GCRO presents at recent RGS-IGB conference in London
The Annual RGS-IGB (Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers) conference was held in London, from 26-29 August 2014. The conference took place in the historic RGS building in South West Kensington adjacent to the Royal Albert Hall and Hyde Park. One of the venues in the RGS was the Council Room which boasted ornate portraits and a large globe, constructed for the RGS’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Senior researcher Caryn Abrahams and researcher Christina Culwick attended and presented at this conference along with nearly 2 000 participants. The theme of the conference was “Geographies of co-production” with over 400 sessions held at various venues in South Kensington at the Imperial College London campus and the RGS. The centrality of the location also allowed for some exploration of the City of London after conference sessions.
The conference content was incredibly varied and rich, and included current debates concerned with, for example, the ‘post-recession generation’, ‘Planetary Geopolitics’ and ‘Greenest Cities’ and more established debates such as ‘Rural Innovation’, ‘Climate Change’ and ‘Extraction and Resource Frontiers’. Fascinatingly, the conference also explored timely, though historically resurgent, themes such as ‘Diaspora Strategies by and beyond the State’ or ‘Armed Forces and Civil-Society’ in the context of progressively diverse and economically volatile cities in the global north. While theoretically grounded, the aim of every session was to understand the realities around transforming society through policy and/or practice, which are seen as increasingly urgent globally in an economically and politically insecure time.
GCRO was represented at the ‘Visualising Economic Geographies’ poster session hosted by Geoforum and the Economic Geography Research Group. The poster entitled ‘Visualising Core and Peripheral Areas in the Gauteng City-Region’ was authored by Sally Peberdy and Chris Wray, together with Kavesha Damon (Strategic Environmental Focus, South Africa). The poster was prepared as part a larger GCRO research report exploring peripheral areas and the urban space economy of Gauteng and is available for download on the published works page.
Christina presented a paper entitled ‘Navigating the co-production process: Reflections from the Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s Green Infrastructure Citylab’ in the double session, sponsored by RGS’s Planning and Environment Research Group, on ‘Mobilising expert knowledge in sustainability research’. The session was well planned, excellently facilitated by two discussants, and it lead to vibrant debate between the presenters and other participants. Other stand-out sessions for Christina included ‘Impact by who, for who: Science for, with or by Policy (makers)’ and ‘Co-production of environmental knowledges: the key to innovative management or a utopian goal?: Reflection on theory’.
Caryn presented a paper on ‘Envisioning and Enacting the National Project in post-apartheid South Africa’ in a session entitled ‘Spaces of Active, Activist and Insurgent Citizenship’. The double session was hosted within the Political Geography Research Group, and brought together scholars working on citizenship and politics in South Africa, Indonesian, Germany, the UK and Lebanon. One of the key conference highlights for Caryn was attending a double session on ‘Governing Diversity’, which focused on urban equality, integrationist housing policy and inclusive cities.
The conference provided a great opportunity to meet, reconnect and engage with Geographers and other researchers from around the world, and more especially to position the GCRO’s work in the context of current geographical debates.
