January 12, 2026

Insights from Health Geographies III: From Vertical Peaks to Horizontal Flows – Learning to Read Blue Spaces in Berlin (Summer term 2025)

It was through daily encounters with the Rhine in Mainz that I began to notice a different spatial logic. I watched how the river functioned as a steady, quiet anchor for people jogging, sitting on the steps, joining festivals or simply watching the water flow. Without fully naming it at the time, I was experiencing what Wilbert Gesler (1992) describes as a therapeutic landscape, a place where well-being emerges through sensory experience, social interaction, and symbolic meaning. Reading the research of Sebastian Völker and Thomas Kistemann (2011; 2013) helped me articulate this intuition.
December 2, 2025

Insights from Health Geographies II: More-than-Human Healthscapes – Tracing Animal and Environmental Health and Care in Mainz (summer term 2025)

Insights from Health Geographies II: More-than-Human Healthscapes – Tracing Animal and Environmental Health and Care in Mainz (summer term 2025) Text and photos by Alyssia ÖzbeyazCities […]