Research Group Members participating in the Annual Meeting of British Geographers in Newcastle

In late August, some members of our research group travelled to Newcastle (UK) to participate in this years’ Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG) titled “Geographies Beyond Recovery”. Leaving the diagnosis of a crisis-ridden world behind, the conference put the moment of recovery and “the geographies that may lie beyond” in the center of attention. Attendees were invited to think about and discuss how recovery can be understood and how emancipatory futures become imagined and practiced. Hosted by Newcastle University, the conference took four full days, and posed the great challenge to decide day-by-day which talks and presentations to attend choosing from a variety of over 300 sessions (see for an overview of the sessions).

Taking the opportunity to present and discuss work in front of an international audience, Malve Jacobsen presented her on-going project in a session on “Critical geographies of enviro-tech innovation”, which had been organized by Martin Mahony and Helen Pallett, both from the University of East Anglia (UK). In her talk “Digitizing air, commodifying nature: A critical take on the innovation of air purification”, Malve demonstrated that the digitalisation of air and other forms of nature has become a new trend in the sustainable innovation business, and that such technologies might lead to an even more unequal distribution of air pollution. The session was well attended, and the discussion afterwards indicated a high interest in Malve’s research project.

Next year, the annual meeting organized by RGS-IBG will take place in London again and we are already looking forward to meeting and exchanging ideas with our international colleagues!