Nichola Harmer

A good move? Young people’s comparisons of rural and urban living in Britain

This article analyses young people’s (aged 12–18 years) comparisons of urban and rural living within the context of counterurbanisation in Britain. By exploring the experiences of young people who migrate from urban to rural environments, drawing out gender- and age-based differences when appropriate, we demonstrate that these young people occupy a unique in-between space from which to reflect on their past and current identities, experiences and locales. This article contributes to the growing literature seeking to understand the diversity and complexity of young people’s experiences and understandings of the rural.

Crude geopolitics: territory and governance in post-peak oil imaginaries

ABSTRACT Crude geopolitics: territory and governance in post-peak oil imaginaries. Territory, Politics, Governance. Concerns over diminishing access to cheap fossil fuels and the impacts of their use on the environment have engendered the production of novels in which new ways of living and alternative forms of governance are imagined. From pioneering self-sufficiency expert John Seymour in the 1990s to twenty-first century novelists dealing with the twin crises of climate change and ‘peak oil’, these stories draw on existential concerns over resource depletion, environmental degradation and climate change to portray fundamentally altered socio-political futures. This article explores the political geographies of these imaginary futures as depicted in post-peak oil novels from the UK and the US. It traces the reterritorialization and rescaling of governance following the imagined disintegration of social and political structures post-peak oil, highlighting an emphasis on the creation of small, localized communities, drawing for their survival on their immediate physical geography. In doing so, the article also demonstrates how the novels provide a conceptual space in which diverse threads of political philosophical thought are drawn upon in order to construct new political geographies in the imagined post-oil societies.

“Choice may not necessarily be a good thing”: student attitudes to autonomy in interdisciplinary project-based learning in GEES disciplines

Abstract Project-based learning (PjBL) is argued to foster a more democratic approach to education, particularly through increasing students’ autonomy over their learning. This article presents the findings of research into students’ views relating to autonomy over topic choice and group constitution during a series of trial interdisciplinary PjBL activities with first-year geography, earth and environmental sciences (GEES) undergraduates in a UK university. Semi-structured interviews with participating students and tutors, in addition to audio-recordings of staff–student discussion during student-led presentation sessions, formed the data set analysed for this article. Findings suggest that while some degree of autonomy was welcomed, participants largely favoured prescription regarding research question and group membership. This has implications for the implementation of PjBL and its potential to foster democratization within the GEES disciplines.

The value of 'having a go': Trialling a project-based learning activity to inform curriculum design

Abstract Active, student-centered pedagogies such as project-based learning (PjBL) can offer significant potential for engaging undergraduates with complex sustainability issues. Driven by institution-wide curriculum changes and informed by educational theories and evidence from previous studies, a trial PjBL activity was designed and delivered on three separate occasions, to three different student groups, at a university in the United Kingdom. In these trials, students from geography, Earth, and environmental science (GEES) programs worked in small (5 to 6 people), multiple-discipline teams to explore a single research question focused on a global sustainability issue. The perceptions and experiences of the trial participants (students and faculty) were investigated using data from surveys and interviews, and the findings applied to designing a new, multiple-disciplinary module focused on energy and climate change. In general, all participants engaged positively with the PjBL approach, although issues around the nature and extent of support available to the students and appropriate methods of assessing PjBL outputs emerged as requiring further consideration. The findings demonstrate that a single research question need not constrain the approach students take when completing a PjBL activity and identify clear potential benefits in terms of developing students’ wider professional skills. This study also highlights the value to curriculum developers in trialing new pedagogic approaches, as the opportunity to “have a go” enabled potential issues for learners and instructors to be identified and mitigated prior to the final module design and implementation.

Designing New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme

We use the New Zealand emissions trading scheme to explore how diffusion and learning from other emissions trading systems can explain the adoption, design, and revision of climate policy. Drawing on secondary documents and interviews with politicians, government officials, business leaders, and independent commentators, we argue for further investigation of how interactions between international and domestic factors shape the design of climate policy, and for deeper probing of structural and shorter-term domestic imperatives, to avoid misreading the extent and nature of international diffusion influences. We particularly stress the importance of distinguishing analytically between diffusion interactions motivated by learning between jurisdictions and scrutiny aimed at avoiding material disadvantages as a result of miscalculations in climate policy design. Finally, we argue for greater attention to the temporal dimensions of climate policy development in explanations of how diffusion and domestic influences may change during policy adoption, design, and revision.

Distant Relations: Identity and Materiality in Elite Discourse on Britain's Overseas Territories

This article examines representations of identity in two British Overseas Territories: St Helena in the South Atlantic and the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. While local forms of representative government exist here, political authority over several significant areas of political life is retained by the British state. As such, the connections between sovereignty, politics and identity are less clearly demarked than in many states. Based on interviews carried out on the islands in 2011, the article explores the way in which national and local identities in the territories are understood in relation to their link with the United Kingdom. The research identifies the importance of geography and economics as key elements in the construction of identity discourses in these territories. This emphasis points to the importance material factors have in shaping the way communities are imagined, particularly where sovereignty is held externally.