Kye Askins

Contact Zones: Participation, Materiality, and the Messiness of Interaction

Recent debates around urban encounter, integration cosmopolitanism, and renewed engagement with contact theory have raised questions about the spaces of interaction that may enable meaningful encounters between different social groups. Reflecting on a participatory art project with young people of African and British heritage in northeast England, we argue that discussion and practice around participatory action research, including the deployment of contact zones as theory and method, can cast some light on what fosters transformative spaces. Through analysis of two different approaches to community art used in the project, we show how elements of each enabled and disabled meaningful interaction between young people. We draw attention to the materiality of art (the tools) within participatory practices (the doing of it) in contributing to a space where interactions might take place, emphasising a complex interplay across/between actors, materials, and space that frames encounters as emergent, transitory, fragile, and yet hopeful. We examine the potential of a focus on the material in thinking beyond moments of encounter to how transformative social relations may be ‘scaled up’ before considering the implications for research and policy.

Public geographies II: Being organic

This second report on ‘public geographies’ considers the diverse, emergent and shifting spaces of engaging with and in public/s. Taking as its focus the more ‘organic’ rather than ‘traditional’ approach to doing public geography, as discussed in the first report, it explores the multiple and unorthodox ways in which engagements across academic-public spheres play out, and what such engagements may mean for geography/ers. The report first explores the role of the internet in ‘enabling conversations’, generating a range of opportunities for public geography through websites, wikis, blogs, file-sharing sites, discussion forums and more, thinking critically about how technologies may enable/disable certain kinds of publically engaged activities. It then considers issues of process and praxis: how collaborations with groups/communities/organizations beyond academia are often unplanned, serendipitous encounters that evolve organically into research/ learning/teaching endeavours; but also that personal politics/positionality bring an agency to bear upon whether we, as academics, follow the leads we may stumble upon. The report concludes with a provocative question — given that many non-academics appear to be doing some amazing and inspiring projects and activities, thoughtful, critical and (arguably) examples of organic public geographies, what then is academia’s role?

Feeling our way: academia, emotions and a politics of care

Abstract This paper aims to better understand the role of emotions in academia, and their part in producing, and challenging, an increasingly normalised neoliberal academy. It unfolds from two narratives that foreground emotions in and across academic spaces and practices, to critically explore how knowledges and positions are constructed and circulated. It then moves to consider these issues through the lens of care as a political stance towards being and becoming academics in neoliberal times. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning literature on emotional geographies, explicitly bringing this work into conversation with resurgent debates surrounding an ethic of care, as part of a politic of critiquing individualism and managerialism in (and beyond) the academy. We consider the ways in which neoliberal university structures circulate particular affects, prompting emotions such as desire and anxiety, and the internalisation of competition and audit as embodied scholars. Our narratives exemplify how attendant emotions and affect can reverberate and be further reproduced through university cultures, and diffuse across personal and professional lives. We argue that emotions in academia matter, mutually co-producing everyday social relations and practices at and across all levels. We are interested in their political implications, and how neoliberal norms can be shifted through practices of caring-with.

Narratives of ethnic identity among practitioners in community settings in the northeast of England

The increasing ethnic diversity of the UK has been mirrored by growing public awareness of multicultural issues, alongside developments in academic and government thinking. This paper explores the contested meanings around ethnic identity/ies in community settings, drawing on semi-structured interviews with staff from Childrens Centres and allied agencies conducted for a research project that examined the relationship between identity and the participation of parents/carers in services in northeast England. The research found that respondents were unclear about, especially, white ethnic identities, and commonly referred to other social categorizations, such as age, nationality, and circumstances such as mobility, when discussing service users. While in some cases this may have reflected legitimate attempts to resist over-ethnicizing non-ethnic phenomena, such constructions coexisted with assumptions about ethnic difference and how it might translate into service needs. These findings raise important considerations for policy and practice.

'Us and us': Faslane 30 and academic direct action

Between 9 June and 9 July 2012, Faslane Peace Camp celebrated its thirtieth birthday by facilitating 30 days of non-violent direct action (NVDA) against nuclear weapons at Faslane naval base, Scotland. As part of this month of action we convened an academic seminar, which took place at the main (North) gate of the base on Friday 6 July. Our seminar built on an emerging tradition of academic seminars staged as NVDAs, notably two blockades which took place from 1 October 2006 as part of Faslane 365, a year of daily protests at the base (see Zelter 2008, Vinthagen et al. 2012). Stellan Vinthagen and Justin Kenrick developed the academic seminar blockade as a manifestation of the notion of ‘critique in action’:

Geographic visualisation: lessons for learning and teaching

Abstract This paper outlines a pedagogic project funded by the former GEES Learning and Teaching Development Fund, exploring students’ attitudes to, and learning through, visualisation as a method of assessment in a core undergraduate geography module. Student expectations and experiences of this assessment, together with reflections on learning and teaching methods more widely, were investigated using participatory appraisal, and follow-up face-to-face feedback. Student perceptions of visualisation as assessment mixed an uncertainty about what was expected, with a sense that visual work might be comparatively ‘easier’. Responses after the assessment recognised the difficulty of the method, the focus on data and the ability to address complex topics. Students also compared their experiences with visualisation to other assessment methods, with many finding the visual approach stimulating and effective for their learning, and module marks were higher than in previous years. We have retained the assessment in the module and extended some of the lessons, especially the use of show-and-tell critique sessions for formative feedback, to other modules.

Obituary: …emptier place: in memory of Dr Duncan Fuller

In September 2001, the geography department at Northumbria University hosted ‘Beyond the Academy? Critical Geographies in Action’, a three-day conference examining the role of academia/academics in engaging with social issues and local communities. Co-organised by Duncan Fuller and Rob Kitchin, Duncan kicked off with a presentation entitled ‘Introducing Issac’. Duncan and Ingrid, his wife, had recently had their first child (of three), and Duncan strongly believed that our personal experiences and how we act in ‘the world’ are inherently intertwined with how we ‘do’ our academic selves. His talk, then, wove the changes in his home life into a narrative that urged ‘committed and active engagement with issues of social justice’ outside our ‘privileged positions’ as academics. As we debated these issues, the significant international tragedies of 9/11 played out elsewhere. Duncan (D) and Rob led a short period of silence on the 12th for us to reflect on what had happened and what this might mean for the social geographies of many diverse yet interconnected groups and individuals. D was always sensitive to such intricacies of incident and emotion (though he didn’t always show it, see later)—moreover, he was committed to the notion of ‘social justice’ and viewed it holistically: to him it was important to ‘fight on all fronts’, and, therefore, vital as an academic to research, learn and teach about multiple deprivations and exclusions in all their complexities. I first met D at this conference and, like many other people, was immediately struck by his outrage at inequality, his energy to ‘fucking do something about it’, and his uncompromising attitude towards standing up and speaking his mind. I’d previously read his posts on the ‘Critical Geography Forum’ e-mailing list so had an idea of his politics, but the man was larger—and louder—in person. He made me grin: here was someone who swore more than I did! We kept in touch by e-mail, having those sporadic but intense and/or jocular discussions-over-the-ether that will resonate with anyone who corresponded with Duncan via e-mail. Our paths crossed at conference Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 10, No. 3, May 2009