Research seminars

Main Departmental seminar series

Main Departmental seminar series at the Department of Geography.

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Thursday 24th October 2019, 4.15pm - Professor Ayona Datta, Department of Geography, King's College, London

#AanaJaana [#ComingGoing]: Curating gendered digital lives in Delhi's urban peripheries

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

This paper presents a gendered perspective of Delhi’s urban future produced and curated by young women living in slum resettlement colonies in the city’s edge. Using the metaphor of #aanajaana ¹ as a paradigm for postcolonial urbanism, this paper argues that their everyday mobility across the home and the city reflect the paradox of belonging and exclusion in a digital urban age. The paper captures the ambiguities and paradoxes of their lives – on the one hand living as second generation rural migrants forcefully evicted from the city slums in the 2000s and resettled in the peripheries. On the other hand, as millennials with increased access to mobile and communication technologies, these women are also riding the digital urban age with promises of their inclusion in the future city. Using a digital and participatory methodology of WhatsApp diary entries of multimedia content (audio recordings, photographs, videos and text messages by women), conversations between the women and researchers as well as observations of the dynamics within the WhatsApp group over a period of 6 months, I suggest that #AanaJaana highlights the inherent slow violence of living between physical and digital exclusions from the city. By digitally and visually curating women’s everyday stories, #aanajaana also turned into a hip-hop song written and performed by these women that drew attention to the attritional and invisible violence of their lives.

# Wednesday 6th November 2019, 1.00pm - Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Department of Geography / Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University

The Weddell Sea, Antarctica: modern science and the search for Shackleton’s Endurance

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

The primary aim of the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019 was to investigate the fluctuating extent and glacial history of the Larsen C Ice Shelf, together with the sea ice, oceanography and marine biology close to it, as part of an interdisciplinary science programme led by the Scott Polar Research Institute. The Weddell Sea and Larsen Ice Shelf were selected for investigation because of the known instability of ice shelves in this area, including the recent calving of the huge iceberg A68, and the significance of the area for sea-ice and dense bottom-water formation. The expedition platform was the South African icebreaker Agulhas II, which was equipped with a number of scientific instruments including two state-of-the-art autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The initial findings of the expedition, including geophysical observations of past ice-shelf grounding lines imaged in unprecedented detail, will be presented.
A second expedition aim was to use the AUVs to search for the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance which was crushed by sea ice and sank in the Weddell Sea during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914 – 1917). A century later the sea-ice conditions in the western Weddell Sea remain just as challenging, but in early 2019 the Agulhas II managed to penetrate this remote region to search for the wreck, whose position was known from historical theodolite and sextant measurements held in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute. The search for Endurance will also be outlined.

# Tuesday 12th November 2019, 5.00pm - Professor Melissa Leach, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex

Geographies of Knowledge Annual Lecture: Configuring and Contesting Planetary Health: Knowledge Politics in Ecologies of Disease

Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Contemporary imaginaries of ‘planetary health’ and ‘one health’ call upon new combinations of knowledge to address pressing global-scale predicaments. These configurations are illustrative of broader planetary imaginaries in the Anthropocene, yet are contested by knowledges from different times, places and scales. Focusing on ideas and actions around infectious diseases, their ecologies and socialities, and drawing on examples from the ethnography of zoonoses – diseases passed from animals to people – in West Africa, I address what anthropocenic reconfigurations are obscuring and marginalising – including creative ways that people interrelate with non-human natures in living and dealing with disease. I argue for an opening-up of planetary (health) imaginaries to greater appreciation of local socio-natures in all their diversity, and for a politicisation of our engagements with ecologies and non-human natures that better appreciates plurality and uncertainty.

# Wednesday 20th November 2019, 1.00pm - Professor Vanesa Castán Broto, Urban Institute, The University of Sheffield

The uses of messiness: understanding climate governance in practice

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Coordination, organisation, alignment, integration, multi-level governance, subsidiarity, coalition-making, harmonisation, orchestration: these are all different words which have become a standard part of the climate change governance vocabulary. They all have one thing in common: they represent attempts to introduce ‘order’ in governance institutions to facilitate the delivery of climate change policy. While the actual vocabularies to describe governance arrangements across spaces and scales have changed in the history of climate change policy, they have maintained a core idea: institutional ordering makes the climate change landscape governable.
What if governing would require, instead, a deliberate engagement with messiness? In this lecture I will offer an initial exploration of the uses and risks of messiness as a form of climate change governance. My proposal emerges against the backdrop of multiple, overlapping proposals to deliver order as a priority response to the urgent challenge of climate change. Ordering is part of the collective quest to make sense of an indeterminate World. An engagement with on-the-ground contexts of action suggests that ordering efforts tend to be inadequate, incomplete, and often deviate attention from immediate priorities at hand. From the active designation of the pure and impure as a form of social regulation (cf. Douglas, 1956) to the fortress of consciousness that helps us to typify normality (cf. Foucault, 1961) ordering efforts are linked to multiple forms of conscious and unconscious oppression.
Climate change imposes a different perspective. The scale of the challenge asks for acting without certainty, and for embracing hope and possibility as a means to reach more sustainable futures. My hypothesis is accepting messiness is a workable alternative for delivering realistic, on-the-ground climate change action with the potential to transform this world. Governance as messiness resonates with feminist alternatives to despair in the Anthropocene. In an urban context- the setting that my scholarship explores- embracing messiness requires: 1) a revisable approach to climate action strategies, 2) an openness to multiple forms of climate knowledge and the role of knowledge holders, and 3) a recognition of the body as a mediator of climate change action.

# Thursday 30th January 2020, 4.15pm - Professor Yadvinder Malhi, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford

El Niño, tropical forests and the potential instability of the global carbon cycle

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Thursday 13th February 2020, 4.15pm - Dr Maria Fannin, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol

"Constructing the ‘fetal environment:’ making intergenerational publics in a regional biobank"

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Wednesday 26th February 2020, 1.00pm - Professor Gail Davies, Geography, University of Exeter

Changing Geographies of Pharmacology

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Wednesday 11th March 2020, 1.00pm - Dr Walter Immerzeel, Faculty of Geosciences, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands

Recent advances in understanding climate, glacier and river dynamics in high mountain Asia

Venue: Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

Seminars in Cultural and Historical Geography

All seminars begin at 1pm and take place in the Hardy Building, Room 101 (unless otherwise stated), Department of Geography. All welcome!

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure - seminar series

• See also: Graduate Workshops in Economic and Social History

Research seminar series run by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

The support of the Trevelyan Fund (Faculty of History) is gratefully acknowledged.

The seminar meets on Wednesdays at 13.15 in Seminar Room 5, Faculty of History.

Convenors: Leigh Shaw-Taylor (lmws2@cam.ac.uk), Romola Davenport (rjd23@cam.ac.uk) and Alice Reid (alice.reid@geog.cam.ac.uk).

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Cambridge Conservation Seminars

The series is intended to provide a research and social focus for university lecturers, research staff and postgraduate students interested in conservation research. The primary aim is to inform university colleagues of what research is going on in different departments and to bring in high quality outside speakers. Equally, members of conservation organisations are welcome to attend. A key element is the opportunity after each talk to socialise with colleagues from different departments and organisations.

Generously funded by the CCI Strategic Initiative Fund
http://www.conservation.cam.ac.uk/

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Climate and Environmental Dynamics - Department of Geography

Seminars which may be of interest to members of the Climate and Environmental Dynamics research group within the Department of Geography.

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Thursday 17th October 2019, 5.30pm - Cameron Petrie, University of Cambridge

Does climate change really cause collapse? Insights from the Land, Water and Settlement and TwoRains projects

Venue: Clare College (Latimer Room)

Abstract not available

# Wednesday 23rd October 2019, 1.00pm - Hans de Leeuw, Department of Chemistry, Cambridge

Validating the NAME dispersion model with TROPOMI satellite observations for the 2019 Raikoke eruption

Venue: Rm Harker 2, Department of Earth Sciences, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Thursday 24th October 2019, 1.00pm - Meghain Boyd (Royal Holloway, UK)

Title to be confirmed

Venue: Rm 101, William Hardy Building, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Thursday 31st October 2019, 5.30pm - Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute, current "Shackleton visiting fellow" at Clare Hall

Aerosols and Ancient History in Arctic and Alpine Ice

Venue: Clare College (Latimer Room)

Aerosol records developed from polar ice cores are powerful tools for reconstructing the timing and extent of natural and anthropogenic changes in Earth’s environment during past centuries to millennia. Recent analytical advances enable rapid development of accurately dated aerosol records of sea spray, windblown dust, biomass burning, volcanism, and industrial activities. Here we used high-depth-resolution measurements in an array of 13 ice cores to develop a 3000-year, sub-annually resolved record of Arctic lead pollution extending from the Iron Age to present, including European Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. After describing the methods used to develop these unique pollution records, we discuss inherent uncertainties in these and all ice-core aerosol records, and interpret our records in terms of their historical implications. We also present the first Alpine ice record of lead and antimony pollution during Antiquity.

# Thursday 7th November 2019, 1.00pm - Joe McConnell (Desert Research Institute, USA)

Volcanic history archived in glacial ice

Venue: Tilley Lecture Theatre, Earth Sciences Department, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Thursday 14th November 2019, 5.30pm - Paula Reimer, Queens University Belfast

The IntCal20 radiocarbon calibration curve - composition and consequences

Venue: tba

Abstract not available

# Thursday 21st November 2019, 1.00pm - Giada Centenaro (Department of Geography, Cambridge)

New insight on the mycorrhizal fungus–host association, expected to emerge from combining dendrochronology, wood anatomy, mycology and ecology

Venue: Rm 101, William Hardy Building, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

# Thursday 28th November 2019, 5.30pm - Thomas Laepple

TBA

Venue: Clare College (Latimer Room)

Abstract not available

# Thursday 5th December 2019, 1.00pm - Jack Atkinson (Department of Geography, Cambridge)

Volcanic plume dynamics and a laminar analogue of an atmospheric thermal

Venue: Rm 101, William Hardy Building, Department of Geography, Downing Site

Abstract not available

Political ecology

• Political ecology research group lunchtime meetings

Polar Physical Sciences

• SPRI Physical Sciences Seminar Series

Histories, cultures, environments and politics research seminars

• Histories, cultures, environments and politics research seminars - Scott Polar Research Institute

Polar Humanities and Social Sciences ECR Workshop

• Polar Humanities and Social Sciences ECR Workshop - Scott Polar Research Institute

Gender

• Multidisciplinary gender research seminars

Quaternary Discussion Group (QDG)

A series of 50 minute lectures, followed by discussion, on the broad topic of environmental evolution, climate, ecological and human change during the Quaternary (the last ~2.6 million years). The lectures are aimed at a broad audience (including geoscientists, glaciologists, environmental scientists, atmospheric chemists, biologists, anthropologists and archaeologists).

Seminars are on Thursdays starting at 17:30. Wine is served after the talks and there is time for discussion over drinks and/or dinner.

QDG is currently organised by David Hodell, Christine Lane, Francesco Muschitiello, Eric Wolff. Please feel free to contact us with queries and suggestions.

To sign up to the QDG mailing list, follow this link:
https://lists.cam.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/soc-qdg-quaternary-disc-reminder

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Thursday 17th October 2019, 5.30pm - Cameron Petrie, University of Cambridge

Does climate change really cause collapse? Insights from the Land, Water and Settlement and TwoRains projects

Venue: Clare College (Latimer Room)

Abstract not available

# Thursday 31st October 2019, 5.30pm - Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute, current "Shackleton visiting fellow" at Clare Hall

Aerosols and Ancient History in Arctic and Alpine Ice

Venue: Clare College (Latimer Room)

Aerosol records developed from polar ice cores are powerful tools for reconstructing the timing and extent of natural and anthropogenic changes in Earth’s environment during past centuries to millennia. Recent analytical advances enable rapid development of accurately dated aerosol records of sea spray, windblown dust, biomass burning, volcanism, and industrial activities. Here we used high-depth-resolution measurements in an array of 13 ice cores to develop a 3000-year, sub-annually resolved record of Arctic lead pollution extending from the Iron Age to present, including European Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. After describing the methods used to develop these unique pollution records, we discuss inherent uncertainties in these and all ice-core aerosol records, and interpret our records in terms of their historical implications. We also present the first Alpine ice record of lead and antimony pollution during Antiquity.

# Thursday 14th November 2019, 5.30pm - Paula Reimer, Queens University Belfast

The IntCal20 radiocarbon calibration curve - composition and consequences

Venue: tba

Abstract not available

# Thursday 28th November 2019, 5.30pm - Thomas Laepple

TBA

Venue: Clare College (Latimer Room)

Abstract not available

Cambridge Volcanology

Cambridge Volcanology seminars.

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Cambridge Cultural and Historical Geography (CCHG) - Department of Geography

Seminars and public lectures within the Cambridge Cultural and Historical Geography research group of the Department of Geography.

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Thursday 17th October 2019, 5.00pm - Prof. Morgan Kelly, University College Dublin

The safety revolution in oceanic shipping, c. 1780-1825

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

# Thursday 24th October 2019, 5.00pm - Prof. Tracy Dennison, California Institute of Technology

The Political Economy of Serfdom: State Capacity and Institutional Change in Prussia and Russia

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

# Thursday 31st October 2019, 5.00pm - Cheng YANG (University of Cambridge)

The occupational structure of China (1736-1898) and the Great Divergence

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

# Thursday 7th November 2019, 5.00pm - Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Utrecht

Women Workers of the World United: Towards a global history of households, gender and work

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

# Thursday 14th November 2019, 5.00pm - Prof. Guido Alfani (Bocconi, Milan) and Dr Matteo di Tullia (Pavia)

Roundtable discussion of "The Lion's Share: Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe" (2019)

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

# Thursday 21st November 2019, 5.00pm - Alexandra Sapoznik, King's College London

Did peasants plough? Agricultural technology and the growth of the medieval economy

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

# Thursday 28th November 2019, 5.00pm - Prof. Peter Scott, Reading

The anatomy of Britain’s inter-war super-rich: reconstructing the 1928 ‘millionaire’ population

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

# Thursday 5th December 2019, 5.00pm - Prof. Richard Smith, Cambridge

The Tyranny of a Concept: the Origins of the European Marriage Pattern

Venue: Old Library, Darwin College

Abstract not available

Geographies of Knowledge - Department of Geography

Seminars and public lectures within the Geographies of Knowledge research group of the Department of Geography.

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Tuesday 15th October 2019, 2.00pm - Willy Topkok (Independent Artist, Alaska)

Life in Alaska as an Inupiaq Artist

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Wednesday 16th October 2019, 1.00pm - Dr Rob Bellamy, University of Manchester

Clumsy solutions for climate change: whose knowledge is needed?

Venue: Seminar Room, Department of Geography

Abstract not available

# Thursday 24th October 2019, 2.00pm - John Woitkowitz (University of Cambridge)

Science Policy Workshop Report/Arctic Circle Assembly 2019

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 29th October 2019, 4.30pm - Vanessa Heggie (University of Birmingham)

Meat to Mittens: a short history of survival science and extreme physiology in the Arctic and Antarctic regions

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre

Abstract not available

# Thursday 31st October 2019, 2.00pm - Prem Gill (University of Cambridge)

"Minorities in Polar Research"-Network

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 12th November 2019, 5.00pm - Professor Melissa Leach, IDS, University of Sussex

Configuring and Contesting Planetary Health; Knowledge Politics in Ecologies of Disease

Venue: Large Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography

Contemporary imaginaries of ‘planetary health’ in the Anthropocene claim to address pressing global-scale predicaments, yet are contested by knowledges from different times, places and scales. In West Africa and beyond, I ask – are anthropocenic reconfigurations obscuring creative, everyday relationships between people and non-human natures in dealing with infectious threats and maintaining healthy lives and ecologies? Who is gaining and losing? How can we open up the politics of planetary health to a greater appreciation of diverse socio-natures, plurality and uncertainty?

# Wednesday 13th November 2019, 1.00pm - Dr Caroline Cornish, Royal Hollaway

Accumulate to circulate: cultures of exchange in nineteenth-century museums

Venue: Seminar Room, Department of Geography

Abstract not available

# Thursday 14th November 2019, 2.00pm - Eleanor Peers (University of Cambridge)

From Epic Bards to Pop Stars in North-East Siberia: Song as Patriotic Education

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 19th November 2019, 4.30pm - Ingrid Medby (Oxford Brookes University)

From Arctic statehood to self: State personnel’s articulations of Arctic identity in Norway, Iceland, and Canada

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre

Abstract not available

# Thursday 21st November 2019, 2.00pm - Ed Armston-Sheret (Royal Holloway, University of London)

The Selected Body: Investigating Ideas about Nerves and Constitutions in the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Wednesday 27th November 2019, 1.00pm - Dr Antonio Ferraz-de-Oliveira, Downing College

From Empire to Globalisation: Jean Gottmann's Political Geographies

Venue: Seminar Room, Department of Geography

Abstract not available

# Thursday 5th December 2019, 2.00pm - Eavan O'Dochartaigh (Umeå University)

Arctic Visible: Picturing Indigenous Communities in the Nineteenth-Century Western Arctic

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 28th January 2020, 4.30pm - Morgan Seag (University of Cambridge)

#AntarcticWomenToo? Making and remaking 20th century Antarctic history

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 11th February 2020, 4.30pm - Sofia Gavrilova (University of Oxford)

Constructing the Other: representations of Arctic native communities in Russian regional museums

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 3rd March 2020, 4.30pm - Max Jones (University of Manchester)

Fridtjof Nansen’s FRAM expedition and the Making of a Transnational Hero

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 12th May 2020, 4.30pm - Olga Ulturgasheva (University of Manchester) and Barbara Bodenhorn (University of Cambridge)

Envisioning Arctic Futures: Digital and Otherwise

Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Lecture Theatre

Abstract not available

Biogeography and Biogeomorphology - Department of Geography

Seminars and public lectures within the Biogeography and Biogeomorphology research group of the Department of Geography.

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Infrastructural Geographies - Department of Geography

Seminars and public lectures within the Infrastructural Geographies research group of the Department of Geography.

View the archive of previous seminars.

# Friday 8th November 2019, 1.00pm - Federico Ferretti

Other Radical Traditions: Brazilian geographers between exile and military dictatorship

Venue: Seminar Room, Department of Geography, Downing Site

In recent years, scholars have started to write the international history of the movement called “Radical Geography” that arose around journals such as Antipode from the 1960s-1970s. While one of the declared aims of these authors is to overtake Euro- and Anglo-centric readings of this phenomenon, this task seems far from being fully accomplished, given that most of the latest contributions address cases from the Anglosphere, especially from North-America. My ongoing reserach project on Brazilian and Latin American critical and radical geographies extends this body of scholarship and puts it in relation with a burgeoning literature on geography and decoloniality, often inspired by authors akin to the Latin American “decolonial turn”. I do this by addressing multilingual works, archives and networks of a circuit of Brazilian geographers who were exiled or variously persecuted by the military dictatorship that ruled their country between 1964 and 1985. At that time, they played influential but still neglected roles in inspiring critical and radical scholarship worldwide, thanks also to their exile experiences and their multilingualism. My main argument is that these scholars anticipated some aspects of current debates on the decolonisation of social sciences such as the critique of Northern recipes in development studies, the engagement with non-European cultures like those of indigenous and Afro-descendants, and the need for a more pluralist and cosmopolitan geography, one which can connect scholarship and grassroots mobilisations

Fieldwork Seminar: Methodologies in the 'field'

These seminars at the Department of Geography are based on reflections from recently undertaken (though this is not essential) fieldwork, and will engage with the challenges of fieldwork, and the contradictions between methodology as we understand it in abstraction, and what plays out in the field.

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Graduate Workshops in Economic and Social History

Mondays at 12:30 pm in Room 5, Faculty of History

All welcome.

Convenors: Ying Dai (Murray Edwards College,yd282) and Emelyn Rude (King’s College, er496)

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Centenary Lecture Series, Department of Geography

Description to be confirmed

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

ERC Research Presentations, Department of Geography

Description to be confirmed

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.

Other talks

Talks in the Department of Geography not connected to any other seminar series.

There are no forthcoming seminars at present. Please check back here later.

You may wish to view the archive of previous seminars.