the very center of Exarcheia, in Exarcheia Square, basically, in a neoclassic building since 2005, if I'm right. And it was really like taking part in all the different events since then with regards to, you know, things were happening in Athens in particular, and the square movement later on during the austerity crisis years.And it is also part of the anti-authoritarian movement. So, in 2019 a number of comrades from Nosotros and other initiatives in Exarcheia Square came together through recognizing that, definitely, since 2015 started slowly seeing a change in the neighborhood. On the one hand, we were seeing higher numbers of comrades coming from abroad to be with us in different projects with the refugees, but at the same time, as I said earlier, an attraction by tourism. And gentrification was definitely happening in the neighborhood; at that time, in slow pace. So it was easy for us to recognize it and to see it, and also to have discussions and assemblies to think how we can act against it.What kind of actions can we take, first of all, to make neighbors aware of what was happening in the neighborhood, and secondly, to act against Airbnbs, but not only, because the issue was not just the Airbnbs. So in 2019 we started, we had a series of assemblies. We had events. We invited comrades from abroad to, to share with us their own experiences of similar situation, like for instance, in Detroit, that at that time we thought that it was the extreme situation on what happened with the economic crisis in US and the collapse of the car industry, not only with the impact in Detroit and in Berlin, which again, at the time, still in 2019, we felt that Berlin was experiencing gentrification very far beyond what was happening in Athens and specifically in Exarcheia.So, that's in 2019. We had also actions that we start mapping the neighborhood to understand where Airbnbs were kind of mushrooming, where were the issues, but also in cases, because the other thing that was start becoming an issue was the eviction. At that time was still not as, for example, we were reading 2019 and before in Berlin, for example, or in Spain, like in Barcelona or Madrid...but there were cases, so we experienced the case of a elderly neighbor with her son who is a person with disabilities who were basically forced through eviction from the place they were renting, for almost two decades, by the new owners, who were real estate developer agency from abroad, who bought the whole building basically, and to convert it to Airbnb, basically. So we did this. Let's say this started in January 2019, where we just have elections and it's the first time we get this government, not first time, but it's the first time we have conservatives being elected and start saying dramatically and aggressively neighborhood with basically the eviction almost of all the housing spot for refugees in the area, apart from one, which still is here.All the others were basically evicted violently with the refugees, were taken by police vans to refugee camps. Those who had already got the papers were basically evicted and sent as homeless in the streets, not even in camps. So, we basically moved our actions towards this as well.And then Covid. So during Covid we created a new initiative were called Kropotkin-19, which was a mutual aid, offering assistance to people in need through the collection of food and things that they need, urgently, in the area, in the neighborhood, and the nearby neighborhood and refugee comes outside Athens.So, AARG! Has basically shifted their actions towards what was actually the urgency of the moment. So, and what happened in all this is that we lost the building through the exact example of gentrification, touristification. The owners took it because obviously it's next to the square where it's actually the metro and the think, they say future thinking, that they will sell it with very good money, to the millions, basically.So Nosotros and us as AARG! were basically now currently homeless. We don't have a real location because the building was basically taken back by the owners, and we were evicted right from the building. [00:32:14] Chris: Well, this context that you just provided for me, it kind of deeply roots together, these two notions of tourists and refugees of tourism and exile.In southern Europe, it's fairly common to see graffiti that says "migrants welcome, tourism go home." And in this context of that building, in that relative homelessness, it seems that, in a place that would house refugees, in a place that would house locals even, that this gentrification can produce this kind of exile that turns local people as well as, you know, the people who would be given refuge, given sanctuary also into refugees in their own places.And I'm wondering if there's anything else you'd like to unpack around this notion of the border crises in Greece and Southern Europe. I know that it's still very much in the news around this fishing vessel that collapsed with some seven to 800 people on it, off the coast of Greece.And certainly this is nothing new in that region. And I'm just wondering if there's anything more you'd like to unpack or to offer our listeners in regards to what's happening in Greece in regards to the border crises there. Mm. [00:33:36] Penny: Okay. I mean, the border crisis, is Greece and it's Europe. So when you speak about national policies or border policy, you need also to think of what we call fortress Europe, because this is it. So Greece is in the borders and it's actually policing the borders. And, there's lots of reports even recently that quite a lot of illegal pushbacks are happening from Greece back to Turkey or in the case of this current situation with a boat with more than 500 people.I think it's almost like to the 700. That's the case. So this current government it was for four years, we've seen that it has definitely an anti-immigration policy agenda, definitely backed up by European policies as well.But now being reelected is going to be harder and this is a big worry for, because still we have conflicts nearby. We need to consider environmental crisis that it creates in various parts for sure, like refugees, and we have conflicts.We have Ukraine, et cetera. Although also there is discussion of thinking of refugees in two ways: those that they come from, let's say, Ukraine, which they look like us and those who do not look like us. And this obviously brings questions of racism and discrimination as well.So borders and tourism also. It is really interesting because these two are interlinked. We cannot see them, but they're interlinked. And even we can think in the widest, let's say, metaphor of this, that at the same week, let's say 10 days that we had this major loss of lives in the Greek Sea.At the same time we have the submarine with the millionaires or billionaires, which almost is a kind of a more like upmarket tourism because also we need to think what the submarine represents symbolically to the life we are creating, worldwide.And I'm saying worldwide because I was currently, and I think I talked with you, Chris, about it, in Latin America and specifically in Medellin, which is a city known mostly abroad for not good reasons, basically for the drug trafficking. But one of the things, definitely post pandemic that the city's experiencing is massive gentrification and massive touristification due to economic policies that allow specific type of tourism to flourish through digital nomads having real opportunities there for very cheap lifestyles. Very good technology infrastructure, but other issues that bring mass tourism that in this case is also sex tourism and underage sex tourism, which is really, really problematic. But going back to Athens and Exarcheia in particular, the issue, it's very obvious. We are even now discussing that this thing is a bubble and sooner or later we will see that bursting because tourism is a product. Tourist locations are products and they have a lifespan.And it's particularly when there's no sustainable planning strategy. And an example in Greece, which is recently been heard a lot, is Mykonos Island. The Mykonos Island was known as this like hedonistic economy, up market, et cetera.But right now it is the first year that they've seen losses, economic losses, that it doesn't do well on the number of tourists coming. So, there are these things that we will see. Still, Athens is in its peak and they're expecting big numbers still because we are not even in July. I live now what most of us would say, we don't want to be in Exarcheia for going out because it doesn't anymore looks as a space we knew, for various reasons. But still there is movement. As I said the metro now is the center of the resistance. And also the other thing that I forgot to say that it's actually from the municipality coming in is that they are closing down and closed down basically green areas in the area, like Strefi Hill, and the nearby park for supposedly to regenerate it and to ensure that it's up in the level that it needs to be. But at the same time, they are leasing it into corporate private businesses to run. [00:38:43] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And just for our listeners, whether this is the intention of local governments or not the closure or at least suspension of these places such as parks or local squares is the refusal to allow people to use public lands or to operate on what are traditionally understood as the commons, right? Mm-hmm. And these are traditionally places that people would use to organize. And so whether this is a part of the government's plans or not this is the consequence, right?And this tends to happen more and more and more as tourism and development reaches its apex in a place. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And Penny, I have a question that was actually written in by a friend of mine who lives there in Athens and his name is Alex who I had the pleasure of meeting last year there.And Alex talks about how everyone in Greece seems to be involved in tourism in some manner or another, that it's according to him "the country's biggest industry and how all of us are bound and tied to it," he said. Mm-hmm. And Alex wonders what alternatives and perhaps worthy alternatives do you think there might be to tourist economies?[00:39:59] Penny: Well, I mean, the issue is not, I mean, tourism is a type of model of tourism as well. I mean and it is also kind of percentages. So if we have more tourists than locals, then there is a question here, what exactly is happening when particular neighborhoods are turned to theme parks?Then again, it's an issue of what exactly offered locals, because okay, it could be good for businesses, but as I said, where is the sustainability in these projects and these models? Because if it's five year plan, then after the five year plan, all these people who are involved in tourism, what are they going to do?The other thing is what kinda tourism we're talking about and what kind services, because if we're all tangled or related with a tourist product, but what we do is servicing, meaning that even very few people will make money because most of us, we will be employees. And saying that is also about labor rights.So this is actually not regulated. There is no real regulation to various levels. Housing, for example, that you touched upon, earlier on in the conversation... In Greece doesn't have a dedicated law. So housing comes in various different parts of law, but it doesn't have a dedicated one.That's another reason why things are very unruly, unregulated. And the other thing is that in Greece, one thing that is unique, in comparison to all the countries, is that after the second World War, there was this idea of small ownership; that the dream is to own a small place, and to give it to your kids, et cetera.So it is very, very complex in that sense. And also as a tenant, it's very difficult to basically to have rights as well. Likewise, when we talk about labor, there's lots of things which are not regulated. So people who work in the tourist industry... it's almost like slavery.Quite a lot of people do not want to work right now in the tourism industry because they know that it's really unregulated and where that ends. So go back to what your friend asked, I'm not an economist and it's not an easy, and it's not, I'm not using it as an easy way to escape from giving a reply, but it's not about how to replace tourism, but it's actually what kind of a tourist model we bringing in because it's the same thing that I brought.So in Greece what exactly are we actually looking as a model to bring things that we saw in other places, didn't work?And they've seen the aftermaths of it. So this is something we need to be very, very serious about. Because at the moment, I think it's a five year plan with no future-thinking further because imagine a scenario that if tourism collapse, and we have all these businesses dedicated to tourism in one single neighborhood. We have urban Airbnb everywhere. What all these privately owned premises going to do? What kind of alternative you they're gonna have? [00:43:27] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You used the word " replace," to replace tourism and I'm a big fan of etymology of the study of the roots of words and in English, the word replace in its deepest meaning could mean "to place, again." Right. And if we understood the word place as a verb, and not just as a noun, not just as a thing, but as something we do, what would it look like to place again, to consider our place not just as a thing, but as a process, as a process through time.And what would that mean to re-place ourselves. To re-place the time we're in. And it brings me to my next question, which is around solidarity and mm-hmm. I'm wondering in this regard, what kind of advice might you have both for tourists, for individuals, and also for people looking to organize their own communities in solidarity with, for example, the movements, the collectives, the residents of places like Exarcheia. What advice would you have for those people who wish to act and live in solidarity with the collectives that are undertaking these battles in places like Exarcheia?[00:44:51] Penny: Okay. If I remember well, the initiative against the Metro has created an open letter which will be for also address to tourists. So to make them aware, you know, you are here, you are welcome, but be aware that this is happening in this neighborhood, that the neighborhood is not just a product for consumption, but they are us, that we live here and we have been hugely affected by policies against us.It's not a blame to the tourists because we've been tourists and we are tourists ourselves. We go somewhere else. It's a matter to how you are respectful and understanding of what happens in local level and that there are people leaving not only the people who make money out of offering you services, but basically every people who have an everydayness in these areas and they need to be respected as well. And even understand where and what may happen to them. I mean, obviously we hear, and there are people who think, okay, we rather prefer to stay in hotels instead of AIrbnbs because this will basically support further this economy, which is platform capitalism because again, at the end, who makes more money, are the people who own those platforms.So it's about to be conscious and to be open and to see around you. And I'm saying that, and I can give you an example because for me, it definitely summarizes what I want to say. Okay, last summer, I was out with friends in Exarcheia, near Exarcheia Square to have a drink with friends who were visiting. No, no one visiting. One is from here. And in another table comes a seller, a migrant from East Asia to sell something and stop in my table. We discuss something with him and behind him, a couple of tourists with a dog passed by. The dog stops, probably afraid of something and kind of barks and bites the seller, the guy who was actually the vendor.So, the vendor gets really panicked and we say what happened to him? The two people with the dog, say, don't actually listen to him. He's lying. He's trying to get money out of us. And this is a story I mean, of understanding, of two people, you know, coming here not understanding at all and having completely this idea, but at the same time trying to consume what Exarcheia is offering. Is a story that to me can say a lot, actually. Mm, [00:47:23] Chris: yeah. Deep imposition. [00:47:25] Penny: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, as tourists, we need to be more conscious of the places we go. We need to understand and to listen and to hear.It is difficult to do otherwise because I mean, when you go back to solidarity, I mean, this is another thing because we don't expect people who come for couple of days to go to different, let's say, collectives, initiatives and take part.But at the same time, people who come and they want to spend time, in the sense of being part, again, one thing you do is not only you consume experiences, you take the experience and you look something abroad. You share the experience and we need that as well. Hmm. [00:48:16] Chris: Wow. And what would you say to people, for example, in places like Oaxaca, where there's been a tourist economy for the last 10, 20 years, steadily growing, and then after the lockdowns has become a destination like cities in Southern Europe, for digital nomads, for quote unquote expatriates, where now the consequences of the tourist economy are reaching a boiling point a kind of crisis moment, and where people are experiencing a great deal of resentment and backlash against the tourist, but who want to find some kind of way of organizing together in order to lessen or undermine or subvert the tourist economies.What advice would you have for those people maybe looking to places like Exarcheia, places like Southern Europe, where people have begun to organize for many years? What advice would you have for those people, for those collectives? [00:49:21] Penny: Well, the prosperity out of what you can get from this type of economy, it's going to be short term. So those who will make money or those who anyway will make money for those who have small businesses, it's going to be for few years. And particularly with digital nomads, is exactly what the word the term means: nomads. So this year or this couple of years, they will be in Oaxaca, they will be in Medellin.Previously they were in Lisbon. They were in Berlin. There is a product that is movable because their business, the work they do is movable. So for them, is what you offer like a package. And if it is cheap package, they will go there. If it has good weather, they will go there. And easier legislation.So it's a matter of recognizing because at the same time you cannot start pushing and throwing and beating up tourists. You're not gonna change anything. It's basically awareness.I'm not fond local authorities, but I've seen that in cases like Barcelona, the local authorities were more conscious and more aware, and obviously more on the left side. They were trying as well to create policies that has some limitation that at least this thing, it doesn't become beyond what you're able to sustain, basically, to create an equilibrium.But still, even in Barcelona, there are situations as in the neighborhood, which has became totally gentrified and people were pushed out. So they need some kind of legislation to limit the numbers of visitors for Airbnbs or things like that. But in the level of action, it's actually awareness and resistance and to continue.It's not easy because the political situation doesn't help. It has created a fruitful land for this to become even more and more and more. But the idea is not to give up and stop. I know that it's very like maybe generic and very abstract what I'm offering a solutions, because obviously here we're also trying to see what solutions we can have. Maybe you create a critical mass in an international level. Also, you make aware outside of what happens. So, so the tourists before even coming, they're aware of what's exactly happening and also with regards to solidarity between similar causes. Hmm. [00:52:00] Chris: Hmm. Thank you Penny. So we've spoken quite a bit about what's come to pass in Athens, in Greece, in Exarcheia in regards to tourism, gentrification, and the border crisis there in fortress Europe. And my final question for you is do you think there's anything about these movements of people and the way that we've come to understand them about the flight and plight of other people's, not just refugees, but also tourists as well, that can teach us about what it means to be at home in our places?[00:52:40] Penny: Oh, that's a big discussion. Cause it depends. I mean, when you talk about mobile population, like those, for instance, digital nomads, then we talk about something else, which is basically a more cosmopolitan understanding of the world, but also that the world is a product for consumption. So, it is two different layers of understanding also home.And basically when you see advertisements of houses specifically short-lets dedicated to let's say, digital nomads, the advertisements will say something like "home," that what we offer you like home. But when you go to those places and you stay in, what they mean like home, is that you have all the amenities to make your life easy as a digital normal.That you have a fast internet to make your work easy, et cetera, et cetera. So it is a very complex thing and definitely the way we live in, it's between the nomadic that has nothing to do with how we understood the nomadic in previous centuries or histories and to their, place as home, like you have a stable place.So, there are many questions and many questions about borders, that borders are easy to pass if you have the right profile, but then it is a block, and it's actually a "no" for those who leave home because they're forced to. So, it's a very unequal way of thinking of borders, home and place, worldwide.It's not just about Greece or Athens or Exarcheia, but maybe Exarcheia is a good example of giving us both sides who are welcome and who are not welcome. So yes, we say "welcome to refugees" and we see this kind of tagging and stencils and graffiti around because yes, this is what we want. We want them here to welcome them, but at the same time, we say " no to tourism," not because we have individual issues with specific people, but because of what has been the impact of this mobility into local lives.[00:54:59] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, may we come to understand these complexities on a deeper level and in a way that that honors a way of being at home in which, in which all people can be rooted.Mm-hmm. So, I'd like to thank you, Penny, for joining me today, for your time, for your consideration, for your willingness to be able to speak in a language that is not your mother tongue is deeply, deeply appreciated. And finally, how might our listeners be able to read more about your work, about the social movements and collectives in Greece?How might they be able to get in touch? [00:55:41] Penny: Okay. We have on Facebook, on social media, we have AARG!. So if they, look at AARG! Action Against Regeneration & G entrification, but it's AARG! on Facebook and also Kropotkin-19, they will find their information. Now about my work specifically, they will look at my profile like Penny Travlou at the University of Edinburgh. So they will see what I do in Athens and in Latin America. So there is material, some things are in the form of academic text and other things are in videos, et cetera, which are more accessible to a wider audience.[00:56:22] Chris: Well, I'll make sure all those links and social media websites are available to our listeners when the episode launches. And once again, on behalf of our listeners, thank you so much for joining us today. [00:56:34] Penny: Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good morning. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

EPISODE 1534: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, the author of THE OVERLOOKED AMERICANS, about the resilience of rural America and it means for the future of the country Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of public policy at the University of Southern California's Price School of Public Policy. She teaches courses in economic development, the arts, and urban policy and urban planning. Her research focuses on the arts and culture, the American consumer economy and the role of cultural capital in geographic and class divides. She is the author of The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City (Princeton University Press 2007); Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity (Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) and The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class (Princeton University Press, 2017), which was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist. Her books have been published in multiple languages. Currid-Halkett's work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Salon, the Economist, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary Supplement, among others. She has contributed to a variety of academic and mainstream publications including the Journal of Economic Geography, Economic Development Quarterly, the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, the New York Times, and the Harvard Business Review. She is a member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network and Industry Strategy Officers and has been a member of the WEF Global Future Councils. Currid-Halkett is currently working on a book which revisits Tocqueville's Democracy in America to better understand how culture and politics of culture influence the current geographic and class divisions in American society. Her book, The Overlooked Americans: Revisiting Tocqueville and the Cultural Geography of the United States, is forthcoming with Basic Books. Currid-Halkett received her PhD in urban planning from Columbia University. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when jobs in academia are scarce, and few of the descriptions of jobs outside academia seem like a fit? How can graduates find the right job for them, whether it's inside academia or far afield? This episode explores: Ways to explain your skills and expertise so an employer sees you as a good match for them. Tips for reframing how graduate students talk about themselves and their research. How advisors can encourage graduates to explore a wider range of jobs. A discussion of the book chapter “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our guest is: Dr. Holly Prescott, who is a career guidance practitioner specializing in working with postgraduate researchers (graduate students/ PhDs). She completed a PhD in Literature and Cultural Geography at the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2011. Since then, she has gained ten years' experience in postgraduate student recruitment, admissions, and careers support. Holly also holds a PGDip (QCG) in Career Guidance from Coventry University (UK) and the Career Development Institute, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is currently the Careers Adviser for Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Birmingham (UK). Holly is particularly passionate about developing Postgraduate Researchers' awareness of career routes beyond and adjacent to academic research, helping them to make transitions into meaningful careers. This led her to found the PhD careers blog ‘PostGradual' (www.phd-careers.co.uk). Holly lives with a rare autoimmune eye condition called AZOOR which causes visual field defects, and outside of work she volunteers for the British sight loss charity RNIB. She is also Assistant Artistic Director of Ottisdotter Theatre Company based in London. She is the author of “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: The Employability Journal, by Barbara Bassot Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide, by Christopher L. Caterine Candid Advice for New Faculty Members, by Marybeth Gasman Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom, by Katina Rogers Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers, by Kathryn Linder, Keven Kelly, and Thomas Tobin The Connected PhD podcast episode, part one Academic Life podcast episode on Hope for the Humanities PhD Academic Life podcast on Leaving Academia Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week, to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What happens when jobs in academia are scarce, and few of the descriptions of jobs outside academia seem like a fit? How can graduates find the right job for them, whether it's inside academia or far afield? This episode explores: Ways to explain your skills and expertise so an employer sees you as a good match for them. Tips for reframing how graduate students talk about themselves and their research. How advisors can encourage graduates to explore a wider range of jobs. A discussion of the book chapter “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our guest is: Dr. Holly Prescott, who is a career guidance practitioner specializing in working with postgraduate researchers (graduate students/ PhDs). She completed a PhD in Literature and Cultural Geography at the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2011. Since then, she has gained ten years' experience in postgraduate student recruitment, admissions, and careers support. Holly also holds a PGDip (QCG) in Career Guidance from Coventry University (UK) and the Career Development Institute, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is currently the Careers Adviser for Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Birmingham (UK). Holly is particularly passionate about developing Postgraduate Researchers' awareness of career routes beyond and adjacent to academic research, helping them to make transitions into meaningful careers. This led her to found the PhD careers blog ‘PostGradual' (www.phd-careers.co.uk). Holly lives with a rare autoimmune eye condition called AZOOR which causes visual field defects, and outside of work she volunteers for the British sight loss charity RNIB. She is also Assistant Artistic Director of Ottisdotter Theatre Company based in London. She is the author of “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: The Employability Journal, by Barbara Bassot Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide, by Christopher L. Caterine Candid Advice for New Faculty Members, by Marybeth Gasman Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom, by Katina Rogers Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers, by Kathryn Linder, Keven Kelly, and Thomas Tobin The Connected PhD podcast episode, part one Academic Life podcast episode on Hope for the Humanities PhD Academic Life podcast on Leaving Academia Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week, to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

What happens when jobs in academia are scarce, and few of the descriptions of jobs outside academia seem like a fit? How can graduates find the right job for them, whether it's inside academia or far afield? This episode explores: Ways to explain your skills and expertise so an employer sees you as a good match for them. Tips for reframing how graduate students talk about themselves and their research. How advisors can encourage graduates to explore a wider range of jobs. A discussion of the book chapter “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our guest is: Dr. Holly Prescott, who is a career guidance practitioner specializing in working with postgraduate researchers (graduate students/ PhDs). She completed a PhD in Literature and Cultural Geography at the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2011. Since then, she has gained ten years' experience in postgraduate student recruitment, admissions, and careers support. Holly also holds a PGDip (QCG) in Career Guidance from Coventry University (UK) and the Career Development Institute, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is currently the Careers Adviser for Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Birmingham (UK). Holly is particularly passionate about developing Postgraduate Researchers' awareness of career routes beyond and adjacent to academic research, helping them to make transitions into meaningful careers. This led her to found the PhD careers blog ‘PostGradual' (www.phd-careers.co.uk). Holly lives with a rare autoimmune eye condition called AZOOR which causes visual field defects, and outside of work she volunteers for the British sight loss charity RNIB. She is also Assistant Artistic Director of Ottisdotter Theatre Company based in London. She is the author of “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: The Employability Journal, by Barbara Bassot Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide, by Christopher L. Caterine Candid Advice for New Faculty Members, by Marybeth Gasman Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom, by Katina Rogers Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers, by Kathryn Linder, Keven Kelly, and Thomas Tobin The Connected PhD podcast episode, part one Academic Life podcast episode on Hope for the Humanities PhD Academic Life podcast on Leaving Academia Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week, to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

What happens when jobs in academia are scarce, and few of the descriptions of jobs outside academia seem like a fit? How can graduates find the right job for them, whether it's inside academia or far afield? This episode explores: Ways to explain your skills and expertise so an employer sees you as a good match for them. Tips for reframing how graduate students talk about themselves and their research. How advisors can encourage graduates to explore a wider range of jobs. A discussion of the book chapter “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our guest is: Dr. Holly Prescott, who is a career guidance practitioner specializing in working with postgraduate researchers (graduate students/ PhDs). She completed a PhD in Literature and Cultural Geography at the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2011. Since then, she has gained ten years' experience in postgraduate student recruitment, admissions, and careers support. Holly also holds a PGDip (QCG) in Career Guidance from Coventry University (UK) and the Career Development Institute, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is currently the Careers Adviser for Postgraduate Researchers at the University of Birmingham (UK). Holly is particularly passionate about developing Postgraduate Researchers' awareness of career routes beyond and adjacent to academic research, helping them to make transitions into meaningful careers. This led her to found the PhD careers blog ‘PostGradual' (www.phd-careers.co.uk). Holly lives with a rare autoimmune eye condition called AZOOR which causes visual field defects, and outside of work she volunteers for the British sight loss charity RNIB. She is also Assistant Artistic Director of Ottisdotter Theatre Company based in London. She is the author of “Beyond the Data: Navigating the Struggles of Post-PhD Employability,” in The Sage Handbook of Graduate Employability. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender. Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: The Employability Journal, by Barbara Bassot Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide, by Christopher L. Caterine Candid Advice for New Faculty Members, by Marybeth Gasman Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom, by Katina Rogers Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers, by Kathryn Linder, Keven Kelly, and Thomas Tobin The Connected PhD podcast episode, part one Academic Life podcast episode on Hope for the Humanities PhD Academic Life podcast on Leaving Academia Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week, to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-south

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

In this episode, Thomas Aiello joins E. James West to discuss Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration: The Cultural Geography of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate (University of Georgia Press, 2023).  Building on his earlier book The Grapevine of the Black South, which focused on the rise and fall of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate through its flagship publication the Atlanta Daily World, this book further reshapes the place of southern newspapers in the historiography of Black journalism. Practical Radicalism and the Great Migration traces the development and trajectory of the individual newspapers of the Syndicate, evaluating those with surviving issues, and presenting them as they existed in proximity to their Atlanta hub. In so doing, he emphasizes the thread of practical radicalism that ran through Syndicate editorial policy, providing a fuller picture of the Scott Newspaper Syndicate and the Black press in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. James West is a historian of race, media and business in the modern United States and Black diaspora. Author of "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (Illinois, 2020), "A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago" (Illinois, 2022), "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this podcast, Dai and Steve discuss the issues that deaf people and deaf communities face in capitalist society and the ways in which deaf people have traditionally framed their engagement and resistance to these issues. We discuss the issues that anarchists need to consider when reflecting on how anarchist spaces can be more accessible to deaf people. For a video of this talk in British Sign Language, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9_Z6nkFUqw For a text version, see the Anarchist Studies blog: https://anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/post/2023/01/16/anarchism-and-deaf-people/ Dai O'Brien is an Associate Professor in BSL and Deaf Studies in York St John University. His most recent papers are M Chua, Maartje De Meulder, Leah Geer, Jonathan Henner, Lynn Hou, Okan Kubus, Dai O'Brien and Octavian Robinson (2022) ‘1001 Small Victories: Deaf Academics and Imposter Syndrome' in The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education, and ‘Theorising the deaf body: using Lefebvre and Bourdieu to understand deaf spatial experience' in Cultural Geographies.  Steve is a Lecturer in BSL and Deaf Studies at York St John University. His most recent papers are: Emery, S. D., & Iyer, S. (2021) ‘Deaf migration through an intersectionality lens'. Disability & Society, 1-22; and Emery, S.D. (2016) 'Deaf Rights Activism, Global Protest', in G. Gertz & P. Boudreault (eds) The SAGE Deaf Studies Encyclopedia, SAGE: C.A., 266-271. He has written a joint chapter and contributed to the others in the forthcoming publication: Kusters, A., Moriarty Harrelson, E., Le-Marie, A., Iyer, S., Emery, S. D. (2023) International Deaf Mobilities. Gallaudet University Press: Washington D.C. This episode of ‘Anarchist Essays' was supported by a grant from The Lipman-Miliband Trust. Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group. Follow us on Twitter @arglboro Artwork by Sam G.

Claudia talks to Lauren van Patter about the concepts of feral and invasive species. They touch on the differences between the two concepts and consider how issues of colonization, reproduction, and human control lead to the categorization of some animals as biosecurity threats.  Date Recorded: 21 September 2022 Dr. Lauren Van Patter is the Kim & Stu Lang Professor in Community and Shelter Medicine in the Department of Clinical Studies at the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph. Lauren is an interdisciplinary animal studies researcher with a background in Environmental Sciences and Cultural Geographies. She has researched urban coyotes and feral cats in Canadian cities as well as free roaming dogs in rural Botswana. Lauren is a co-editor of the volume ‘A Research Agenda for Animal Geographies', and has published in peer-reviewed Veterinary, Animal Studies, Geography, African Studies, and Wildlife Management journals. Connect with Lauren on Twitter (@levanpatter) or on her website.  Claudia (Towne) Hirtenfelder is the founder and host of The Animal Turn. She is a PhD Candidate in Geography and Planning at Queen's University and is currently undertaking her own research project looking at the geographical and historical relationships between animals (specifically cows) and cities. She was awarded the AASA Award for Popular Communication for her work on the podcast. Contact Claudia via email (info@theanimalturnpodcast.com) or follow her on Twitter (@ClaudiaFTowne). Featured: Animal Liberation by Peter Singer; Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson ; Managing Love and Death at the Zoo: The Biopolitics of Endangered Species Preservation by Matthew Chrulew; Anishnaabe Aki: an indigenous perspective on the global threat of invasive species by Nicholas Reo and Laura Ogden; Managing Love and Death at the Zoo: The Biopolitics of Endangered Species Preservation by Mathew Chrulew ; Some “F” words for the environmental humanities: feralities, feminisms, futurities by Catriona SandilandsAnimal Highlight: CrabsFeatured: Crab by Cynthia ChrisThe Animal Turn is part of the  iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, Twitter, and Instagram Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; the Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research Collective for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music; Jeremy John for the logo; and Christiaan Menz for his editing.The Animal Turn is part of the  iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, Twitter, and InstagramA.P.P.L.E Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E)Biosecurities Research Collective The Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research brings together scholars interested in biosecurity.

In this episode, Ben is joined once again by Dr Pauline Couper, Associate Professor of Geography and Associate Head for the School of Humanities at YSJU, to discuss the concept of ‘phenomenology'. We explore some of the ways in which philosophers and geographers have attempted to theorise and inject a sense of our bodily existence and experience into accounts of human-environmental interactions. We explore the contributions of humanist geography, as well as the application of ideas around perception in the work of continental philosophy, and consider some of the exciting and critical ways in which today's scholars are extending and adding to our understanding of body-world relations. Below, for those who are interested, are some links to relevant readings mentioned in conversation and that further flesh out the concepts / topics discussed... Key Reading #1: The 2007 article “Leaving nothing but ripples on the water: performing ecotourism natures” by Gordon Waitt and Lauren Cook is mentioned by Pauline in discussion as a useful applied example of how scholarship on outdoor human activities might incorporate and consider bodily experiences. Published in the Social & Cultural Geography and available online here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649360701529782 Key Reading #2: Pauline's 2017 paper in cultural geographies, flagged in the episode, sees her apply the insights of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to the subject of small-boat sailing and the experience of ‘being in nature'. “The embodied spatialities of being in nature” is available online here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474474017732978 Further Reading: Geographer Eden Kincaid has developed a range of resources explaining and discussing key concepts and debates in geography as part of a series of collated twitter threads (see the website: ‘wtf is…geography!?'). Being as they work on phenomenology in their own research, the thread on this subject is a great way into the concept. Available online here: https://twitter.com/WTFisGeography/status/1572962871042273280?s=20&t=XW5MYaGWLJjfcgl8tkvsDQ Further Reading: The article by Drik van Eck and Roos Pijpers from 2017, ‘Encounters in place ballet', published in Area, is one that Pauline has found works well when teaching students about phenomenological ideas and how they might be applied by geographers to understand spatial experience (in this case, the experience of parks by older people). Link here: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/area.12311 (C) 2022. Produced / Edited by B. Garlick

For our next few episodes, we're going to turn to performance and look at how music, theatre and dance have intersected with education in the past. Our stop will be in early modern England, where Dr Amanda Eubanks Winkler will be our guide to performance in the schoolroom. Amanda is a historian of English music in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries at Syracuse University. Her research interests include the relationship among musical, spiritual, and bodily disorder; performance and pedagogy; and the intersection of music and politics. Her most recent book, Music, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools, touches on a number of these topics. A transcript of the episode is available at the History of Education Society website, along with more information about our events, publications and conferences. You can follow the History of Education Society UK on Twitter and keep up-to-date with the latest research in The History of Education journal.SourcesMusic, Dance, and Drama in Early Modern English Schools by Amanda Eubanks Winkler  Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke's Company by Amanda Eubanks Winkler and Richard Schoch‘Opera at School: Mapping the Cultural Geography of Schoolgirl Performance' by Amanda Eubanks Winkler, in Operatic Georgraphies: The Place of Opera and the Opera House, edited by Suzanne Aspden

Sandeep Banerjee's book Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony (Routledge, 2021) illuminates the spatial utopianism of South Asian anti-colonial texts by showing how they refuse colonial spatial imaginaries to re-imagine the British Indian colony as the postcolony in diverse and contested ways. Focusing on the literary field of South Asia between, largely, the 1860s and 1920s, it underlines the centrality of literary imagination and representation in the cultural politics of decolonization. This book spatializes our understanding of decolonization while decoupling and complicating the easy equation between decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism. The author utilises a global comparative framework and reads across the English-vernacular divide to understand space as a site of contested representation and ideological contestation. He interrogates the spatial desire of anti-colonial and colonial texts across a range of genres, namely, historical romances, novels, travelogues, memoirs, poems, and patriotic lyrics. The book is the first full-length literary geographical study of South Asian literary texts and will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of Postcolonial and World Literature, Asian Literature, Victorian Literature, Modern South Asian Historiography, Literature and Utopia, Literature and Decolonization, Literature and Nationalism, Cultural Geography, and South Asian Studies. Dr. Sandeep Banerjee is Associate professor at McGill University in Canada.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Sandeep Banerjee's book Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony (Routledge, 2021) illuminates the spatial utopianism of South Asian anti-colonial texts by showing how they refuse colonial spatial imaginaries to re-imagine the British Indian colony as the postcolony in diverse and contested ways. Focusing on the literary field of South Asia between, largely, the 1860s and 1920s, it underlines the centrality of literary imagination and representation in the cultural politics of decolonization. This book spatializes our understanding of decolonization while decoupling and complicating the easy equation between decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism. The author utilises a global comparative framework and reads across the English-vernacular divide to understand space as a site of contested representation and ideological contestation. He interrogates the spatial desire of anti-colonial and colonial texts across a range of genres, namely, historical romances, novels, travelogues, memoirs, poems, and patriotic lyrics. The book is the first full-length literary geographical study of South Asian literary texts and will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of Postcolonial and World Literature, Asian Literature, Victorian Literature, Modern South Asian Historiography, Literature and Utopia, Literature and Decolonization, Literature and Nationalism, Cultural Geography, and South Asian Studies. Dr. Sandeep Banerjee is Associate professor at McGill University in Canada.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Sandeep Banerjee's book Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony (Routledge, 2021) illuminates the spatial utopianism of South Asian anti-colonial texts by showing how they refuse colonial spatial imaginaries to re-imagine the British Indian colony as the postcolony in diverse and contested ways. Focusing on the literary field of South Asia between, largely, the 1860s and 1920s, it underlines the centrality of literary imagination and representation in the cultural politics of decolonization. This book spatializes our understanding of decolonization while decoupling and complicating the easy equation between decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism. The author utilises a global comparative framework and reads across the English-vernacular divide to understand space as a site of contested representation and ideological contestation. He interrogates the spatial desire of anti-colonial and colonial texts across a range of genres, namely, historical romances, novels, travelogues, memoirs, poems, and patriotic lyrics. The book is the first full-length literary geographical study of South Asian literary texts and will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of Postcolonial and World Literature, Asian Literature, Victorian Literature, Modern South Asian Historiography, Literature and Utopia, Literature and Decolonization, Literature and Nationalism, Cultural Geography, and South Asian Studies. Dr. Sandeep Banerjee is Associate professor at McGill University in Canada.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Sandeep Banerjee's book Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony (Routledge, 2021) illuminates the spatial utopianism of South Asian anti-colonial texts by showing how they refuse colonial spatial imaginaries to re-imagine the British Indian colony as the postcolony in diverse and contested ways. Focusing on the literary field of South Asia between, largely, the 1860s and 1920s, it underlines the centrality of literary imagination and representation in the cultural politics of decolonization. This book spatializes our understanding of decolonization while decoupling and complicating the easy equation between decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism. The author utilises a global comparative framework and reads across the English-vernacular divide to understand space as a site of contested representation and ideological contestation. He interrogates the spatial desire of anti-colonial and colonial texts across a range of genres, namely, historical romances, novels, travelogues, memoirs, poems, and patriotic lyrics. The book is the first full-length literary geographical study of South Asian literary texts and will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of Postcolonial and World Literature, Asian Literature, Victorian Literature, Modern South Asian Historiography, Literature and Utopia, Literature and Decolonization, Literature and Nationalism, Cultural Geography, and South Asian Studies. Dr. Sandeep Banerjee is Associate professor at McGill University in Canada.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Sandeep Banerjee's book Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony (Routledge, 2021) illuminates the spatial utopianism of South Asian anti-colonial texts by showing how they refuse colonial spatial imaginaries to re-imagine the British Indian colony as the postcolony in diverse and contested ways. Focusing on the literary field of South Asia between, largely, the 1860s and 1920s, it underlines the centrality of literary imagination and representation in the cultural politics of decolonization. This book spatializes our understanding of decolonization while decoupling and complicating the easy equation between decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism. The author utilises a global comparative framework and reads across the English-vernacular divide to understand space as a site of contested representation and ideological contestation. He interrogates the spatial desire of anti-colonial and colonial texts across a range of genres, namely, historical romances, novels, travelogues, memoirs, poems, and patriotic lyrics. The book is the first full-length literary geographical study of South Asian literary texts and will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of Postcolonial and World Literature, Asian Literature, Victorian Literature, Modern South Asian Historiography, Literature and Utopia, Literature and Decolonization, Literature and Nationalism, Cultural Geography, and South Asian Studies. Dr. Sandeep Banerjee is Associate professor at McGill University in Canada.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

Sandeep Banerjee's book Space, Utopia and Indian Decolonization: Literary Pre-Figurations of the Postcolony (Routledge, 2021) illuminates the spatial utopianism of South Asian anti-colonial texts by showing how they refuse colonial spatial imaginaries to re-imagine the British Indian colony as the postcolony in diverse and contested ways. Focusing on the literary field of South Asia between, largely, the 1860s and 1920s, it underlines the centrality of literary imagination and representation in the cultural politics of decolonization. This book spatializes our understanding of decolonization while decoupling and complicating the easy equation between decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism. The author utilises a global comparative framework and reads across the English-vernacular divide to understand space as a site of contested representation and ideological contestation. He interrogates the spatial desire of anti-colonial and colonial texts across a range of genres, namely, historical romances, novels, travelogues, memoirs, poems, and patriotic lyrics. The book is the first full-length literary geographical study of South Asian literary texts and will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience in the fields of Postcolonial and World Literature, Asian Literature, Victorian Literature, Modern South Asian Historiography, Literature and Utopia, Literature and Decolonization, Literature and Nationalism, Cultural Geography, and South Asian Studies. Dr. Sandeep Banerjee is Associate professor at McGill University in Canada.  Gargi Binju is a researcher at the University of Tübingen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Local Milwaukee historian John Gurda is the author of 22 books including The Making of Milwaukee, which was also the basis for an Emmy Award-winning documentary series. He also writes a local history column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has a bachelors in English from Boston College, a Masters in Cultural Geography and an honorary Ph.d from the University of Wisconson-Milwaukee. You can find out more about John and order his publications at johngurda.com

In this episode, Ben is joined in conversation by Dr Jude Parks, Senior Lecturer in Geography, and Dr Catherine Heinemeyer, Lecturer in Arts and Ecological Justice, both of York St John University, to discuss the concept of ‘ecological justice' and its implications for understanding and responding to contemporary climate crisis. The conversation includes discussing how best to make questions of justice in the context of human-environmental relations tangible for students in the classroom, and Jude and Cath also touch on their work at YSJU as part of the Ecological Justice Research Group, which has run a ‘Living Lab' project to use a nearby congested junction as a place to think through the everyday relations and experiences of environmental (in)justice. You can read more about their work via the YSJU Institute for Social Justice blog here: https://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/isj/the-living-lab/. You can also follow the YSJU Ecological Justice Research Group on Twitter @YSJEcolJustice. Below, for those who are interested, are some links to relevant readings mentioned in conversation and that further flesh out the concepts / topics discussed... Key Reading #1: Julian Agyeman's book Just Sustainabilities from 2013 explores the various dimensions of justice as they relate to questions of sustainable environmental (and broader) practices. In particular, Chapter 3, ‘Space and Place' (pp.96-135), connects these ideas to geographical concerns. Link: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Just_Sustainabilities/XImxKppJsNEC?hl=en&gbpv=0 Key Reading #2: Farhana Sultana's 2021 paper in Social & Cultural Geography, entitled ‘Climate change, COVID-19, and the co-production of injustices: a feminist reading of overlapping crises', demonstrates the kind of feminist intersectional geographical approach that Jude describes near the end of the conversation, applied in the context of analysing the interrelated and unequal consequences of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649365.2021.1910994 Further Reading: ‘Racism and the Anthropocene', a 2018 chapter by Laura Polido published in in Greg Mitman et al's edited collection, Future Remains: A cabinet of curiosities for the Anthropocene, examines the intertwined issues of racial and environmental injustice as they affect our current epoch of ecological crisis. You can access part of the book (and her chapter) via Google Books but there are some websites out that that appear to host the chapter in full... Link: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Future_Remains/tOpODwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 Further Reading: A recent article by Perpertua Kirby and Rebecca Webb (2021) in Educational Review (‘Conceptualising uncertainty and the role of the teacher for a politics of climate change…') informs much of Jude and Cath's approach to teaching Ecological Justice in the classroom, as well as the ‘thing-based approach' that Cath describes. Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131911.2021.1933392 (C) 2022. Produced / Edited by B. Garlick

As broadcast June 22, 2022 with plenty of extra kuldak to sate your appetite.  Tonight we head to Kazakhstan with the fabulous Dunia Aljawad for our 77th Round Trip Wednesday.  The Crossroads of Asia, the middle of the famed Silk Road has seen it all over the millenia, and it's cultural diversity is certainly reflected in its fantastic music influenced by all the cultures surrounding it along with those further afield.  From old school greats like Shamshi Kaldayakov to newer budding artists like dudeontheguitar or Dana Tunes, there's more than a lot to like on this week's global jaunt.#feelthegravityTracklisting:Part I (00:00)Borat – Kazakhstan National AnthemSon Pascal – Altyn NightMarhaba Sabi – Qoi,kursinbeDARICORN – TemperaturaStephanskiy x Imanbek – Smoke It UpDarkhan Juzz – BylygypYenlik – BiplPart II (30:03)Moldanazar – AlystanaDos Mukasan feat Murat Kusainov – Sulu Kyizdudeontheguitar – baqplanettu – VdochJeltoksan feat dudeontheguitar & mountflower – Chill ChillQonyratbay Fam – BaribirTaspay – Orlana Qashqyn Part III (61:12)Dana Tunes – Mende Bar ArmanZhanar Dugalova - Izin korem (I see traces) Shamshi Kaldayakov - Дүнген қызы (The daughter of Dungan) dudeontheguitar – Boiy BolganImanbek x Rita Ora - Bang BangAsiya Ospanova – MSQ Part IV (93:37)Ulytau – AdaiQonyratbay Fam – Beker EmesZiruza - Айт ендi (Tell me now)Asiya - BezoruzhenLee Hyo Ri 이효리 – 미쳐 crazyBoA - Better 

Episode 20 completes the conversation Dr. Hilary Jones and I began in Episode 19.An Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Hilary Jones credits her high school French teacher as the person who opened the door to her interest in francophiles in the African diaspora. Now, nearly 3 decades later, Dr. Jones is a scholar with a vested interest in setting the historical record straight about the lives, contribution and history of Africans in the diaspora and Senegal. Dr. Jones' research has appeared in the Journal of African History, Cultural Geographies, Slavery and Abolition, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, and Zamani a publication of CODESRIA (Dakar).  She has contributed to six edited volumes and seven research works.  Currently, Jones is working on a book manuscript about the long history of Senegal and the French Caribbean.  In Episode 20, she shares her experiences with international travel and the importance of students developing a global perspective. With that being said, she agrees with me when I say, if there is an opportunity for you or your student to travel and study abroad - Go.A native of Detroit, Michigan, Jones is a graduate of Cass Technical High School and Spelman College.  She earned her doctoral degree in African History at Michigan State University.To get more information on things we discussed this episode, check out:https://blackkidsdotravel.comhttps://themomtrotter.comhttps://thecatchmeifyoucan.comFor more information on Dr. Jones' work check out:https://aaas.as.uky.edu

This week on The Capital of Craft, Sarah James from Craft Festival and Find a Maker chat's with Dr Nicola Thomas from University of Exeter.  Nicola Thomas is Professor in Historical and Cultural Geography at the Department of Geography, University of Exeter. Her research interrogates the ways in which geographical perspectives can help make sense of ‘craft'. This includes the relationships between places, materials and makers; the role of craft communities; the connections between craft and justice movements, and the embodied, material and social entanglements within craft. ⁠ Nicola sits as a Trustee and Director of two arts organisations, Kaleider and Double Elephant Printworkshop, enabling her to take her research back into the sector. Her own passion for engaged research has led her to develop a strong co-design methodology within her research practice, working in partnership with organisations like the Make South West, Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen and the Crafts Council. @craftfestival @njt_craftgeographies

In this episode I had a nice conversation with Holly Prescott about career options for postgraduates beyond academia. She is not against academic careers––and me neither. She just wants postgraduates to know it's not their only option. Holly Prescott is a career guidance practitioner specialising in working with postgraduate researchers. She is based at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. She completed a PhD in Literature and Cultural Geography at the University of Birmingham in 2011. Since then, she has gained ten years' experience in postgraduate student recruitment, admissions and careers support. Holly is particularly passionate about developing Postgraduate Researchers' awareness of career routes beyond and adjacent to academic research, and helping them to make transitions into meaningful careers. In 2021 she founded the PhD careers blog ‘PostGradual': www.phd-careers.co.uk Holly holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Career Guidance from Coventry University and the Career Development Institute (UK), and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Outside of work, Holly is Assistant Artistic Director of Ottisdotter Theatre Company in London, and is a volunteer story writer for the British sight loss charity RNIB. Enjoy

In the first episode of The Kenyanist, Kamau Wairuri (host) talks to Melissa Wanjiru-Mwita, a lecturer in Spatial Planning at the Technical University of Kenya in Nairobi. Melissa argues that street names reflect what those in power want us to remember or forget.   In the first segment, we go back in time to trace the emergence of Nairobi City around the Railway Depot and how the streets were named. Noting that after Kenya became a Crown Colony in 1920, the British were more deliberate about naming the streets. One of the ways of claiming a space is to imprint a name on it. Melissa notes that the Africans were marginalised while some Asians got recognition.   In the second segment, we trace the renaming of the streets in Nairobi in the post-colonial period. We note that many streets took the names of Kenya (such as Dedan Kimathi and Harry Thuku) and African nationalists (such as Albert Luthuli and Kwame Nkrumah). However, many of the freedom fighters, including the Kapenguria 6 who had been detained by the colonial government were not honoured in this way. We also note that many streets were named after people who had close ties to Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, even where their contribution to the struggle for independence may not be commensurate with the honour. We examine the politics of naming a street after Tom Mboya, the charismatic politician who was assassinated in Nairobi in 1969, especially the refusal to rename Government Road after him. The street was then renamed 'Moi Avenue' after Daniel arap Moi took over as the second President of Kenya. In this section, we also discuss the gender dynamics of street naming noting how women heroes of the liberation movement such as Field Marshall Muthoni Nyanjiru are not recognised.   In the third segment, we look at the contemporary period. We contrast the processes of renaming of streets in Nairobi after Prof Wangari Maathai and Wambui Kenyatta. We examine the more heated debates on the renaming of streets. We note that some renaming of street such as the renaming of Accra Road after Kenneth Matiba and Cross Street after Charles Rubia have been widely accepted. However, the renaming of a street after Fidel Odinga in Mombasa and Francis Atwoli in Nairobi have been met with resistance. Similarly, the failure of the County Government of Mombasa to rename the Mama Ngina Waterfront after Mekatilili wa Menza also raised some acrimony. the Melissa calls for a better legal framework to address the issues of street naming, including outlawing the naming of streets after a living person. She also calls for better recognition of women and go beyond politicians to also honour athletes and cultural icons.  Mentioned: Melissa Wanjiru-Mwita. Nairobi's street names reveal what those in power want to remember, or forget. The Conversation. (July 30, 2020). (02.09.2021) Melissa Wanjiru. Street Toponymy and the Decolonisation of the Urban Landscape in Post-Colonial Nairobi, Journal of Cultural Geography, 34, 1 (2017), pp. 1-23. 

In episode 167 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on nostalgia, the photographic happening and a celebrity photo shoot in New York. Plus this week photographer Simon Roberts takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer's the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?' exhibited widely and his photographs reside in major public and private collections, including the George Eastman House, Deutsche Börse Art Collection and V&A Museum. In 2010 he was commissioned as the official British Election Artist by the House of Commons Works of Art Committee to produce a record of the General Election and in 2014 he represented Britain during the UK-Russia Year of Culture. He has been commissioned to make several large-scale public artworks and recognised with numerous awards including an Honorary Fellowship to the Royal Photographic Society, the Vic Odden Award and grants from Arts Council England and the John Kobal Foundation. He is the author of several critically acclaimed monographs including Motherland in 2007, We English in 2009), Pierdom in 2013 and Merrie Albion in 2017. Roberts work has been profiled and published widely including in the New Yorker, Granta, National Geographic, ArtForum, Wallpaper, amongst others. He holds a BA Hons in Cultural Geography from The University of Sheffield, and is a regular public speaker and visiting lecturer at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Outside of his own professional practice he is involved with several not for profit organisations having served as a trustee of Photoworks and currently working as an ambassador for FotoDocument and the Positive View Foundation. Roberts is a member of the European artist collective, Piece of Cake and lives in Brighton, England. www.simoncroberts.com You can now subscribe to our weekly newsletter at https://www.getrevue.co/profile/unofphoto Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019). © Grant Scott 2021

The Ecology of Culture© 2021is an analytical scholarly cultural conversation which occupies the precincts of culture. This podcast is captured in ISBN978-976-96689-0-4 and framed in 15 chapters and verbalized in publication 229. The Ecology of Culture© 2021 is an ethos articulated and evolves around ecosystem and culture. Simply put an ecosystem is a culture which evolves around all of the organisms living within an area and the interactions between them and the physical environment. What is uniquely interesting in order to be able to feed the world's growing population, we need ever more food, which must be diverse, balanced and of good quality to ensure the progress and well-being of humankind. One of the ways this event happens has to do with the Bees way of life because they are renowned for their role in providing high-quality food (honey, royal jelly and pollen) and other products used in healthcare and other sectors (beeswax, propolis, honey bee venom).a bee's niche is making honey, pollinating flowers, and drinking nectar and its habitat is a forest or a field. Bees are vital for the preservation of ecological balance and biodiversity in nature. They provide one of the most recognizable ecosystem services, i.e. pollination, which is what makes food production possible.  The manner, approach and the way that the bees comports themselves  becomes critical link in this discourse because the work of bees entails much more! The greatest contribution of bees and other pollinators is the pollination of nearly three quarters of the plants that produce 90% of the world's food. A third of the world's food production depends on bees, i.e. every third spoonful of food depends on pollination. Trees are equally important to the ecosystem for several reasons. Another critical aspect of ecology are trees without trees, human life could not exist on Earth. According to the Community Forest Guidebook, 100 trees remove about five tons of CO2, and 1000 pounds of other pollutants within their lifetime.   "Facts and figures on marine biodiversity | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization". www.unesco.org. Retrieved 2018-12-01.  "Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Marine Systems" (PDF).  Barnett, Anthony (2016). The human species. Penguin Books Limited (1957).  Chapin et al. (2002), p. 10  Chapin et al. (2002), pp. 11–13  Chapin et al. (2002), pp. 281–304  Corals and Coral Reefs". Ocean Portal | Smithsonian. 2012-09-12. Retrieved 2018-03-27.  Cultural ecology is a theoretical approach that attempts to explain similarities and differences in culture in relation to the environment. ... Developed by Julian Steward in the 1930s and 1940s, cultural ecology became an influential approach within anthropology, particularly archaeology.  Duncan, James (2007). A Companion to Cultural Geography. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 14–22. ISBN 978-1405175654.  Ecology | Britannicahttps://www.britannica.com › science › ecology  Ecosystem Services | Mapping Ocean Wealth". oceanwealth.org. Retrieved 2018-03-27.  Gittens,William  Anderson,Author, Cinematographer Dip.Com., Arts. B.A. Media Arts Specialists' License Cultural  Practitioner, Publisher,CEO Devgro Media Arts Services®2015,Editor in Chief of Devgro Media Arts Services Publishing®2015  http://nhdbdos.com/index.php/nhd/gullies  http://www.pthomeandgarden.com/5-ways-bees-are-important-to-the-environment/  https://barbadostoday.bb/2020/05/16/old-empire-theatre-to-be-transformed-into-performing-arts-facility/  https://climatechange.lta.org/risks-to-hummingbirds-an-important-pollinator/  https://ecologyhelp.weebly.com/habitat--niche.html  Support the show (http://www.buzzsprout.com/429292)

What role do museums and heritage organisations have to play in the climate emergency? How do we stop cultural and historical landmarks from falling into the sea, or is it time to learn to say goodbye? Rodney Harrison and Caitlin DeSilvey share their expertise, from lost lighthouses to net-zero carbon museums, and their work on a shared project, Heritage Futures www.heritage-futures.org. Rodney Harrison is Professor of Heritage Studies at University College London and AHRC Heritage Priority Area Leadership Fellow (2017-2021). He co-leads the project ‘Reimagining Museums for Climate Action' – which includes an exhibition opening on 25 June at the Glasgow Science Centre for COP26 which aims to inspire radical change in museums to address the climate crisis. This project included an international design competition where people were invited to submit concepts around how museums might adapt to and address the challenges of climate change. You can read more about the exhibition and see the design proposals here: https://museumsforclimateaction.org And, you find out more about AHRC's Heritage Priority Area here: https://heritage-research.org Caitlin DeSilvey is Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter and together with Rodney Harrison, was on the research team for the AHRC-funded project, Heritage Futures. She is currently leading the AHRC-funded follow on project, Landscape Futures and the Challenge of Change: Towards Integrated Cultural/Natural Heritage Decision Making. You can read more about the project here: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/research/projects/landscape-futures/ Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Durham. You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion. The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC's supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast. Producer: Sofie Vilcins

In this episode I talk to Lizzie Hubson about her experience of doing non-traditional research, using creative research methods to undertake research in Cultural Geography. Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/   Podcast transcript   1 00:00:09,230 --> 00:00:13,640 Hello and welcome to R, D and The Inbetweens. 2 00:00:13,640 --> 00:00:32,180 I'm your host, Kelly Prwwxw, and every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development and everything in between. 3 00:00:32,180 --> 00:00:37,190 Hello and welcome to the latest episode of R, D and the In Betweens. It's Kelly Preece here 4 00:00:37,190 --> 00:00:44,900 And today, I'm delighted to be bringing you an episode about non traditional research or approaching research, 5 00:00:44,900 --> 00:00:50,090 and research methodologies in non-traditional ways, the benefits, the challenges. 6 00:00:50,090 --> 00:00:54,260 So I'm delighted to welcome Lizzie Hobson who is the PGR in geography. 7 00:00:54,260 --> 00:00:58,220 Lizzie, are you happy to introduce yourself? I'm 8 00:00:58,220 --> 00:01:06,530 Lizzie Hobson from the Geography Department here at Exeter I'm a PhD student in the final kind of throes and stages. 9 00:01:06,530 --> 00:01:11,330 So I'm spending most of my time writing up. 10 00:01:11,330 --> 00:01:21,200 So I guess now I would call myself a cultural geographer. That means I'm mostly interested in the development of landscape theory and geography and 11 00:01:21,200 --> 00:01:28,410 perhaps more broadly about geography of writing kind of effectivity and performance. 12 00:01:28,410 --> 00:01:38,620 Brilliant. Thank you. So the what we gonna talk about today is, quote unquote, doing non-traditional research. 13 00:01:38,620 --> 00:01:40,470 So so kind of unpack back a little. 14 00:01:40,470 --> 00:01:50,550 Can you talk about how how your research breaks the kind of traditional mode of what we expect research to look like a doctoral level? 15 00:01:50,550 --> 00:01:57,200 So a lot of my work is very methods based rather than 16 00:01:57,200 --> 00:02:04,350 And so I kind of engage with theory in a more of a framing statement kind of way and think about how we can 17 00:02:04,350 --> 00:02:11,010 think about ideas kind of differently when we experiment with styles of writing and modes of presentation. 18 00:02:11,010 --> 00:02:14,820 I guess maybe in the simplest sense 19 00:02:14,820 --> 00:02:21,600 my project is about therapeutic landscapes and encounters to think about the therapeutic as kind 20 00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:29,910 of residing more in the encounters between bodies and landscapes and in body practises. 21 00:02:29,910 --> 00:02:36,110 The problem with some of this research is that it puts forward this kind of. 22 00:02:36,110 --> 00:02:44,130 And this is me speaking in a in a general sense, an argument that's led to what we can call the medicalisation of landscape amd nature. 23 00:02:44,130 --> 00:02:50,520 I try and open up what we might judge, as having kind of restorative or recuperative qualities. 24 00:02:50,520 --> 00:02:57,330 And what recovery might mean. And I'm particularly interested in how creative practises might open up some 25 00:02:57,330 --> 00:03:03,240 of these spaces and address some of these questions in more open ended ways, 26 00:03:03,240 --> 00:03:09,060 I guess its pretty, quite useful to go through an example of my work. 27 00:03:09,060 --> 00:03:14,680 So a part of my project is kind of laid out into three. And I got. 28 00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:22,460 A really good opportunity to go to Ithica, which is a small island and part of Greece, 29 00:03:22,460 --> 00:03:31,120 is not a traditional health pilgrimage site in the way Lourdes might be, but it is kind of a health landscape of sorts. 30 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:38,200 But it kind of ties with these ideas of the therapeutic come from kind of its Greek mythology. 31 00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:45,490 So I didn't do Latin or Greek in school. So I was kind of really unfamiliar with these ideas before I got to Ithica 32 00:03:45,490 --> 00:03:55,480 But Ithica is supposedly the home of Odysseus, who is kind of thought to have spent this 10 years mega journey battling sea monsters and 33 00:03:55,480 --> 00:03:59,660 going through all kinds of mental torment just to kind of return to his beloved homeland, 34 00:03:59,660 --> 00:04:09,370 Ithica. And then because of this and with the help of the poet C.P. Caffery, who wrote this famous poem, Ithica, and for many, 35 00:04:09,370 --> 00:04:18,280 Ithica has come to symbolise this kind of legendary journey that every person makes through life as they look for their own kind of personal Ithica. 36 00:04:18,280 --> 00:04:22,480 And it's become this metaphor for a kind of supreme goal 37 00:04:22,480 --> 00:04:29,710 this kind of sweet homeland where you'll find a kind of internal calmness and satisfaction. 38 00:04:29,710 --> 00:04:37,730 When I was in Ithica, I was lucky enough to spend some time with an archaeologist who took me to Homer's Palace 39 00:04:37,730 --> 00:04:45,850 no Homer's School, which is also thought to be the ruins of Odysseus' palace. 40 00:04:45,850 --> 00:04:49,770 And the thing is, when you go there, you expect this kind of super 41 00:04:49,770 --> 00:04:57,850 grand place like ticketed off kind of all official like English heritage or national trust, what you see with them. 42 00:04:57,850 --> 00:05:01,600 When I got those kind of none of that. And that's really super glad 43 00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:06,190 to have my guide because I wouldn't have known what I was looking at. 44 00:05:06,190 --> 00:05:11,130 There's basically one kind of placket saying you enter the site at your own risk 45 00:05:11,130 --> 00:05:15,850 as it isn't stable and then nothing telling you what you were looking at. 46 00:05:15,850 --> 00:05:24,250 So I kind of started thinking about these kind of grand myths and legends and standing amongst this place that was kind of. 47 00:05:24,250 --> 00:05:30,460 Full of rubble. And I started experimenting with knitting as a practise, 48 00:05:30,460 --> 00:05:39,060 and I didn't if you know those kind of old school geography diagrams where you get those different layers like sediment. 49 00:05:39,060 --> 00:05:43,090 And then you've got the granite layer that's a bit harder on sits on top and lasts a bit longer. 50 00:05:43,090 --> 00:05:49,440 And I think it's probably actually the other way around. But I was thinking about knitting a bit like that. 51 00:05:49,440 --> 00:05:57,010 So knitting is kind of a way to bring the landscapes, kind of absences and presences in gaps into life. 52 00:05:57,010 --> 00:06:02,140 So when I was there, I was kind of interested in the materiality of the place. 53 00:06:02,140 --> 00:06:06,650 That was kind of caught up in this very real process of erosion. 54 00:06:06,650 --> 00:06:11,290 And lack of funds have kind of stopped any kind of like 55 00:06:11,290 --> 00:06:20,110 Oh, gosh, archaeological work. And nothing was kind of roped off in the way Stonehenge was. 56 00:06:20,110 --> 00:06:27,670 When I was talking to my friend, my participant, before I went out on this this trip with the archaeologist, 57 00:06:27,670 --> 00:06:31,480 her partner actually knew the site I mentioned because he was there. 58 00:06:31,480 --> 00:06:32,620 Oh, yeah, I've been there. 59 00:06:32,620 --> 00:06:41,500 I do rock climbing and kind of parkour there as a substitute because there's no gyms, you know, outside it's site for outdoor exercise for him, 60 00:06:41,500 --> 00:06:49,870 which are kind of real madness when you think about heritage site regulations kind of here in the UK. 61 00:06:49,870 --> 00:06:54,610 And yeah, I also got to spend a lot time looking at Ithica's museum collections, 62 00:06:54,610 --> 00:07:02,620 some of the artefacts are kind of rumoured to be linked to as evidence that this was Odysseus' home place. 63 00:07:02,620 --> 00:07:13,630 So, yeah, we looked at these fragments of kind of urns and tripods and it meant to be gifts to Odysseus and kind of spoke to this magical place. 64 00:07:13,630 --> 00:07:24,640 But they also kind of opened up the space to talk about anticipating loss and curated decay and kind of heritage, those potentially beyond saving. 65 00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:30,900 So when you kind of through the process of knitting and forming and reforming the landscape, 66 00:07:30,900 --> 00:07:35,890 it kind of became for me not just about this this magical tale 67 00:07:35,890 --> 00:07:44,980 but about visible mending, decision making and uncertain times and ideas about unbuilding in the process of preservation. 68 00:07:44,980 --> 00:07:48,810 So I started thinking about Ithica, this place of mining memories. 69 00:07:48,810 --> 00:07:53,500 So that's kind of just one example of my practise. 70 00:07:53,500 --> 00:07:58,900 I've done different things and in different places. 71 00:07:58,900 --> 00:08:03,840 That's completely and utterly fascinating. 72 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:12,620 So, okay, so you've talked about the ways in which your kind of research methods are not traditional. 73 00:08:12,620 --> 00:08:20,960 How how does these practises or things like knitting and the way that if I'm understanding correctly, 74 00:08:20,960 --> 00:08:30,020 that knitting is kind of a practise of recreate and exposing those kind of different layers within these sites? 75 00:08:30,020 --> 00:08:34,980 How how does that form for part of a of a doctoral thesis? 76 00:08:34,980 --> 00:08:44,360 You know, as we said before we started recording, I'm I'm very as an art, as a kind of ex artist and lecturer in the arts. 77 00:08:44,360 --> 00:08:46,040 I am very familiar with this kind of practise. 78 00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:51,770 But thinking about the kind of people out there that are doing very traditional research that don't have a clue about 79 00:08:51,770 --> 00:08:58,040 how kind of these sorts of practises can be incorporated for a research project or be kind of an outcome of research. 80 00:08:58,040 --> 00:09:06,770 How does that work? Like I'm sure quite a lot of different disciplines do is that I keep kind of a field. 81 00:09:06,770 --> 00:09:15,170 note journal. And instead of just classically kind of doing interviews or something like that, I kind of. 82 00:09:15,170 --> 00:09:19,830 And then I do a bit of that as well. But, you know, and keep a diary. 83 00:09:19,830 --> 00:09:24,400 But I also do like lots of sketches and things out in the landscape and things like that. 84 00:09:24,400 --> 00:09:34,250 So when like and like anyone else, I then write it up when I when I get back and I'm making a lot more kind of it out. 85 00:09:34,250 --> 00:09:38,080 I'm kind of. Impressive. So it goes alongside a text 86 00:09:38,080 --> 00:09:44,080 So in the case of the kittting, I kind of I write 87 00:09:44,080 --> 00:09:49,000 Conceptually thing about ruins and kind of ruination in an essay format. 88 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:55,610 And then I also present my my knitting alongside that. 89 00:09:55,610 --> 00:10:01,990 In that kind of works in photograph form. 90 00:10:01,990 --> 00:10:08,170 I was really interested to hear you describe it as an artist sketchbook. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things, isn't it? 91 00:10:08,170 --> 00:10:09,970 Does this do a disservice? 92 00:10:09,970 --> 00:10:16,090 That's when one of the thingsmy supervisors said when I think, no, you know, it's probably the best way of encapsulating it. 93 00:10:16,090 --> 00:10:21,780 It's almost more like a magazine than a traditional...more like a magazine. 94 00:10:21,780 --> 00:10:28,640 Again, this is probably the wrong terminology, but. Yeah, so I have. 95 00:10:28,640 --> 00:10:37,580 I have to. I have a lot of I link back to the academic literature, but for me, I'm not practise based. 96 00:10:37,580 --> 00:10:45,170 I haven't gone by performance. And it kind of opens up another huge kind of can of worms around. 97 00:10:45,170 --> 00:10:49,940 what creative methods are who uses them? That thing for me. 98 00:10:49,940 --> 00:10:56,240 It's a way of. Kind of. Using creative methods is a process as a way of kind of slowing down what we think 99 00:10:56,240 --> 00:11:02,110 we know when I'm sitting with kind of uncomfortable moments at the discipline. 100 00:11:02,110 --> 00:11:06,950 And I guess if you were going more by performance, you obviously have your your final end piece. 101 00:11:06,950 --> 00:11:14,490 And that looks very different to what I'm kind of talking about at a non-traditional thesis. 102 00:11:14,490 --> 00:11:22,600 Yeah, absolutely. And like what you're talking about and how you're talking about it, really. 103 00:11:22,600 --> 00:11:30,230 The kind of methodology that your approach you're approaching in that artist's sketchbook really it sounds, you know, 104 00:11:30,230 --> 00:11:36,640 to make a parallel for people who aren't familiar with this kind of thing, it really sounds like kind of how you document ethnographic fieldwork. 105 00:11:36,640 --> 00:11:48,400 Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's it's very similar in its approach, but it's taking more creative forms of documentation and. 106 00:11:48,400 --> 00:11:53,590 Thinking about data in a much, much broader. 107 00:11:53,590 --> 00:11:58,140 And way as kind of being beyond. 108 00:11:58,140 --> 00:12:06,410 And, you know, words, numbers, which a lot of our kind of data and research tends to be either numerical or linguistic. 109 00:12:06,410 --> 00:12:13,900 But also thinking about. Practises of knowledge and understanding that go beyond the numerical and the linguistic. 110 00:12:13,900 --> 00:12:23,270 So, you know, I'm thinking as a as a  person with an arts background. You know, we talk to a lot about experiential learning. 111 00:12:23,270 --> 00:12:37,010 And wht we would call embodied knowing say things that you might know through experience or intuition that you can't necessarily put into language. 112 00:12:37,010 --> 00:12:50,060 So it sounds to me like you're incorporating all of those different forms of knowledge and learning into kind of one really rich set of data. 113 00:12:50,060 --> 00:12:57,120 Yeah. It's all about non-representational theory and. 114 00:12:57,120 --> 00:13:04,690 And yeah embodied and bodied ways and bodily ways of knowing. And I think that that's that's one of the challenges, right, 115 00:13:04,690 --> 00:13:17,790 of doing this kind of research in an academic environment that even though it's actually not new to approach research in this kind of way, it's still. 116 00:13:17,790 --> 00:13:20,490 I don't want to always say looked down on, because that isn't always the case, 117 00:13:20,490 --> 00:13:27,720 but it's it's not valued in the same way sort of across the sector or across all disciplines 118 00:13:27,720 --> 00:13:33,840 in higher education that more traditional research methods and forms of knowledge are. 119 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:41,520 And that's really one of the key. I would imagine one of the key challenges of doing research in this way is kind of having to. 120 00:13:41,520 --> 00:13:46,650 To justify it to the to the wider academy is that something that you experience? 121 00:13:46,650 --> 00:13:51,420 I think I'm. I'm really lucky because I work in a little pocket. 122 00:13:51,420 --> 00:13:57,410 And so I've got a lot of kind of like minded people, which again, I guess is why in. 123 00:13:57,410 --> 00:14:03,790 Sometimes it's hard to stay outside and kind of go, oh, yeah, is just like ethnography, you know. 124 00:14:03,790 --> 00:14:09,580 But yeah, there's this challenge of kind of publication and how to judge creative work. 125 00:14:09,580 --> 00:14:18,230 So, yeah, despite the fact that in my own discipline, there's this widespread support for kind of this creative turn within geography, 126 00:14:18,230 --> 00:14:24,230 in this kind of acceptance or even understanding of alternative outputs 127 00:14:24,230 --> 00:14:30,380 It's very varied even I guess by no means universal. Yeah, exactly. 128 00:14:30,380 --> 00:14:38,060 And I know I find kind of sometimes the articulation of trying to use traditional language like, 129 00:14:38,060 --> 00:14:44,070 you know, talking about all of the different things in your sketchbookas just different forms of data. 130 00:14:44,070 --> 00:14:50,920 That's, you know, it still has that. You know, you talked about writing the kind of theoretical and unpacking that is alongside it. 131 00:14:50,920 --> 00:14:57,990 It still has that theoretical basis, still has that analysis. All of those things that other people are using to create knowledge. 132 00:14:57,990 --> 00:15:06,470 Yeah. So whether you're in politics or whether you're in engineering, you know, you're you're still doing collecting data and interpreting it and analysing it. 133 00:15:06,470 --> 00:15:11,360 And you are very much doing that. You're just doing that in a different way. 134 00:15:11,360 --> 00:15:17,170 Yeah. And I think this is this. I really wish that I could come and be able to show you my work. 135 00:15:17,170 --> 00:15:20,890 You know, because, yeah, my work is practise based. 136 00:15:20,890 --> 00:15:24,200 You know, I know. I speak about it. I do it. 137 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:29,720 You know, and so it kind of comes up against these traditional forms a bit in a podcast but 138 00:15:29,720 --> 00:15:36,350 a lot about the journal format, more, you know how well these places are kind of geared up for creative output. 139 00:15:36,350 --> 00:15:44,840 So I guess one of the issues I come up against in my thesis and which is going to for a whole nother kind of spanner in the works here. 140 00:15:44,840 --> 00:15:50,090 But yes, so I do a part on Ithica and I also do your part on aerial silks and circus skills. 141 00:15:50,090 --> 00:15:56,660 And so I'm interested in visual and movement, bodily movements in landscape. 142 00:15:56,660 --> 00:16:04,790 So I really my ideal situation would be being able to include these videos of performances 143 00:16:04,790 --> 00:16:12,140 of aerial silks by myself or my participants and demonstrating certain kind of silw routines, 144 00:16:12,140 --> 00:16:19,670 experiences with gravity in the air. But the traditional kind of word document doesn't really have this capacity. 145 00:16:19,670 --> 00:16:28,160 So at the moment, I'm kind of working with including a load of load of visual like screenshots not screenshots 146 00:16:28,160 --> 00:16:32,660 stills from these videos and kind of laid out like that old school kind of camera. 147 00:16:32,660 --> 00:16:38,860 reel, but. Ideally, I would be able to actually include video or someone read a paper. 148 00:16:38,860 --> 00:16:44,260 They'd be able to see the video instead of having to do the follow this link. No disruption. 149 00:16:44,260 --> 00:16:49,070 So you have to. Is imperfect and it's an imperfect option. 150 00:16:49,070 --> 00:16:53,640 So we talked about the challenges. Let's. Flip it on its head. 151 00:16:53,640 --> 00:17:00,270 What are the benefits of approaching a this way? What are the what are the benefits to the research? 152 00:17:00,270 --> 00:17:01,890 You know, on a kind of theoretical basis. 153 00:17:01,890 --> 00:17:09,570 But what are for you as a researcher what are the benefits and the development opportunities and the joys of doing research in this way? 154 00:17:09,570 --> 00:17:18,140 I guess for me. And I guess this is quite a personal thing, is that it's about doing something that you love. 155 00:17:18,140 --> 00:17:21,500 That's sounds like cheesey. So I like super cheesy. 156 00:17:21,500 --> 00:17:29,030 And I'm going to get even more cheesy because maybe it's because I'm getting to the end of my PhD 157 00:17:29,030 --> 00:17:37,250 My partner's just finish and he's looking for jobs. And sometimes, yeah, my PhD is a gift. 158 00:17:37,250 --> 00:17:43,550 Right. I get to spend four years of my life doing something that I enjoy and I want to do. 159 00:17:43,550 --> 00:17:47,870 And I'm very lucky that I got to write my own PhD and that I'm funded. 160 00:17:47,870 --> 00:17:54,100 So I'm aware that I speak from a privileged position here. 161 00:17:54,100 --> 00:18:02,170 But, yeah, I don't think despite all of the stresses that we've kind of talked about, that I could have done my PhD any other way. 162 00:18:02,170 --> 00:18:09,520 I kind of felt happy and true to myself and I was really doing something worthwhile. 163 00:18:09,520 --> 00:18:15,200 So, yeah, I did. I'm very aware that sounds very idealistic. 164 00:18:15,200 --> 00:18:20,240 I kind of spent the first. So I've done creative methods all the way through my undergrad. 165 00:18:20,240 --> 00:18:25,370 Then in my Masters. I'm very lucky that I kind of fell on my feet and like there's a real hub for it in geography 166 00:18:25,370 --> 00:18:33,680 And when I started, I was kind of. I never really thought I was ever gonna kind of go into further education, 167 00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:38,150 and I was really lucky to have some very good mentors kind of help push me that way. 168 00:18:38,150 --> 00:18:43,010 But when I I thought, I don't know. I don't know what a thesis looks like. 169 00:18:43,010 --> 00:18:48,470 So I spent probably a bit over a year trying to write a traditional PhD 170 00:18:48,470 --> 00:18:54,890 I kind of resorted back to these traditional methodologies like interviews and things like that. 171 00:18:54,890 --> 00:18:57,740 And I really hated it. 172 00:18:57,740 --> 00:19:05,880 And I honestly think if I hadn't kind of started trusting myself again, I wouldn't have finished and I certainly would have been happy with it. 173 00:19:05,880 --> 00:19:14,850 So. Yeah, I think. But I think it was just a necessity. 174 00:19:14,850 --> 00:19:20,520 So people tend to be really reticent to talk about their research in that kind of enthusiastic, 175 00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:27,370 passionate and idealistic way, which is kind of bizarre on a number of levels because. 176 00:19:27,370 --> 00:19:37,390 You are not going to dedicate however many years of your life you take to do your research degree to a project. 177 00:19:37,390 --> 00:19:45,900 If you're not incredibly passionate about it. And incredibly invested in it because you couldn't do it, you know, so. 178 00:19:45,900 --> 00:19:50,470 And also what we respond when people talk about their research. 179 00:19:50,470 --> 00:19:57,310 Is their enthusiasm and their excitement. You know, that's that's the thing we respond to as human beings. 180 00:19:57,310 --> 00:19:59,230 Obviously, we respond to the content. 181 00:19:59,230 --> 00:20:06,270 But if someone you know, if someone's talking to you about their research and they sound really bored, you don't pay attention. 182 00:20:06,270 --> 00:20:15,130 And and it's really lovely to hear you talk about your research in that kind of enthusiastic and passionate way, 183 00:20:15,130 --> 00:20:21,500 because doing a research degree is hard. Like. I'm not trying to sugarcoat it, 184 00:20:21,500 --> 00:20:29,130 but there are some things about it that are wonderful and positive and that kind of enthusiasm and passion is one of them. 185 00:20:29,130 --> 00:20:34,700 So what I like to do is to wrap up is ask people to offer some advice based on their experience. 186 00:20:34,700 --> 00:20:39,010 So basically, you know, if people are. 187 00:20:39,010 --> 00:20:47,870 You know, looking at doing or have just started doing a research degree that involves these kind of creative methods. 188 00:20:47,870 --> 00:20:54,200 What advice would you give them based on your experience? What did you wish you knew when you started? 189 00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:59,890 Yes, I guess from my kind of experience, I would say. 190 00:20:59,890 --> 00:21:03,100 That you probably have to compromise. 191 00:21:03,100 --> 00:21:10,480 Compromise is probably the wrong word here, because if you're gonna do something so bold, then you need conviction. 192 00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:18,960 But. I guess what I mean by compromise is that if you're going to experiment with styles and kind of modes of presentation, 193 00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:25,870 then you kind of have an obligation to your reader to help them. Get where you're going. 194 00:21:25,870 --> 00:21:31,090 So for me, I have a framing statement that does a bit of this kind of donkey work. 195 00:21:31,090 --> 00:21:34,840 It kind of acts a bit like what I was kind of saying in the beginning. 196 00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:43,160 Like, I kind of started talking about my method. If I hadn't stopped, it's situating them somewhere within the therapeutic landscapes literature. 197 00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:48,380 So. I love creative writing. 198 00:21:48,380 --> 00:21:53,990 I do. That's my kind of niche, which I kind of. 199 00:21:53,990 --> 00:21:57,710 I go from there. I will start with creative writing. 200 00:21:57,710 --> 00:22:06,250 But for me, I had to kind of come to terms with the fact that there's gonna be some bits of my thesis that are not so beautifully written. 201 00:22:06,250 --> 00:22:12,860 Because there are times when I'm gonna need to hold my reader's hand and I need to put interludes between between the pieces because, 202 00:22:12,860 --> 00:22:17,300 you know, we jump from Ithica and then we go to the circus skills. 203 00:22:17,300 --> 00:22:23,720 Right. So, yeah, compromise in a sense. 204 00:22:23,720 --> 00:22:30,650 And I guess I'd also say that there's a need to take real care, I guess first picking up supervisors, 205 00:22:30,650 --> 00:22:39,500 but then also picking examiners to kind of see where you're coming from and see the value in your in your work. 206 00:22:39,500 --> 00:22:44,360 I've had some encounters where peoplehave just thought they're nice pretty pictures. 207 00:22:44,360 --> 00:22:48,470 But what are they doing? Ouch. My heart, you know. 208 00:22:48,470 --> 00:22:56,340 I've had others that I've really got what I'm trying to do and had really critical and productive conversation. 209 00:22:56,340 --> 00:22:59,360 So quite important. 210 00:22:59,360 --> 00:23:08,660 Thanks so much to Lizzie for taking the time to talk to me about what is an incredibly fascinating project and about the real challenges, 211 00:23:08,660 --> 00:23:15,180 but also the real benefits of doing, quote unquote, non-traditional research. 212 00:23:15,180 --> 00:23:21,440 If there's something about your project that you're approaching non traditionally. I'd love to hear from you and to talk to you on the podcast. 213 00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:25,280 I think it's really important that we share these stories and represent these 214 00:23:25,280 --> 00:23:32,550 alternative ways of doing that increasingly aren't that alternative and becoming very mainstream. 215 00:23:32,550 --> 00:23:38,750 But it can be scary to be the first one in your department to take that leap. And that's it for this episode. 216 00:23:38,750 --> 00:23:41,840 Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe and join me. 217 00:23:41,840 --> 00:24:08,448 Next time we'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.  

In 1817 a young woman appeared in the English village of Almondsbury, speaking a strange language and seeking food and shelter. She revealed herself to be an Eastern princess, kidnapped by pirates from an exotic island. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of Princess Caraboo, who was both more and less than she seemed. We'll also discover a June Christmas and puzzle over some monster soup. Intro: In 1988, Martine Tischer proposed wrapping gifts in uncut U.S. currency. In 1948, Ralph Alpher, Hans Bethe, and George Gamow seized the chance of an immortal byline. Sources for our feature on Princess Caraboo: John Matthew Gutch, Caraboo: A Narrative of a Singular Imposition, 1817. Sabine Baring-Gould, Devonshire Characters and Strange Events, 1908. Anonymous, Carraboo, Carraboo: The Singular Adventures of Mary Baker, Alias Princess of Javasu, 1817. John Timbs, English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, 1877. C.L. McCluer Stevens, Famous Crimes and Criminals, 1924. J.P. Jewett, Remarkable Women of Different Nations and Ages, 1858. The Lives and Portraits of Curious and Odd Characters, 1852. Mrs. John Farrar, Recollections of Seventy Years, 1869. Margaret Russett, "The 'Caraboo' Hoax: Romantic Woman as Mirror and Mirage," Discourse 17:2 (Winter 1994-1995), 26-47. Michael Keevak, "A World of Impostures," Eighteenth Century 53:2 (Summer 2012), 233-235. Shompa Lahiri, "Performing Identity: Colonial Migrants, Passing and Mimicry Between the Wars," Cultural Geographies 10:4 (October 2003), 408-423. "Top 10 Imposters," Time, May 26, 2009. "Local Legends: Bristol's Princess Caraboo," BBC (accessed Jan. 31, 2021). Corrie Bond-French, "The Tale of a Mysterious Princess," Gloucestershire Echo, June 7, 2018. "Story of Exotic Beauty Still Fascinates Us Today," Mid-Devon Gazette, May 3, 2016, 21. Nazar Iene Daan Kannibelle, "Servant Girl Hoaxed All Great Britain by Pose as Princess," Washington Times, November 6, 1921. "A Singular Imposture," Strand 9:52 (April 1895), 451-456. "The Pretended Princess Caraboo," Gloucestershire Notes and Queries 35 (July 1887), 627-629. "The Princess Caraboo," Curiosities of Bristol and Its Neighbourhood 7 (March 1884), 48. "Caraboo," Notes and Queries, June 3, 1865, 447. F.W. Fairholt, "The Curiosities of Eccentric Biography," Bentley's Miscellany 69 (Jan. 1, 1851), 180-193. "Princess Caraboo," Museum of Hoaxes (accessed Jan. 31, 2021). John Wells, "Baker [née Willcocks], Mary [alias Princess Caraboo]," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept. 1, 2017. Listener mail: Wills Robinson, "For Once, a Good Excuse for Bad Handwriting: One of Admiral Nelson's First Letters Written Left-Handed After He Lost His Right Arm in Battle Is Unearthed," Daily Mail, Feb. 16, 2014. "Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson," Wikipedia (accessed Feb. 5, 2021). Maev Kennedy, "Nelson's Right and Left Hand: Wellcome Exhibit Reveals How Past Leaves Its Mark," Guardian, Nov. 24, 2010. "Peter Butterworth," Wikipedia (accessed Feb. 6, 2021). Lucy Thornton and Mark Branagan, "Carry On's Peter Butterworth Rejected to Play Himself in Role Because He Was 'Too Fat'," Mirror, Aug. 16, 2020. "Stray Cat With Shocking Facial Growth Rescued," Catcuddles, Aug. 10, 2020. Rae Gellel, "Catcuddles Cat Hodge to Follow in Doorkins Magnificat's Paw Prints," Catcuddles, Dec. 6, 2020. Andrew Nunn, "Welcome to Hodge by the Dean of Southwark," Southwark Cathedral (accessed Feb. 6, 2021). Jane Steen, "Southwark and Hodge and Dr Johnson," Southwark Cathedral (accessed Feb. 6, 2021). This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Lucie. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- you can choose the amount you want to pledge, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

This week, host Frank Roche is joined by Tyler Sonnichsen, who has a huge collection of his great-grandfather's postcard collection from the 1930s and 1940s.  Tyler’s great-grandfather, Ben Irving, was a musician. Traveling salesman. Vaudeville performer. And prolific postcard writer. Tyler has his great-grandfather’s postcards…and all kinds of terrific stories to accompany them. Tyler is a PhD geographer and comedian based in Michigan and Florida. He teaches Human and Cultural Geography at Central Michigan University. He's the author of Capitals of Punk: Paris, DC, and the Circulation of the Underground as well as work on the vinyl record industry and the history of Parisian hardcore punk. You can follow more of his writing and research at SonicGeography.com. He released his second standup album, Modern Life is Awesome, on RainShine Records in 2018.

Mary Gearey is a human geographer and Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography at Brighton University. In this episode, John asks Mary about her new book, "English Wetlands: Spaces of Nature, Culture, Imagination", as well as how Covid-19 might impact our attitudes to outdoor spaces among other things.  John and Mary also mentioned the website WetlandLIFE which you can find here.

This episode, we’re heading south for a story of Antarctic disaster. Did Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1911 expedition end in survival cannibalism? Carmella unravels the cold case in a tale of overland hauling, extreme rationing, and all the unpleasant things that can happen to sled dogs. TRANSCRIPT https://castinglotspod.home.blog/2020/01/09/12-ice-part-iii-douglas-mawson/ CREDITS Written, hosted and produced by Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis. Theme music by Daniel Wackett. Find him on Twitter @ds_wack and Soundcloud as Daniel Wackett. Logo by Riley. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @tallestfriend. Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network. Network sting by Mikaela Moody. Find her on Bandcamp as mikaelamoody1. BIBLIOGRAPHY Chalmers, S. (2007). ‘The icecap cannibal’, Daily Mail, 27 Oct. Available at: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20071027/282235186299099 Day, D. (2013). Flaws in the Ice. London: Scribe. Hurley, F. (c.1914-16). Tom Crean.jpg. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Crean.jpg Leane, E. and H. Tiffin. (2011). ‘Dogs, meat and Douglas Mawson’, Australian Humanities Review, 51. Available at: http://australianhumanitiesreview.org/2011/11/01/dogs-meat-and-douglas-mawson/ PM. (2009). ABC Radio, 20 May. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2576375.htm Shearman, D.J.C. (1978). ‘Vitamin A and Sir Douglas Mawson’, British Medical Journal, 1(6108), pp. 283-285. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1602734/ Taylor, G. (1959). ‘Obituary: Sir Douglas Mawson, O.B.E., F.R.S.’, Australian Geographer, 7(4), pp. 164-165. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00049185908702341 Yusoff, K. (2005). Arresting visions: a geographical theory of Antarctic light. PhD Thesis. Lancaster University. Available at: https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/49392/ Yusoff, K. (2007). ‘Antarctic exposure: archives of the feeling body’, Cultural Geographies, 14(2), pp. 211-233. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1474474007075355

Jo Shawyer is a cultural geographer who taught in the Department of Geography at MUN for many years. Her special interest is the study of cultural landscapes. Jo has researched the tradition and structure of a farming landscape, the impact of an expanding urban area on the adjacent rural farmscape, the arrival of a military landscape in St John's during World War II, and, currently, the landscape of property in downtown St John's. We talk about cultural geography, what it is, and how Jo started in the field. We also discuss historic and cultural landscapes, sense of place, the history of Churchill Park’s development, and what role geographers will play in the future.

Cultural geographer and linguist Bella Jordan returns to the SlavX studio to discuss languages, indigenous peoples of the former Russian Empire, and the process of "de-Russification" that is the tendency now of many societies in the post-Soviet space. ABOUT THE GUEST: A native of Sakha (Yakutia), an ethnic republic located in northeast Siberia, Bella grew up in a multicultural and multilinguial environment that inspired her interest in different cultures and traditions. She began to study Germanic languages quite early and got a Bachelor's degree in English Philology from Yakutsk State University in 1986. In 1987-91 she studied Linguistics and Text Stylistics at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages after Moris Torez (now Moscow Lingusitics University). Afterwards she worked as an official translator for the government of Sakha (Yakutia) and was instrumental in translating important documents and treaties into English and participated in the rough diamonds trade negotiations between the local government and DeBeers. In 1995 Bella began Master's program at the University of Texas at Austin in the Geography department and defended her doctoral dissertaion in 2002. The focus of her PhD was the ethnogenesis of the Sakha (Yakut) people and creation of their homeland since the 14th century. Currently Dr. Jordan teaches Geography of the Former Soviet Union; Northern Lands and Cultures; Regions and Cultures of Europe; Russian Society, Economics and Politics, Advanced Russian Language course "Advanced Comprehension and Composition"; Business Russian; Cultural Geography of Russia; Religion in Eastern Europe and Russia; and the graduate seminar "Geopolitics and Nation-Building in Central Asia". NOTE: Episode recorded on September 20th, 2019 at the University of Texas at Austin. CREDITS Co-Producer: Matthew Orr (Connect: facebook.com/orrrmatthew) Hosts/Associate Producers: Lera Toropin & Katya Yegorov-Crate Music Producer: Charlie Harper (Connect: facebook.com/charlie.harper.1485 Instagram: @charlieharpermusic Visit him on the web: www.charlieharpermusic.com) Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (Connect: facebook.com/mdanielgeraci Instagram: @michelledaniel86) www.msdaniel.com Follow The Slavic Connexion on Instagram: @slavxradio, Twitter: @SlavXRadio, and on Facebook: facebook.com/slavxradio . Visit www.slavxradio.com for more episodes and information. Special Guest: Bella Jordan.

On the fifth episode of the Circular Metabolism Podcast, we had the opportunity to chat with Matthew Gandy, one of the pioneers of urban political ecology.Matthew is Professor of Geography, and Fellow of King's College at the University of Cambridge. He was Founder and Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory and also has been a visiting scholar amongst others at Columbia University, the University of California, and the Humboldt University in Berlin.Matthew’s research topics range from environmental history, urban political ecology, urban water infrastructure, epidemiology, as well as rethinking existing understandings of urban nature. He is indeed an eclectic researcher led by curiosity, attentive observation and sometimes by serendipity. His research is sometimes inspired through art exhibitions asking unusual or unpredictable questions which social sciences tend to overlook or not address.His publications include Concrete and clay: reworking nature in New York City (The MIT Press, 2002), The fabric of space: water, modernity, and the urban imagination (The MIT Press, 2014), and Moth (Reaktion, 2016), along with articles in New Left Review, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Society and Space and many other journals. He is currently researching the interface between cultural and scientific aspects to urban bio-diversity. His article “Rethinking Urban Metabolism: water, space and the modern city” and his book “Concrete and clay: reworking nature in New York City” really helped me broaden my urban metabolism horizons by adding social, geographical, historical and political layers.In this episode, we discuss how our choice of words and metaphors is extremely important to describe complex social and environmental challenges. For instance, Matthew used the urban metabolism metaphor to describe for the double circulation in water infrastructure, meaning the circulation of water and capital as well as the interlinks between the material and immaterial flows. However, the use of this metaphor has been highly controversial and almost divisive over the years between critical geographers and industrial ecologists.Matthew also mentions how he actively changes the focus of urban political ecology by bringing different actors and protagonists at the forefront of the research such as flies and overmature trees to question our current discourses on biodiversity in the urban context. He argues that one of the weaknesses of urban political ecology is the lack of direct engagement with ecological science.In the future, a more radical interdisciplinarity is necessary to tackle complex urban problems. He believes that grounded theory and the use of a practical case could enable us to explore the combination between social, historical and ecological sciences.Enjoy this episode and don’t forget to visit our website www.circularmetabolism.com to find all of our activities and productions. Also, make sure subscribe to your favourite app including Youtube, iTunes, Spotify and Stitcher to avoid missing any new episode. Finally, leave us a comment or a review to help us improve our podcast.Link to the ERC project Rethinking Urban Nature ; https://www.naturaurbana.org/Link to selected publications“Rethinking urban metabolism: water, space and the modern city”“Concrete and Clay, Reworking Nature in New York City”Gandy, M. 2016 ‘Unintentional landscapes,’ Journal of Landscape Research 41 (4) pp. 433–440.Gandy, M. 2017 ‘Negative luminescence,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 107 (5) pp. 1090–1107.Gandy, M. 2017 ‘Urban atmospheres,’ Cultural Geographies 24 (3) pp. 353–374.Gandy, M. 2019 ‘The fly that tried to save the world: saproxylic geographies and other-than-human ecologies,’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Link to Matthew’s presentation at the Brussels Ecosystem conferenceLink to Matthew Gandy’s website, blog

In this episode, student host Christian Elliott sits down with Dr. Christopher Strunk, an associate Professor of Geography at Augustana College. In the episode, Dr. Strunk discusses his graduate school research on Bolivian refugee incorporation in Washington D.C. and more recent work with refugee community gardeners in Rock Island, Illinois.

Dr. Christopher Strunk, an associate Professor of Geography at Augustana College, discusses his graduate school research on Bolivian refugee incorporation in Washington D.C. and more recent work with refugee community gardeners in Rock Island, Illinois.

In this episode of Knowing Animals I am joined by Angelica Caiza Villegas. Angelica is a PhD student in the Department of Cultural Geography at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. We discuss her paper titled ‘Becoming Bat: Bats, Bat-lovers and Bat-detectors’ which is currently under review with the journal Social & Cultural Geography. Her co-author is Bettina van Hoven. This episode of Knowing Animals is brought to you by AASA. AASA is the Australasian Animal Studies Association. You can find AASA on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/AASA-Australasian-Animal-Studies-Association-480316142116752/. Join AASA today! This episode of Knowing Animals is also brought to you by MC Pony. MC Pony brings you Mindful Rhymes for Kinder Times. Check out MC Pony at www.veganthused.com.    

I had a fascinating discussion with Tim Edensor this week on the geography and politics of light. Tim has a brilliant talent for making us think  differently about something we take for granted. During our chat we talked about our changing perceptions of light, the politics of light, the aesthetic appreciation of light, and how one's willingness to decorate your house at Christmas might be a key factor in the Brexit vote. Most importantly we talked about Tim's great affection for  the Blackpool Illuminations.  Tim is a Reader in Cultural Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University. He researches geographies of tourism, national identity, industrial ruins. and urban materiality. Tim is the author of From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination and Gloom (University of Minnesota Press, 2017). You can find out more about Tim here.  You can listen to more free back content from the Thales' Well podcast on TuneIn Radio, Player Fm, Stitcher and Podbean. You can also download their apps to your smart phone and listen via there. You can also subscribe for free on iTunes. Please leave a nice review. You can follow me on Twitter: @drphilocity

A year ago, Hiraeth was invited to participate in a session on “Whose Heritages Matter” during a conference at Wageningen University in the east of the Netherlands. Meghann Ormond, Associate Professor in Cultural Geography at Wageningen, speaks about her own heritage, from her two passport countries, the U.S. and Portugal, as well as the Netherlands, where she has made her home for the past eight years, and other countries that have touched her life. Meghann’s own identity has been shaped by both her own travels around the world and her multifaceted family history, including her mother’s search for her birth parents on two continents. Through this experience, she realised: “We are all inheritors of extraordinarily transnational stories.” Heritage from Below is an acknowledgement that the everyday stories and lives of ordinary people should be included as a part of history. Meghann started the Heritage from Below Educational and Research Collective (HERC) to bring together cultural heritage and history scholars, practitioners and educators to help children of all backgrounds feel that their history and culture are important and recognised as part of a larger whole. This episode also features music by Ketsa (copyright) http://ketsamusic.com/ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License http://hiraethmagazine.com/podcast/

Illumination and darkness: Laurie Taylor is joined by Tim Edensor, Reader in Cultural Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University, and author of a study into the ways in which light and dark produce everyday life and the stories we tell about ourselves. In examining the modern city as a space of fantasy through electric illumination, he considers how we are seeking-and should seek-new forms of darkness in reaction to the perpetual glow of urban lighting. They're joined by Robert Shaw., lecturer in geography at Newcastle University, who has studied the relationship between night and society in contemporary cities. He claims that the economic activity of the 'daytime' city has so advanced into the night, that other uses of the night as a time for play, for sleep or for escaping oppression have come increasingly under threat. Producer: Jayne Egerton.

412 Food Rescue, helping to end hunger in Pittsburgh and food waste at the same time!   SHOW NOTES: Learn more about being a #FoodRescueHero: https://412foodrescue.org/take-action/volunteer/   Facebook: 412 Food Rescue, 724 Food Rescue Instagram: @412FoodRescue @724FoodRescue Twitter: @412FoodRescue @724FoodRescue   Topics covered in this Podcast: -What is 412 Food Rescue? Tell us about the mission- how does it work? -How can people get involved? Any requirements? -How is 412 Food Rescue working to expand its volunteer base? 412 Food Rescue Podcast  Welcome to the show! Today, we have two wonder women on a mission to help take 2 problems and use each as a solution for the other: food waste, and hunger in our community. These women are: Terri Hammond is a curious problem solver and system builder. Her experiences in publishing, education, retail marketing, hospitality and now business coaching have carried the theme of continuous improvement.  At ThistleSea Business Development, Terri works with both for-profit and non-profit organizations to improve their systems and deliver great results. In May of 2017, Terri was elected to the Board of Directors of 412 Food Rescue, a Pittsburgh-based tech non-profit committed to reducing hunger WHILE ALSO reducing food waste.   Becca Suffrin is committed to pursuing vibrant justice and creating positive, sustainable, and equitable change in Pittsburgh and beyond.   After studying International Relations and Cultural Geography at Ohio Wesleyan University, She came back to the burgh in 2014 to spend 2 years as an education justice fellow and team leader with Repair the World: Pittsburgh.    Since joining the 412 Food Rescue team in September of 2016, Becca has managed the organization's digital presence, marketing, and engagement. She encourages you to “like” 412 Food Rescue on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cultural geographer Tim Edensor is passionate about place. His career has taken him from the Taj Mahal to industrial ruins in England's north, and now to Melbourne and its stone buildings. Wandering is the best way to get to know a place, says Dr Tim Edensor, and as a cultural geographer who has explored everything from what Christmas lights reveal about British class identity to Melbourne's old stone buildings, he should know.Episode recorded: March 1 2018Interviewer: Steve GrimwadeProducers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-WallAudio engineer: Arch CuthbertsonBanner image: Travellers Travel Photobook/Flickr

How do human geographers use creative methods, such as poetry, to engage with changing places? We spoke to Dr Phil Jones, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Geography at University of Birmingham about his collaboration with a professional poet in Cardiff, Wales. Further Reading: Jones, P. and Jam, C. (2016), Creating ambiances, co-constructing place: a poetic transect across the city. Area, 48: 317–324. doi:10.1111/area.12262 [Free Access] Image: Fred Bigio (Flickr): http://bit.ly/2w4MgwS

What a great interview. We have Part 2 Tomorrow Same time 3:00CST! With April Mullins Mela This might be a series of interviews, we have so much to share. Please join us or listed to the archived version, at your leisure! We are going to talk about DNA and my new word "Ethno-washing" Necro ethnicity. A skeleton key to unlock the amalgamation within mixed people groups . The veil is lifting from the hidden mystery that has perplexed scholars for at least 600 years! Join us as Stacy Mae Webb and April Mullins Mela collaborate utilizing data gleaned from Genealogy, DNA, and Cultural Geography. These two ladies have conducted fieldwork that sketch a beginning portraiture of the many faces of Melungeoness. We'll catch you up on the latest DNA findings and discuss the upcoming Melungeon Heritage Association yearly gathering in Morristown, Tn. June 20,21 & 22 Hope to see you all there!

Necro ethnicity. A skeleton key to unlock the amalgamation within mixed people groups . The veil is lifting from the hidden mystery that has perplexed scholars for at least 600 years! Join us as Stacy Mae Webb and April Mullins Mela collaborate utilizing data gleaned from Genealogy, DNA, and Cultural Geography. These two ladies have conducted fieldwork that sketch a beginning portraiture of the many faces of Melungeoness. We'll catch you up on the latest DNA findings and discuss the upcoming Melungeon Heritage Association yearly gathering in Morristown, Tn. June 20,21 & 22 Hope to see you all there!

Institute of Modern Languages Research Caribbean Traffic: Bodies, Cultures, Knowledges Programme Plenary Address: Traffic's Poetic Politics Jean-Françoise Boclé

Institute of Modern Languages Research Caribbean Traffic: Bodies, Cultures, Knowledges Programme Plenary Address: Traffic's Poetic Politics Jean-Françoise Boclé

November 7 2016 – Claudio Minca As the authorities have recently fulfilled their mission in clearing the infamous Calais Jungle Camp, once home to some seven thousand migrants and asylum seekers, we in this week’s talk speak with Claudio Minca – Professor and Head of the Cultural Geography chair group at Wageningen University (WUR). Instead of focusing on the internal politics and political symbolism surrounding the jungle camp, this conversation deals with the spatiality and the constant interplay between inclusion and abandonment of the arriving migrants in contemporary refugee camps. These camps have a functional logic of their own, which leads to the construction of a new geography within Europe in which these camps will probably have a permanent presence.

Former Labour MP and first Minister for Women discusses a life in politics and her new memoir Going Nowhere with Birkbeck Professor Rosie Campbell. This talk is chaired by Dr Melissa Butcher, Reader in Social and Cultural Geography at Birkbeck and Acting Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research. As Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford from 1987 to 2015, Dame Joan Ruddock had a long, varied and pioneering parliamentary career, but it didn’t always move in the direction she expected. After her election to the Commons in 1987, Joan held three consecutive shadow portfolios and, by the time of Labour’s election victory in 1997, was thought to be on the fast track to high office. But she was overlooked by Tony Blair in his first round of government appointments, eventually becoming the country’s first Minister for Women – a role she took, famously, without pay, the budget for salaries having been finalised by the time the appointment was made. Nevertheless, as Minister, Joan worked with fellow MP Harriet Harman to push through a radical agenda. A year later, she was sacked. What followed was a prominent career on the backbenches, where she ran a series of high-profile campaigns, including opposition to GMOs, championing Afghan women’s rights and changing the hours of the Commons. In 2009 she returned to government as Minister for Energy and Climate Change under Gordon Brown. She retired as an MP in 2015.

Emily Eliza Scott is an interdisciplinary scholar, artist, and former park ranger who is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the architecture department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich). Her work focuses on contemporary art and design practices that engage pressing ecological and/or geopolitical issues, often with the intent to actively transform real-world conditions. She has published in The Avery Review, Art Journal, American Art, Third Text, and Cultural Geographies as well as multiple edited volumes and online journals; and her first book, Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics, coedited with Kirsten Swenson, was published by UC Press last year. She is a founding member of two long-term, collaborative projects: World of Matter (2011-), an international art and research platform on global resource ecologies, and the Los Angeles Urban Rangers (2004-), a group that develops guided hikes, campfire talks, field kits, and other interpretive tools to spark creative explorations of everyday habitats in their home megalopolis and beyond.

Migraine: a cultural history. How did a painful and disabling disorder come to be seen as a symptom of femininity? Laurie Taylor talks to Joanna Kempner, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, about her research into the gendered values which feed into our understanding of pain. Also, 'chavs' and 'pramfaces': Anoop Nayak, Professor in Social and Cultural Geography at Newcastle University, discusses a study into how marginalised young men and women resist the social stigma attached to negative labels. He's joined by Helen Wood, Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester. Producer: Jayne Egerton.

This show celebrates the publication of the new book by Dr Peter Hughes Jachimiak based on recollections of his childhood home, Ivy Cottage, Skewen. The show primarily focuses on music, memories and memorabilia from the 1970's. The title of the book is 'Remembering the Cultural Geographies of a Childhood Home. The eclectic playlist includes contributions from The Kinks, The Jam, Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mitch and Titch, oh, and Bagpuss...

David Pinder (Lecturer in Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London) Abstract Cities are profoundly mobile. Yet they are also in many ways fixed, solid and enduring. Movement and flow typically require fixed infrastructures to enable them, while processes of deterritorialisation are accompanied by those of reterritorialisation. This presentation addresses the long-standing tension in urban writings between movement and settlement, and between flow and fixity, by addressing attempts to re-imagine and re-conceptualise urban mobilities through contested visions of circulation. The focus is on selected architectural and urban projects developed within modernist and avant-garde circles, especially in western Europe during the 1960s. What might be made of experimental designs and proposals for cities to become mobile and nomadic themselves? How to approach these visions today, at a time when mobilities and nomad thought are high on urban agendas? How might reconsidering them enable insights into the politics of mobility, and hence into debates about possible mobility futures? David Pinder is Reader in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London. His research focuses on utopianism and cities, with particular reference to modernist and avant-garde movements in twentieth-century Europe; and on art, spatial practices and urban politics. He is author of Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth-Century Urbanism (2005) and guest editor of a theme issue of Cultural Geographies on ‘Arts of urban exploration’ (2005). He was a Velux Visiting Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark, in 2011-12.

From its 334 miles of coastline, to its interior forests, famous man-made lake, and northern savannah, Ghana is home to a number of diverse cultures, wildlife, landscapes, and natural resources. A shining example to other countries in the region due to its relative prosperity and stability, Ghana is moving towards modernity while currently maintaining much of its unique culture and traditions. However, Ghana struggles with many of the problems afflicting developing countries: including environmental destruction, poverty, and insufficient infrastructure and services. This talk establishes the unique physical and cultural geography setting for KSU’s Year of Ghana, highlighting some of Ghana’s outstanding qualities and current challenges. Originally, from Trinidad, Dr. Slinger-Friedman obtained her M.A. in Latin American Studies and Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Florida. Her work has included a World Bank sponsored study in Mexico and El Salvador of Vetiver grass technology for soil erosion control, the use of an agroforestry system for Amazonian urban resettlement in Acre, Brazil, and the use of ecotourism in both Latin America and Africa (specifically Ghana) for economic development and nature preservation. Currently, Dr. Slinger-Friedman has a regional focus on Latin America and the Caribbean and the SE United States, where she researches ecotourism and the impact of Latino immigration respectively. Her recent research interests also include innovative pedagogy in geography.

Dr. Alex Vasudevan talks about culture, it’s geographical nature, and his work in Berlin and on landscape in photography.

Dr. David Wilson is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography and a faculty member in the unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an internationally recognized, interdisciplinary scholar and his work has contributed significantly to numerous fields including geography, sociology, urban and regional planning, and political science.