More evidence that the US is a memeocracy - governed purely by spectacle and necrocapitalism

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library With the home at the forefront of political and public health responses to COVID-19, the thresholds between domestic space and the world beyond acquired a new significance in people's everyday lives....

New in TIBG:

'Pandemic geographies of home: Domestic thresholding in response to COVID-19' by Alison Blunt et al.

This paper introduces the concept of 'thresholding' to explore how internal & external thresholds are materialised through embodied practice.

doi.org/10.1111/tran... #geosky

Currently my daily mantra

A graphic showing the title page of Area on a black background with a large 'A' on the right hand page. On the left hand page are seven tiles with the names of papers in a Special Section titled 'Gender and Rewilding'. The papers are: 1) Gender and Rewilding: Introduction to the Special Section Nadia Bartolini 2) Rewilding: An emotional nature Sophie Wynne-Jones 3) Gendered, embodied knowledge within a Welsh agricultural context and the importance of listening to farmers in the rewilding debate Ffion Jones 4) Rewilding, gender and the transformation of the Côa Valley Nadia Bartolini, Bárbara Carvalho, Sarah May 5) ‘A canary is supposed to sit in a cage and look at someone else's happiness’: Domestic rewilding in fin-de-siècle St Petersburg Olga Petri 6) The politics of rewilding through an ecofeminist lens Sherilyn MacGregor 7) Rewilding Gender: Towards Relational Understandings of ‘the Wild’ Kim Ward

A graphic showing the title page of Area on a black background with a large 'A' on the right hand page. On the left hand page are nine tiles with the names of papers in the issue. The papers are: 1) Unravelling uneven livelihood transformations in China's multi-ethnic Southeast Asian borderland: Perspectives from spatial interactions Xiaobo Hua, Renshan Luo 2) Milk from the farm, the factory and the future: An ecofeminist reflection on Aotearoa New Zealand's dairy sector Milena Bojovic 3) Research methods for legal geography Francesco Chiodelli 4) Changing jobs, changing landscapes: Do land use patterns reflect occupational shifts? Armina Aktara, Manash Jyoti Bhuyan 5) Displaced attention: Bergson, attentive habits and Tony Conrad's drone music George Burdon 6) What does geography look like? Robert Shaw 7) Multispecies placemaking: Tibetan pastoralist perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic Tsering Bum, Shuling Cheng 8) A mixed-methods approach to researching extreme heat: Insights from urban Ghana Katherine V. Gough, Ben M. Roberts, Ebenezer Forkuo Amankwaa, Karim Abdullah, Samuel Nii Ardey Codjoe, Ronald Reagan Gyimah, Raymond Kasei, Kevin J. Lomas, Frederick Wireko Manu, Peter Mensah, Eftychia Spentzou, Robert L. Wilby 9) Climate change sensing across work and home: A research diary experiment Febe De Geest, Carolina Contreras, Todd Denham, Patrick Bonney, Ashleigh Stokes, Blanche Verlie, Oluwadunsin Ajulo, Lauren Rickards

A graphic showing the title page of Area on a black background with a large 'A' on the right hand page. On the left hand page are eight tiles with the names of papers in a Special Section titled 'Participatory historical geographies'. The papers are: 1) Participatory historical geographies: Introduction Ruth Slatter, Edward Brookes 2) The Victoria County History and participatory historical geography Ruth Slatter 3) Mapping entangled mobilities: Using participatory historical geography to explore the migration of objects and people across (neo)colonial spatialities Sarah Linn, Jina Lee, Mariam Zorba, Caitlin Nunn, Jennifer Cromwell 4) Dancing in the archive: Bodily encounters, memory, and more-than-representational participatory historical geographies Lucy Thompson 5) Youth-led theatre for climate resilience and action at COP26 Kate Smith, Briony McDonagh, Sukhmandeep Dhillon 6) Participatory collaborations between geographers and performance artists: Taking urban renewal histories to the street Aled Singleton, Edward Brookes, Ruth Slatter 7) Watery archives: Reflections on doing participatory archival research for climate action and audience engagement Hannah Worthen, Claire Weatherall 8) ‘A series of abject failures’: Navigating the pitfalls of place-based participatory histories Juliette Desportes

A graphic showing the title page of Area on a black background with a large 'A' on the right hand page. On the left hand page are five tiles with the names three commentaries and two 'Ethics in/or geographical research' papers. The papers are: 1) ‘Good farming’ in a polycrisis: What could arts-led research offer? Agatha Herman, Liz Roberts 2) Reflecting on the restless volumetric place (re)naming race Sergei Basik 3) The architecture of whiteness Rhianna Garrett 4) Ethical mediation: Navigating research ethics and frictions in overseas fieldwork Sandra Hiari, Maiss Razem 5) Questions of power and ethics: Doing feminist research in methodological contexts that let the body lead Gabriel Baker

📢December Issue of Area📢

This issue features Special Sections on 'Gender & Rewilding' and 'Participatory Historical Geographies' alongside papers on topics from Tibetan pastoralist perceptions of the pandemic to research methods for legal geography ⬇️

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14754762...

The politics of listing and urban heritage: social housing, representation and the case of Robin Hood Gardens This paper examines how the politics of listing buildings in the UK intersect with urban heritage and redevelopment, focusing on the contested case of the Robin Hood Gardens (RHG) estate in East Lo...

An added bonus to the last day of work for me this year - my latest article has just been published online 🎉

It's all about urban heritage and the politics of the listing campaign associated with the Robin Hood Gardens Estate - please feel free to give it a read 👉 tinyurl.com/y3ykx6sk

A graphic publicising a new Special Section in Area called 'Participatory Historical Geographies'. There are eight tiles with the names of papers and authors as follows: 1) Participatory historical geographies: Introduction Ruth Slatter, Edward Brookes 2) The Victoria County History and participatory historical geography Ruth Slatter 3) Mapping entangled mobilities: Using participatory historical geography to explore the migration of objects and people across (neo)colonial spatialities Sarah Linn, Jina Lee, Mariam Zorba, Caitlin Nunn, Jennifer Cromwell 4) Dancing in the archive: Bodily encounters, memory, and more-than-representational participatory historical geographies Lucy Thompson 5) Youth-led theatre for climate resilience and action at COP26 Kate Smith, Briony McDonagh, Sukhmandeep Dhillon 6) Participatory collaborations between geographers and performance artists: Taking urban renewal histories to the street Aled Singleton, Edward Brookes, Ruth Slatter 7) Watery archives: Reflections on doing participatory archival research for climate action and audience engagement Hannah Worthen, Claire Weatherall 8) ‘A series of abject failures’: Navigating the pitfalls of place-based participatory histories Juliette Desportes

A black tile publicising the new 'Participatory Historical Geographies' Special Section in Area. There is a quote from Ruth Slatter & Ed Brookes' (2025) introduction. It reads: "The production of participatory historical knowledge is contingent on a wide variety of skills and labour, including communities themselves that often go unacknowledged. The challenge of navigating these pitfalls and barriers serve to highlight the many reasons why researchers, practitioners or members of the public may be reluctant to engage in participatory historical research".

'Participatory Historical Geographies' Special Section - out now in Area!

This collection, guest edited by @ruthslatter.bsky.social & @ed-brookes.bsky.social, reflects on the increasing use of participatory methods in historical geography.

Read here⬇️
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

I'm pretty sure this guy's is called 'The Carbonated Crusader'

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library Over the past two decades, historical geographers have increasingly embraced participatory methods to challenge dominant narratives and engage communities in the production of historical knowledge. T...

2/ First up @ed-brookes.bsky.social and I have written an introduction outlining what participatory historical geography is/could be and why it's important. Read more here: rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

1/ All of the papers in the special section of #Area I have co-edited with @ed-brookes.bsky.social are now available online. All focused on #participatory #historicalgeography they are full of practical reflections on innovative pieces of historical research. Follow this thread to find out more!

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library Over the past two decades, historical geographers have increasingly embraced participatory methods to challenge dominant narratives and engage communities in the production of historical knowledge. T...

Delighted to share our AREA special issue on Participatory Historical Geographies 🎉 Co-edited with the brilliant @ruthslatter.bsky.social - exploring the rewards & challenges of collaborative historical research.

Read 👉 rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

#Geography #AREAjournal

Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.

RHG’s demolition is a classic example of how the appearance of urban space is used to stigmatise communities and justify political decisions at the expense of residents. A worrying precedent when we see extreme forms of the same process in the US with Trump’s architecture bill tinyurl.com/5yeznewy

To add to this—reading the full listing report, he quickly dismisses the estate as “not a good place to live” and lacking community. This ignores the brilliant work of Jessie Brennan tinyurl.com/msezae5h
and Kois Miah tinyurl.com/43zfraap
which shows the opposite.

Brutalism Redux: Relational Monumentality and the Urban Politics of Brutalist Architecture Brutalism is an architectural form that is experiencing somewhat of a revival of late. This revival focuses almost purely on its aesthetics, but there is an ethical dimension to Brutalism that often ...

Yes it was 16-odd years ago, and he's grown politically since then, but it exposes his Blairite roots. RHG was an icon; a brutalist manifesto that deserved to be preserved and cherished, not fed to the gentrifying wolves (I wrote about it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....) /3

He ignored appeals and listening only to the private real estate developers instead of the community groups. There were plenty of options available and he chose the most Thatcherite one possible, you can read work by @ed-brookes.bsky.social on the process here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.... /2

Secretary of State rejects Robin Hood Gardens appeal The culture secretary Andy Burnham has sealed the fate of Robin Hood Gardens after rejecting an appeal from the Twentieth Century Society against the government’s decision not to list the ‘Brutalist’ ...

Andy Burnham, when he was culture secretary back in 2009, refused listing for Robin Hood Gardens in London, affectively demolishing it. RHG was one the finest example of brutalist architecture and a really important social housing block, and he went all Alice Coleman on it. /1

Free speech laws need to be reviewed after Linehan arrest, says Streeting The health secretary says ministers wanted police to focus on street crime rather than posts on social media.

Transphobe arrested: "we need to look at the laws, clearly something's not right"

80 year old vicars and disabled people carried off parliament square because they said genocide is bad: "these laws need to be tightened if anything"

100% I love both for very different reasons, and if anything expand my opportunities to read/listen to books!
Thought your responses were great btw ☺️

I don't really understand the weird binary that the BBC #r4today and other media seem to be trying to create between books and audio books. Can't we just enjoy both without pitting one against the other?

Artwork of a rainbow in a puddle of rain advertising two performances of Britten’s ‘Noye’s Fludde’ at Grimsby Minster on 24 March 2025 and at Hull Minster on 26 March 2025.

Join us for a unique opera experience! Funded by the AHRC for the #FromNoahToNow project @uniofhull.bsky.social, this *free* event aims to raise awareness about flooding.

Book for:
Grimsby Minster 24.03.2025 lnkd.in/dwPpGfyz
Hull Minster 26.03.2025 lnkd.in/dJaWTV36
#ArtsEducation #OperaInSchools

In Gaza we witnessed material scholasticide with the physical destruction of universities and people.

In the US, we're seeing ideological scholasticide via pulling any critical funding, censoring keywords.

In the UK, it's economical scholasticide via total starvation of funds and gov't inaction.

Longshot as I've been reading about cybernetic ecologies and this morning 😅 but I wondered if it could be linked to the emergence of cybernetics within ecology and design... Something there about technocrats, neoliberlism and systems thinking? 🤔 - although this may be a rabbit hole 😅

Singing in the rain foxes, ferrets and a flood opera Young voices set to join performances of Britten

Check out this short piece by Stewart Mottram, Lisa Coates and I which talks about our work on the Noah to Now project at the University of Hull and using Opera to explore flooding with young people 🎭
tinyurl.com/7u3b2485
#arts #opera #flooding #climatechange #noahtonow

Luckily for those who aren't sure there is a handy guide

a cartoon says we 've tried nothing and were all out of ideas ALT: a cartoon says we 've tried nothing and were all out of ideas

Biden:

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper is based on our experience of running a workshop at the Hull History Centre in the Summer of 2023 and reflects on the value of participatory approaches and co-production to open up access ...

New paper in Area:

'Watery archives: Reflections on doing participatory archival research for climate action and audience engagement' by @hannahworthen.bsky.social & Claire Weatherall

This paper is part of an ongoing Special Section on 'Participatory Historical Geography'.

doi.org/10.1111/area...

Parking fines: Woman faces £1,906 bill over five-minute payment rule Rosey Hudson paid for parking each time, but is being taken to court for £1,906 by Excel Parking.

Car park operators can get in the bin
Rentier capital at its absolute worst

BBC News - Parking fines: Woman faces £1,906 bill over five-minute payment rule - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper is based on our experience of running a workshop at the Hull History Centre in the Summer of 2023 and reflects on the value of participatory approaches and co-production to open up access ...

Thrilled to see 2 more articles online from the Area special section on participatory historical geography I am editing with @edbrooks.bsky.social Congrats @hannahworthen.bsky.social (rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....) & Lucy Thompson (rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....)

SuDS Research: Making a Splash in Sustainable Drainage! Blog from Dr Alexander Osborne of the University of Hull

SUDSLab & Water Data for People

Which explore how we can use sustainable drainage schemes in Hull, Grimsby and Immingham and how we can engage people with water data in ways that can address water challenges.

Find out more here: tinyurl.com/yc6hnk7x

Community Waterscapes

A project which is working with residents in Hull to create a digital, heritage record of people’s connection to water in the city.

You can find out more here tinyurl.com/252jt74p
Or check out the StoryMap to read peoples watery stories and histories tinyurl.com/3zv9se8m