Cultural Geography

Wageningen Geography Lecture | Connection and Purpose: the incredible journey of Camille Seaman 🗓️ Thursday 23 January 2025 🕞 15:30 - 17:00 📍 Gaia 2, Wageningen Campus 💻 Online link: https://lnkd.in/esFtEU87 About the lecture: Afro-Indigenous expedition photographer Camille Seaman will share her relationship with rapidly changing landscapes in the Arctic and Antarctic through her portrait photography. She takes us through her process and two decades documenting the impacts of global warming and understanding our interconnected relationships with nature.   About the speaker: For more than two decades Camille Seaman has documented the rapidly changing landscapes of Earth's polar regions through the lens of portraiture rather than landscape. As an expedition photographer aboard small ships in the Arctic, Antarctic, she has chronicled the accelerating effects of global warming. Seaman's perspective of the landscape is entwined with her Afro-Indigenous (Shinnecock-Montaukett) identity, which taught her from an early age to recognize all living beings—trees, spiders, fish, and even ice—as individual members of one, enormous family. Viewing human beings as fundamentally interconnected to nature, Seaman approaches photographing icebergs “as if I am making portraits of my ancestors,” each one with a distinct history, personality, and set of social relationships. Her dynamic images embed her subjects in an enduring, nourishing, but increasingly strained relationship with their environment—of which humans are an integral part. More information about Camille: https://lnkd.in/efUrc8NQ Centre for Space, Place and Society Jennifer Veilleux, Ph.D.

Starting of 2025 with some great news!: MSc Tourism, Society and Environment (MTO) alumna Vivian Sakko won the 2024 Utrecht University Dr. Albert van der Zeijden master's thesis prize for her thesis entitled "Vibrant tales that connect us all through folklore tourism: A case study into the folklore-centric gaze using animism". The thesis prize is awarded annually to recognise exceptional work in the field of intangible heritage. Vivian's thesis was supervised by GEO's Meghann Ormond. A hearty congratulations to Vivian! May she continue to shine in this field and share her passion for storytelling with many others!   Thesis abstract: Folklore tourism has risen significantly in popularity over the last years, enticing people from all over the world to explore landscapes infused with supernatural folklore. However, the relationship between tourism, the landscape and folklore is rather complicated and includes certain (frequently conflicting) tensions, into which more insight is needed, especially considering tourism destinations becoming increasingly interested in incorporating folklore into their development strategies. Inspired by Ironside and Massie (2020), this thesis explores a sustainable strategy to folklore tourism practices that is considerate of landscape, people living in a place, and heritage value. Considering that modern travellers require narratives like supernatural folktales to enliven landscapes for them, allowing them to experience these landscapes in new ways, liminal spaces (i.e. a space between reality and the ‘extraordinary’) are created during which people may be receptive to new and fresh perspectives on, for example, environmental matters. Consequently, folktales – which convey an animistic worldview - can thus offer transformative experiences which have the capacity to impact and mould tourist behaviour. Considering furthermore that humanity is at a turning point where we need to critically reflect on the relationship we have with the natural world, this thesis considers an approach to folklore tourism that proposes an animist ‘folklore-centric gaze’. It uses the Isle of Skye in Scotland as a case study and explores how (the animist characteristics of) supernatural folktales circulated on Skye might influence residents’ and tourists'/visitors’ perceptions and behaviours in relation to Skye’s landscapes.    More about the thesis prize: https://lnkd.in/eJqqPUtY

As we are approaching the end of 2024, the Cultural Geography Group (GEO) would like to wish you a warm and festive holiday season, we hope 2025 is filled with peace, joy and happy moments. We have a lot of exciting things coming up in 2025, so stay tuned!

🔥Let’s sue them! Dive into this course on mobilities and climate change and discover how to take action against the big polluters of our planet. ⚖️ In the Tourism & Globalization course, you’ll dive into how tourism and related activities are affected by climate change. You’ll do this by preparing for, acting out, and thinking about a mock greenwashing court case. You’ll learn about different ideas, theories, and ways to study global mobilities, how these mobilities are connected to the environment, and especially, climate change. This course will teach you how to use academic knowledge to help make big changes that go beyond and are critical of technofixes and redirecting responsibility to individuals or others elsewhere.    🌍 This course is meant for MTO (MSc Tourism, Society & Environment) students and others who are interested the multiple and dynamic relations between tourism, mobilities, and climate change.     🗓10 March – 2 May 2025 (WUR Period 5)  📝 Registration deadline: 9 February 2025  📖 More information*: https://lnkd.in/eB3TyviP  *Please note that this course is currently being redesigned, minor discrepancies between the study handbook and the course may occur.  Martijn Duineveld Cheryl van Adrichem

Gender equality is a fundamental value of the European Union and is one of the UN’s sustainable development goals and therefore a cross-cutting theme in their programming.   On 3 December the Wageningen University and Research (WUR) "Gender+ Equality Plan 2024-2028" was officially launched by rector Prof. dr. Carolien Kroeze.   The WUR Gender+ Equality Plan is “a next step to collectively address biases and inequalities in all fields required by the EU: education and research, governance and leadership, recruitment and career support, social safety and work-life balance”.   During this launch event, the WUR Gender+ Equality Award was handed out to GEO’s Chizu Sato who coordinates the Gender+ minor and CoP, Marrit van den Berg (DEC-SSG) and Joshua Wambugu (DARE).   Congratulations to Chizu, Marrit and Joshua!   More information here: https://lnkd.in/esq-2Fjg

We are excited and looking forward to the upcoming screening of the film documentary made by GEO’s Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong based on his research project that was funded by the NWO Veni grant. Event | Premiere Screening of Film Documentary (The Embodied Absence of the Past: tourism’s intersection with slavery and colonial heritage memories in the Ghana-Suriname-Netherlands triangle) 🗓 Friday 6 December 2024 🕒 18.30 doors open and 19.00 film screening starts 📍 Visum Mundi (old WUR Aula), Generaal Foulkesweg 1, Wageningen After the documentary screening there will be a moderated discussion with the audience. 

At Cultural Geography we decided to make the work on our mid term review fun. So the working session on making it was about learning how to illustrate our ideas and ambitions

The Cultural Geography Group (GEO) proudly announces that two of our courses coordinated by GEO’s Chizu Sato have been nominated for the WUR Excellent Education Prize! Each year, the courses most appreciated by students across the whole of WUR are identified based on the results of the course evaluations. In the upcoming weeks, the jury, consisting of four teachers and four students from four different sectors (Environmental Sciences, Technology and Nutrition, Social Sciences, and Life Sciences) will decide on the eventual winners. The nominated courses, ‘Gender and Diversity in Transnational Worlds’ and ‘Responsibilities for Equality and Sustainability’ are both part of the minor Gender and Diversity for Sustainable Worlds. In this minor, students start from their own position to become aware of their responsibilities and then, to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that support integration of gender and diversity into their efforts to advance a more equal and sustainable world. More information about the the minor Gender and Diversity for Sustainable Worlds can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eKf426YU We are very proud of Chizu’s accomplishment, and we look forward to the outcome of the WUR Excellent Education Prize ceremony on the 10th of December!

📣 Upcoming event - Lunch Lecture on Anti-colonial resistance by GEO's Jennifer Veilleux, Ph.D. 🗓️ Monday 2 December 2024 🕧 12:30 - 13:45 📍 Wageningen Campus, Forum Building Room B0404 OtherWise Wageningen Centre for Space, Place and Society

Interested in studying the MSc in Tourism, Society and Environment (MTO) but unsure what to expect? Join the Master Open Day on the 28th of November and get answers to all your questions about studying MTO at Wageningen University! During the Master Open Day, you can attend a presentation about the MTO programme, chat in person with students and teachers and, learn more about application and admission. More details:  MTO programme presentation: 17:40 – 18:25 & 18:45 – 20:15 Information session ‘from HBO to WO’ (in Dutch):  18.45 - 19.30 & 19.50 - 20.35 📍 Orion Building, Wageningen Campus - room details will be updated soon here: https://lnkd.in/eUm97gen 💻 Not able to visit the Open Day in person? The Virtual Open Day will take place on the 12th of December from 15:00 – 21:00 CET. More information about the Virtual Open Day can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eAVVexBw