Reading for the Area Prize each spring is a really lovely opportunity to engage with all the amazing early career work being produced across the discipline and that @areajournal.bsky.social is proud to publish. Well done to Maddie, Stefano, and Rosie on their excellent papers! @rgs.org
Absolutely agree! There are amazing early career geographers pushing the discipline forward and it is brilliant that they see Area as a place for their work. BIG CONGRATULATIONS to this years winner and those highly commended!
All of those thoughts/ideas that he promised he wouldn't publish in his lifetime because the Jesuit's wouldn't allow it, later go on to inspire Vernadsky's notion of the biosphere.
Screenshot of a highly commended paper in the 2025 Area Prize: Rosie Knowles (University of Liverpool, UK) “Narrating health and well-being with vulnerable participants: The ethics of composite fiction as a creative method in health geographies” Area, 58(1), e70042 This impactful article by Rosie Knowles pushes health geographers towards a more sustained engagement with how composite fiction can be assembled ethically and rigorously. Reflecting on what it means to tell stories together and to build collective reflection into accounts of health geography, Knowles’ paper offers a creative and insightful methodological contribution.
& Rosie Knowles for her paper 'Narrating health and well-being with vulnerable participants: The ethics of composite fiction as a creative method in health geographies' ⬇️
doi.org/10.1111/area...
@livunigeog.bsky.social
Screenshot of a highly commended paper in the 2025 Area Prize: Stefano Pagin (University of Leicester, UK) “Bringing nuance to real estate financialisation: Insights from Brazil” In this carefully argued article, Stefano Pagin and Daniel Sanfelici examine how institutions take shape within, and most importantly give shape to, the financialisation of real estate. The piece shows both the utility of broader political economic thought and cautions against overextending its analytical reach. It convincingly argues that contextualising financialisation in particular places enables it to be seen as one of many logics shaping urban geographies, making a significant contribution to thinking from and with the Global South.
The editors also recognised two highly commended authors:
Stefano Pagin for his co-authored paper with Daniel Sanfelici: 'Bringing nuance to real estate financialisation: Insights from Brazil' ⬇️
doi.org/10.1111/area...
@uniofleicester.bsky.social
Screenshot of the 2025 Area Prize-winner announcement: Madelaine Joyce (Royal Holloway University of London, UK) “Sensing the sky’s edge: Atmospheric insights into the Korean demilitarised zone” With this innovative article, Madelaine Joyce pushes cultural and political geographers to attend closely and creatively to both affective and material atmospheres. Taking the anticipation of an encounter with the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea as both prompt and problematic for rethinking borders across fog, radio signals, and no-go zones, Joyce’s article is a deserving Area Prize winner.
🏆Area Prize Announcement!🏆
This year's Area Prize for the best paper written by an ECR has been awarded to 𝐌𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐉𝐨𝐲𝐜𝐞 for her paper 'Sensing the sky's edge: Atmospheric insights into the Korean demilitarised zone' ⬇️
doi.org/10.1111/area...
@maddiejoyce.bsky.social @rhulgeography.bsky.social
Screenshot of a paper abstract in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers by William Monteith (2026) entitled: 'Green Refrontierisation: Critical Cartographies of the Hydrogen Rush in Africa' with a red banner at the top. Land is a critical requirement of low-carbon energy transitions, driving global land acquisitions on an unprecedented scale. Under pressure to diversify and decarbonise their energy mix, European states and investors have begun to map the ‘green hydrogen potential’ of territories on the African continent, producing powerful new visualisations of energy space. This article provides a critical cartographic analysis of the green hydrogen (GH2) maps present within the reports of European states, lobby groups and investment bodies to examine the role of geographical knowledge in the production of low-carbon energy frontiers. It identifies three spatio-political strategies present within these maps: spatialising hydrogen potential, territorialising hydrogen space and (re)mobilising fossil fuel infrastructure. Together, these strategies form part of a broader process that I term ‘green refrontierisation’: the assembling of low-carbon energy frontiers atop the remnants of colonial and carbon frontiers. Through a particular focus on the Namibian case, the article's findings advance debates at the intersection of energy geographies and critical cartography by demonstrating how low-carbon energy frontiers (re)spatialise land around a series of dynamic environmental processes rather than the subterranean resources that have historically guided geographical thinking.
New in TIBG:
'Green refrontierisation: Critical cartographies of the hydrogen rush in Africa' by William Monteith
This paper provides a critical cartographic analysis of the green hydrogen maps within the reports of European states, lobby groups & investment bodies.
doi.org/10.1111/tran... #geo
What happens if you ask somebody who makes medieval-style maps to make one of Alberta, but emphsasing Treaty lands and watershed boundaries? Something like this I suppose! DM me if you want a copy.
My latest article is a look at how western irrigation experts in the US and Canada tried (and failed) to get a transboundary water agreement in southern Alberta in the decades prior to the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
@justwaterfutures.bsky.social, @waalternatives.bsky.social, @humanright2water.bsky.social, @endwaterpoverty.bsky.social, @icruxen.bsky.social, @jeremyjschmidt.bsky.social .........
My latest article is a look at how western irrigation experts in the US and Canada tried (and failed) to get a transboundary water agreement in southern Alberta in the decades prior to the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
I meant this link...beautifuldestruction.ca/beautiful-destruction-ga...
Thanks! I was super happy that Louis Helbig gave permission for it (he has so many amazing shots! beautifuldestruction.ca/about-louis-...)
It would be great to catch up! Can't figure out how to use DMs on here but am at jeremy.schmidt [at] qmul.ac.uk
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. It might between small basins, but I think GP might be too far for the Peace/Athabasca combo to come into play. I'm just so dismayed that this is the future for one of the most amazing inland freshwater deltas (and everything that it is to so many) on Earth.
Powerful stuff from our students:
"AI cannot coexist with education — it can only degrade it.... With our own university leading the charge, AI is now corrupting those few sacred spaces and leaving us with nowhere to engage in true scholarship."
To all those who celebrate:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KalQ...
Thanks Jonny!!
Now book-cover-official!
Coming this September:
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Now book-cover-official!
Coming this September:
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
first ones of the year out today!
A new paper, by an international team of researchers, reviews the latest evidence and says global temperatures must cool to around 1°C above pre-industrial levels in the long term. tinyurl.com/52xyujnf
I didn't think Small Prophets could get better, then the Modest Mouse tee-shirt scene.
100%
BBC switching mid-game from hockey to luge. Things that would never happen in Canada. #Canada #Olympics
I was also thinking there are (limited) parallels with a land rush; where scale facilitates reach and return. But of course land is limited in ways that data, while also limited, is not.
I think so too. There is something different than a bubble being built (I'm working my way to a new metaphor but haven't landed on whatever it is that does not displace something and then pop, and is also not like a rhyzome (et al)).
Read a review of a book where somebody takes a swipe at a junior scholar for no clear reason. So, I bought the book and plan to give it a great review (because it is a great book!).