skip to primary navigation skip to content

Department of Geography

 

Spatial risk and resilience reading group

This group is discussing the ways in which resilience as a concept is useful (or not) in different areas of geography, ranging from physical to economic and social geographies.

It has two main aims. The first is to consider some of the questions arising from the emerging discourses of resilience – particularly developing our thinking about the spatial aspects of resilience. Research in risk and resilience may take place in a very broad range of disciplinary contexts across the social and physical sciences, yet societal resilience may be strongly geographically controlled in terms of physical challenges, governance structures, cultural controls and traditions… How do the different disciplines respond to these issues, and how effective or important is the idea of resilience in shaping futures? We hope that this meeting will bring together people from across the Department to discuss some of these topics. The second aim of the meeting is to discuss the role that the Geography Department could take in producing distinctive new research in this field.

Forthcoming meetings

27th March 2012

4pm to 6pm in the Seminar Room.

There will be two short talks followed by discussion. We are very pleased that Bill Adams and Liz Watson have agreed to share some of their work with us:

  • Prof Bill Adams – Elephant Landscapes: Risk and Resilience in Laikipia, Kenya
  • Dr Liz Watson – Enhancing resilience of pastoralists in dryland East Africa

Refreshments will be provided as usual.

19th January 2012

The next meeting of the Spatial Risk and Resilience group will be 19th January from 4pm-6pm in the Seminar Room. Refreshments will be provided.

There will be a brief introduction, and then two very short talks to get the discussion going.

  • Keith Richards – “Resilient Social-Ecological Scenarios”
  • Amy Donovan – “Disaster and spaces of resilience on Montserrat”

Previous meetings

First meeting (date unsure)

At the first meeting, Ash Amin and Ron Martin shared some of their recent research in the areas of urban resilience and economic resilience respectively. There was an extensive discussion.

1st December

Details to follow.