Organizers: Political Geography editorial team
Deadline for expression of interest: October 15, 2021
Anniversaries provide time for reflection. Over its 40-year history, Political Geography has been at the vanguard of the sub-discipline’s transformation from a “moribund backwater” to a vibrant and essential field of research. This vitality stems in no small part from ongoing efforts to extend the sub-discipline’s reach, welcoming an array of theoretical, methodological and analytical approaches, all while continuing to shore up its essential, defining research areas. On the event of the journal’s anniversary, rather than looking backwards to how we have arrived at this point, or laterally at the shifting boundaries of the field, we want to mark the occasion of the journal’s anniversary by looking inward and reflecting on what it means to practice political geography. In defining a discipline, we tend to focus–perhaps too much–on the thematic and theoretical shifts that appear in the pages of scholarly journals. But as we know, disciplines, like all institutions, are constituted by the myriad everyday practices through which we, as scholars, form (or break) associations, chase our dreams and desires, and develop, utilize and leverage our skills, capacities and resources as we attempt to act within and shape the ‘environments’ through which we move.
To celebrate the journal’s 40-year anniversary, and with a view to a subsequent publication in an edited volume, we invite panelists to prepare an 8-minute reflection on the practice of political geography. Key questions to consider include:
- What practices define political geography as a discipline?
- How are these practices changing?
- What changes should take place to make the discipline more vibrant, relevant, and attentive to the intersections of place and power?
- Do you feel represented or included in the broader subdiscipline’s community of thought?
- What pressures or expectations within the sub-discipline (implicit or explicit) shape how and what you work on?
We invite reflection on any form(s) of practice, including but not limited to:
- Research and fieldwork: methods, ethics
- Public engagement
- Teaching and pedagogy
- Publication strategies and practices
- Professional development
- Mentorship and Early Career Researcher support
- Inter-, intra- and trans-disciplinarity
If you are interested in participating as a panelist in these panel sessions, please send a short description of your intended remarks by October 15, 2021, to Kevin Grove at pol-geog@fiu.edu and Filippo Menga at filippo.menga@unibg.it.
Filippo Menga 