Faculty of Social Sciences
Department of Geography
External Collaborations
Our commitment to critical geography and to research on politics, ethics and responsibility, means that we highly value opportunities to engage with the wider public. The Department focuses on enabling the circulation of ideas through: seminars and international workshops; external collaborations in the creative industries and arts sectors, in policy development, and participation in international associations. A few examples are listed here and further information can be found in individual staff profiles and postgraduate pages.
Media
Staff have been involved in a number of media programmes, advising on production and developing supporting text and internet material, including the popular OU/BBC series, Coast, and David Attenborough's Climate Change series. Our academics have been involved in various radio and television broadcasts, such as Doreen Massey’s participation in the 'Thinking Allowed' series on BBC 4 (2008). Doreen’s essay on the geographies of greenhouse gas emissions (broadcast on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 1st January 2007) can be heard on the Geographical Association website.
Public events
Events in 2009 will see the inaugural Doreen Massey lecture held at the Royal Geographical Society. Other events have included collaborations with the Tate Modern, incorporating a public lecture series on ‘Nature: Space: Society’ and 'Making Public' in 2004 and 2005. The Nature: Space: Society lectures marked a collaboration with artist Olafur Eliasson's installation, 'The Weather Project'.
Doreen Massey chairs discussion at the OU/Tate Modern public lecture series to accompany Olaffur Eliason’s Turbine Hall exhibition.
Olafur Eliasson's successful Weather Project in the Tate Modern’s Turnbine Hall.
Interdependence Day eventshave been held in collaboration with the new economics foundation (nef) 'think and do' tank. The resulting Interdependence Reports enjoyed substantial media coverage and included an Ecological Debt Calendar showing when we exhaust our capacity to live sustainably: for the UK it's April 16!
ESRC/NERC funded Interdependence Day seminars.
Culture and Creative Industries
Clive Barnett collaborated with the CREATE Centre on consumption and fair trade, Bristol, as part of an ESRC/AHRC funded Ethical Consumption project (2004). The project co-sponsored a photographic exhibition, A Taste of Life, and associated events which were open to the public as well as participants in local fair trade, organic, and ethical consumption networks, local authority officials, councillors and MPs, trade unionists, and representative of local businesses.
Doreen Massey and Gillian Rose have worked with Artpoint and Milton Keynes Council on issues around public space in that city. Doreen has also given many public lectures for organisations such as the Institute for Contemporary Art, the Hay Festival, and Liverpool Biennial.
Steve Pile has numerous collaborations with art organisations and artists, including ArtAngel (an exhibition by Richard Wentworth; see here for more details), the 50th Anniversary of the Royal Festival Hall; contributing to a Public Art Forum; Architecture Week at the Anna Freud Centre; and projects with individual artists (Jo Roberts' at the Pumphouse Gallery, Battersea Park; Brandon Labelle at the Archipel Festival, Geneva, and Sharon Kivland tracing Sigmund Freud and Alexander's 1904 journey from Trieste to Athens).
UK Public Policy
The department’s researchers are also active in UK and international political debates and the development of public policy.
Steve Hinchliffe has contributed to the ODPM review of urban green space and to the Royal Commission on Environment Pollution. He presented (with Andy Blowers) to the House of Commons Inquiry on Education for Sustainable Development and sits on the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust.
Doreen Massey is on the board of the Lipman-Miliband Trust and the Catalyst Think Tank.
European and International Organisations
Jessica Budds has collaborated extensively with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) involving the preparation of working papers and sections of UN Habitat reports. Jessica is a member of the Advisory Board for the Journal Environment and Urbanization.
David Humphreys has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Forest Institute and in 2005 was lead author on its major report on Biotechnology and the Forest. He has consulted for Norway’s Ministry of Environment on international responses to illegal forestry and been an expert adviser and contributor to the United Nations Environment Programme’s third Global Environmental Outlook (GEO 3) (2001). David was a member of three United Kingdom government delegations to United Nations Forum on Forests and editorial advisor for the Journal Forest Policy and Economics.
Petr Jehlicka is a member of Hungary’s Centre for Environmental Policy and Law Advisory Board.
Parvati Raghuram has prepared policy reports for the IPPR, and has been an expert advisor to the Dutch government in the preparation of their UN contribution on migration and development. She is a member of the Women's National Committee on Asylum and Immigration for the Gender group of the Global Commission for International Migration.
Jennifer Robinson has ongoing associations with South African urban policy, for example, being invited to speak to senior councillors and officials from Johannesburg City Council on a study tour to the UK. Jennifer is a member of the Reference Group for Urban Renewal and Development Unit, Human Sciences Research Council and has collaborated frequently with Isandla, an urban think tank in Cape Town.
Joe Smith has presented to international business and media organisations on environmental issues including the European Broadcasting Union science and education conference 2007, the EU DG Research Science Journalists congress 2007 and the Prince of Wales Business and Environment Programme (2004 and 2005 meetings).