Heike Jons

Geographies of education and the significance of children, youth and families

This paper engages with Hanson Thiem’s (2009) critique of geographies of education. Accepting the premise that education warrants fuller attention by geographers, the paper nonetheless argues that engaging with research on children, youth and families reshapes understanding of what has been, and might be, achieved. Foregrounding young people as the subjects rather than objects of education demands that attention be paid to their current and future life-worlds, in both inward and outward looking geographies of education. It also requires a broadening of our spatial lens, in terms of what ‘count’ as educational spaces, and the places where we study these.

Transnational Academic Mobility and Gender.

This paper examines to what extent the participation of researchers in transnational academic mobility, their experiences and perceived outcomes vary by gender. Based on longitudinal statistics, original survey data and semi-structured interviews with former visiting researchers in Germany, the paper shows that the academic world of female researchers tends to be less international than that of their male colleagues, particularly in the natural sciences. This situation has improved since the 1980s but significant variations remain by source country, subject, career stage and length of stay. The paper argues that the underlying reasons go far beyond direct gender relationships and suggests that conceptualising transnational academic mobility as an integral part of mobilisation processes in Latourian ‘centres of calculation’ underlines the need for making this experience accessible to the widest possible range of researchers.This paper examines to what extent the participation of researchers in transnational academic mobility, their experiences and perceived outcomes vary by gender. Based on longitudinal statistics, original survey data and semi-structured interviews with former visiting researchers in Germany, the paper shows that the academic world of female researchers tends to be less international than that of their male colleagues, particularly in the natural sciences. This situation has improved since the 1980s but significant variations remain by source country, subject, career stage and length of stay. The paper argues that the underlying reasons go far beyond direct gender relationships and suggests that conceptualising transnational academic mobility as an integral part of mobilisation processes in Latourian ‘centres of calculation’ underlines the need for making this experience accessible to the widest possible range of researchers.

Dynamic hybrids and the geographies of technoscience: discussing conceptual resources beyond the human/non-human binary

This paper discusses the nature of (post)-human and (post)-natural worlds by examining the types of entities responsible for knowledge production in contemporary technoscience. Based upon a case study in high-energy physics and a constructive critical engagement with actor-network thought in science studies and geography, a complex trinity of geographically relevant actants is developed and discussed as a conceptual resource for studying geographies of human–environment relations beyond reductionist dualisms such as subject/object, nature/society and human/non-human. At the heart of the suggested trinity of actants lies the notion of ‘dynamic hybrids’ that identifies humans, other organisms and certain machines as decisive nodes between material and immaterial spaces of scientific network-building. The paper concludes by assessing how the suggested conceptual moves may affect the analysis and critique of scientific practice. It is pointed out that the proposed conceptual resources are not trying to establ...This paper discusses the nature of (post)-human and (post)-natural worlds by examining the types of entities responsible for knowledge production in contemporary technoscience. Based upon a case study in high-energy physics and a constructive critical engagement with actor-network thought in science studies and geography, a complex trinity of geographically relevant actants is developed and discussed as a conceptual resource for studying geographies of human–environment relations beyond reductionist dualisms such as subject/object, nature/society and human/non-human. At the heart of the suggested trinity of actants lies the notion of ‘dynamic hybrids’ that identifies humans, other organisms and certain machines as decisive nodes between material and immaterial spaces of scientific network-building. The paper concludes by assessing how the suggested conceptual moves may affect the analysis and critique of scientific practice. It is pointed out that the proposed conceptual resources are not trying to establish new boundaries in order to contribute to a better understanding of science and its varying geographies, but to keep the categories we use in motion.

Research travel and disciplinary identities in the University of Cambridge, 1885–1955

This article considers the role of overseas academic travel in the development of the modern research university, with particular reference to the University of Cambridge from the 1880s to the 1950s. The Cambridge academic community, relatively sedentary at the beginning of this period, became progressively more mobile and globalized through the early twentieth century, facilitated by regular research sabbaticals. The culture of research travel diffused at varying rates, and with differing consequences, across the arts and humanities and the field, laboratory and theoretical sciences, reshaping disciplinary identities and practices in the process. The nature of research travel also changed as the genteel scholarly excursion was replaced by the purposeful, output-orientated expedition.

Boundary spanning in social and cultural geography

This article situates interactions between German- and English-language social and cultural geographies since the mid-twentieth century within their wider intellectual, political and socio-economic contexts. Based on case study examples, we outline main challenges of international knowledge transfer due to nationally and linguistically structured publication cultures, differing academic paradigms and varying promotion criteria. We argue that such transfer requires formal and informal platforms for academic debate, the commitment of boundary spanners and supportive peer groups. In German-language social and cultural geography, these three aspects induced a shift from a prevalent applied research tradition in the context of the modern welfare state towards a deeper engagement with Anglophone debates about critical and post-structuralist approaches that have helped to critique the rise of neoliberal governance since the 1990s. Anglophone and especially British social and cultural geography, firmly grounded in critical and post-structuralist thought since the 1980s, are increasingly pressurized through the neoliberal corporatization of the university to develop more applied features such as research impact and students’ employability.

Foreign Banks are Branching out: Changing Geographies of Hungarian Banking, 1987–1999

Walking through the streets of Budapest in spring 1999 could have given you the following impression: the supermarkets (Spar), the milk products sold there (Danone, Muller), and the property markets (OBI) come from different Western European countries such as the Netherlands, France and Germany. Almost all fast food restaurants (McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC) and many hotels (Hilton, Mariott) have their origins in the US; shoes and clothes offered in downtown are designed in Italy or France (Benetton, Marco Polo); medicine is predominantly produced in Switzerland (Novartis, Roche) and the banks as well as the car dealerships have their roots everywhere in the so-called Western world - usually including Japan and other Asian countries with major (car) companies - but not in Hungary itself.

The University of Cambridge, academic expertise and the British empire, 1885–1962:

This paper examines how imperial travel of British academics shaped the production of knowledge and colonial policy from the 1880s to the 1960s. It employs an innovative, archive-based methodology that examines the changing geographies of all recorded academic travel from the University of Cambridge in conjunction with the extensive overseas journeys of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, Drapers’ Professor of Agriculture from 1930 to 1957 and a key advisor to the Colonial Office on tropical agriculture. Drawing on recent work in geography and science studies, this study outlines how scientific expertise was increasingly sought by colonial governments at the eve of decolonisation due to a lack of scientific infrastructure and growing social upheavals in the colonies. The analysis discusses related geographical shifts in the engagement of British academics with the colonial world and identifies a profound deepening of the uneven integration of different areas of empire into academic networks after 1945. Based on Engledow’s contribution to the Moyne Commission on the West Indies (1938–1939) and ensuing colonial reform, it is argued that he represented, like many other late colonial British academic experts, a distinctively post-Victorian imperialist, whose strong belief in Christian faith, racial differences, colonial networks, humanitarianism, science and planning created an ambivalent positionality that explains why his expertise both supported and undermined colonial rule.

Mobilities of knowledge: an introduction

Mobilities of Knowledge examines how the geographical mobility of people and (im)material things has impacted epistemic systems of knowledge in different historical and geographical contexts. In this chapter, the authors introduce key concepts and debates in interdisciplinary research on spatial mobility and the production, dissemination, and transfer of knowledge. They suggest extending Urry’s (2007) typology of interdependent mobilities that constitute the space of flows and the space of places (Castells 1996) from five to six dimensions through the consideration of mobile knowledges, concepts, and practices. Finally, they outline how the chapters of this volume help to identify generic as well as context-specific practices and processes of knowledge production, dissemination, and transfer and call for more empirical case studies to further the collective development of flexible conceptual understandings.

Introduction: Toward More Inclusive and Comparative Perspectives in the Histories of Geographical Knowledge

Over the past three decades, feminist historiography of geography has begun to situate womens contribution to the production of geographical knowledge within the histories of geography, at times against the conviction of skeptical colleagues. In this Focus Section introduction, we renew Domoshs (1991a, 1991b) call for creating more inclusive feminist histories of geography by situating the three focus section articles on the careers and contributions of women in twentieth-century geographical practice and knowledge production in the United Kingdom and the United States within wider debates about diverse, unfamiliar, and previously hidden aspects of geographical knowledge production. We argue that feminist historiography of geography and feminist historical geography could benefit from continuously diversifying inclusive and comparative research perspectives, and from unlocking diverse archives, to enhance understanding of why and how some male and some female gatekeepers have been more supportive of women than others.

Boundary-crossing academic mobilities in glocal knowledge economies: new research agendas based on triadic thought

ABSTRACTThis editorial introduction identifies a need for more multidimensional and collective theorizations of boundary-crossing academic mobilities in order to conceptualise this phenomenon, compare empirical findings, and identify new research perspectives. My suggestion is that triadic thought – or the thinking in three rather than two conceptual categories – overcomes some of the limitations that binary thought has imposed on social theory. By transforming the three conceptual dyads that frame this special issue on boundary-crossing academic mobilities, namely mobility/migration, students/academics, and local/global, into more differentiated relational triads, I argue that ordering and framing studies on academic and other mobilities through three-by-three matrices grounded in triadic thought helps to advance conceptual debate and unfold a wider research agenda in truly collective ways.ABSTRACT This editorial introduction identifies a need for more multidimensional and collective theorizations of boundary-crossing academic mobilities in order to conceptualise this phenomenon, compare empirical findings, and identify new research perspectives. My suggestion is that triadic thought – or the thinking in three rather than two conceptual categories – overcomes some of the limitations that binary thought has imposed on social theory. By transforming the three conceptual dyads that frame this special issue on boundary-crossing academic mobilities, namely mobility/migration, students/academics, and local/global, into more differentiated relational triads, I argue that ordering and framing studies on academic and other mobilities through three-by-three matrices grounded in triadic thought helps to advance conceptual debate and unfold a wider research agenda in truly collective ways.