The program is now full, and whilst the running order may be subject to change we are no longer accepting submissions – we look forward to seeing you all on the day, either in person or online.
Venue: Armstrong Building Room 2.49 Newcastle University.
Note: the Doreen Massey archive workshop session scheduled for 13.00 to 14.45 is in-person only and the Teams meeting will pause for this.
11:30-11:40: Welcome
11:40-12:10: The Nautical Turn: The Birth of the Renaissance as found in it’s Cartographic History and it’s Shift to a Maritime Focus. (Seb Willis, University of Hull – presented in person)
Abstract: The junction between the Mediaeval and Early Modern eras has, frustratingly for some, always been divided by the Renaissance. A period often defined by humanist philosophy, classical romanticism, blossoming republics and mercantilism, the Renaissance is elusive in its origins. A stark juxtaposition between Mediaeval and Renaissance culture is found in the cartographic traditions of both. The mappamundi of mediaeval Europe, characterised by its religious allegory and moral teaching, was pushed abruptly aside by the Portolan Charts of mercantile republics. This shift in cartographic expression coincided with, and this paper will explore if it created, a changing world view that saw the sea not as a border separating the Earth from the rest of the cosmos, but as a vector of opportunity to be explored and exploited. Rejecting its capitalist resolution, this paper will lean into Edgar Zilsel’s thesis on the artisanal origins of modern science. Thus, reframing Renaissance cartography as something born from the personal relationship with, and the many knowledges of, the maritime world as held by the people living and operating upon it.)
12:10-12:30: Retracing Footsteps: Reanimating Past and Present Encounters with a Mountain (Daniel Bos, University of Chester – presented via Teams)
Abstract: This paper draws on an interdisciplinary project combining art, photography, and cultural geography to investigate historical and contemporary tourist experiences with the mountain Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), Wales. The project has focused on reanimating archival materials by juxtaposing contemporary artistic practices, using photography and moving images, with excerpts from 19th-century visitor books once held in summit huts atop Yr Wyddfa. By retracing the journeys of 19th-century visitors to the summit of the mountain, the team set out to reimagine the rural mountain landscape as it exists today, reflecting on the broader contemporary environmental, socio-economic, and cultural challenges the mountain faces for a sustainable future due to its ever-growing popularity. By referencing examples from various public exhibitions, the talk will focus on the practices and process of documenting and reanimating such archival materials in ways that creatively engage with the temporalities of rural landscape and show how such creative work can develop and alter public understandings of popular rural geographies.
12:30-13:00: Lunch.
13:00-14:45: Stories-so-far: Doreen Massey archive (Ben Newman and Colin Lorne, Open University – presented in person, this workshop will not be available on Teams).
Abstract: during this workshop Ben and Colin will share a small collection of (scanned) materials from the Stories-so-far: Doreen Massey archive project. This is a significant privilege, and a brilliant opportunity to actively practise some of the emerging tenets of Porous Archives by directly engaging with the papers of a truly public intellectual and deeply political geographical scholar.
14:45-15:00: Refreshments and morsels.
15:00-15:30: Recovering Dialogues: Archival Perspectives on the International Dialogue Project (Colin Fuchs, Open University, William Kutz and Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Lund University – presented in person with colleagues at Lund joining via Teams)
Abstract: This paper revisits the International Dialogue Project (IDP), a curiously forgotten initiative given the current scholarly interest in ‘dialogue’. Initiated by Anne Buttimer and Torsten Hägerstrand at Lund University in 1978, the IDP produced over 150 video-recorded conversations with researchers, artists and practitioners from across the sciences and humanities. But far from being a success story, the IDP presents a case of unmet expectations, frustrations and misunderstandings arising from a project that on paper could not have been more ideally positioned for impact. Coinciding with the opening of Hägerstrand’s archive at Lund University (Fryksén, forthcoming) and recent work on Buttimer’s archive at University College Dublin (Ferretti, 2019), we use the IDP as a lens through which to examine how knowledge moves and endures through dialogic encounter. In parallel, we reclaim some of the IDP’s lost vocabulary to reconsider the work of stewarding disciplinary ideas and memory for the future.
15:30-16:00: The evolution of Central Asia’s geospatial structure: interactions between nomads and sedentary populations (Qiran Song, University of Warwick – presented in person)
Abstract: The evolution of Central Asia’s geospatial structure is closely associated to livelihoods, migration, trade, and political and military affairs. The South-North Tie (S-N Tie), underpinned by interactions between nomads and sedentary populations, played a significant role during the early stages of this evolution. Even as nomads gained military-political dominance, the S-N Tie fostered their trend toward sedentarisation. While the S-N Tie remained influential, the East-West Tie (E-W Tie) emerged as nomadic groups entered Central Asia in succession from the East Eurasian Steppes. The E-W Tie arose from tensions between China (Han-Di) and the steppe-forest regions of Mongolia and the watersheds of the Songhua and Liao Rivers, as well as the conflicts between Sassanian and Byzantine, demonstrating the feature that interdependent rise-and-fall dynamics among Eurasian nomadic groups and reciprocity between nomads and peasants interwove. After the 15th century, Central Asia’s geospatial structure was increasingly shaped by maritime powers, which integrated Central Asia into a new geospatial structure that the influence of the Eurasian Continent and the ocean intersected.
16:00-16:15: Refreshments and morsels.
16:15-16:45: The Scattered Memory of Nigeria’s Independence Speeches across Porous Archives (Olalekan Ojumu, Archivi.ng – presented via Teams)
Abstract: Nigeria’s Independence Day speeches should represent some of the most stable and accessible state records in the country’s postcolonial history. Yet when Archivi.ng set out to compile a complete collection for a public storytelling project on governance and national memory, it became clear that no central institution had preserved them in full. This discovery began a nine-month search across Nigeria’s fragmented archival landscape, moving through the National Archives in Ibadan, Kenneth Dike Library, the National Libraries in Yaba and Ibadan, the Oyo State Library Board, Radio Nigeria, NISER, and the Tribune Library. Each site offered only partial remnants, ranging from isolated transcripts to deteriorating documents and unlabelled audio reels. These encounters revealed the degree to which Nigerian state archives operate as porous systems shaped by institutional discontinuity, personal discretion, staff memory, and chronic underfunding. Records that should form a coherent national narrative survive instead as scattered and vulnerable fragments. The Independence speeches, central texts in Nigeria’s annual political ritual, emerge as unfinished objects that continue to be reshaped by loss, recovery, and interpretive labour. By tracing the effort required to reconstruct these materials, this paper explores how porous archives influence public history, digital preservation, and the broader task of rebuilding state memory.
16:45-17:05: Nuclear perpetrations in the thoughtful landscapes of Eryri National Park. (Paul Wright, Newcastle University / HGRG – presented in person)
Abstract: Damaged landscapes might be labelled as “spoiled”, “scarred” or “ruined”: the scholarly terminology is “encroachment” or “disturbance”, with “coherence” as the opposite, meaning that landscape damage is understood as an outgrowth of thoughtlessness. Thoughtlessness inheres in features conceived and built with scant (or no) thought to their coherence with the landscape (Davoudi and Brooks 2019, 9). For landscapes to fare well, additions to them need to practice a kind of mimicry – they need to adopt (to some extent) the look, scale, and orientation of the landscape receiving them. Using this definition, Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station may appear to be one of the UK’s more significant acts of thoughtlessness and damage. Eryri National Park – formerly Snowdonia National Park – was created in 1951 to protect the natural beauty of, and public access to, the landscapes of North Wales. Just two years later, a public enquiry concluded that a nuclear power station should be built in Eryri, and between 1959 and 1965 the two reactor halls and ancillary buildings of Trawsfynydd were completed. This proposed project asks: is Trawsfynydd thoughtless? The archived text of the public enquiry appears to feature care, hesitation, a degree of affection, and a particular articulation of what we now call “coherence”, although it could be considered wishful, and possibly naive. What the archived public enquiry offers (and what this paper analyses) is an insight to the question of how landscapes receive damage from caring hands, and tests a tentative research design that asks whether landscapes are experienced differently if people know that the damage arose from errant care, rather than thoughtlessness.
17:05-17:15: Outline of 2026 events, and close.