Together with Gabriella Palermo of the University of Palermo, I am putting together a proposal for a special issue of Social & Cultural Geography focusing on intersections between, on the one hand, critical ocean geography informed by the fluid, dynamism of the ocean and, on the other hand, the ‘oceanic turn’ in African diaspora / Caribbean […]

For the past two decades, scholars in the social sciences and the humanities have increasingly referred to an ‘oceanic turn’ – drawing also on much longer efforts to embrace the ocean for thinking, literally, against the ‘grain’ (or ground) and the normative assumptions about society and space it generates. In such work, a focus on […]

Source: https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/uk-news/2020/06/07/why-was-the-statue-of-edward-colston-so-controversial/   My Twitter feed has been replete with a video showing the removal of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston from his plinth in Bristol (UK) during this past weekend’s Black Lives Matter protest. In several cases, enthusiastic retweeters noted that the statue was subsequently rolled down the street and “into the […]

[Posted 21 March, updated 26 March] I have COVID-19. Or maybe I don’t. I’m really not sure, since the UK isn’t testing anyone who doesn’t require hospitalisation. I’m on Day 5 or 6, I think. It began with a tight upper back and a slightly sore throat. Then there was a day of very minor […]

Reconfiguring and reconceptualising ocean geographies: oceanic excess, extensions and expansions Convened by Kimberley Peters, University of Liverpool; Philip Steinberg, Durham University, UK. What is the ocean and how do we study and understand it as geographers? This session is aimed at exploring this question by reconfiguring and reconceptualising ocean geographies through the themes of ‘excess’, […]

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been posting to this blog much lately. Or worse yet, you probably haven’t noticed. To some extent, that’s because of changes in the way that “we” (read: academics) use electronic media since I began the blog in 2012. Increasingly, we trade ideas and references via Twitter rather than writing […]

Last night I spent much more time than planned on Twitter following up on a post that I’d tweeted. In the post (technically, two linked posts), I had used the #ImmodestWomen movement (wherein women with PhDs are encouraging each other to add the “Dr” title to their social media names to encourage broader recognition of […]

  After three years being available in hardback only,  Contesting the Arctic has now been released in paperback, at the cost of GBP 18.95, direct from from IB Tauris, or USD 35.00 from Amazon.com.  Pick up your copy, while supplies last!

As editor-in-chief of Political Geography, I have had to make some difficult decisions concerning the relationship between the ongoing strike in UK academia, my position as a member of an international scholarly community, and my specific responsibilities with the journal. Even in the best of circumstances, deciding what it means to be an academic on […]

In an earlier post on this blog I announced the formation of DurhamARCTIC (the Durham Arctic Research Centre for Training and Interdisciplinary Collaboration), which is funding 15 new PhD students at Durham University. As an interdisciplinary programme, student recruitment cuts across a number of disciplinary cultures, from the natural science model, where academic staff design fully […]