A Panel Discussion relating to the upcoming Special Issue in Landscape Research Journal
Dr Matthew Rofe, University of South Australia and Professor Michael Ripmeester, Brock University, Canada
This event has now passed
The recording is available below
LRG is hosting a panel discussion with the Guest Editors and some authors of an upcoming Special Issue of the Landscape Research Journal, exploring the theme of the complexity of contested landscapes on Monday 26th June at 16.00 BST, 17.00 CEST.
The Guest Editors, Dr Matthew Rofe and Prof Michael Ripmeester, will be joined by two of the issue’s authors, Dr Jenna Ashton (University of Manchester, UK) and Dr Richard White (Bath Spa University, UK) who will discuss the rationale behind choosing this theme for the Journal, their thoughts around its impact and implications and finding a way forward through its complexity.
Landscapes are complex, multifaceted and contested. Readers of Landscape Research would accept this as a truism. However, beneath their veneer of normalcy lies a complex reality. For example, the landscapes within which we live our daily lives and through which we create and express narratives of memory, identity and community are typically taken for granted. These memoryscapes offer a sense, for many, of familiarity and, by extension, provide security and stability. Yet not all people share in these narratives or the stability they provide. For these others, landscapes are neither familiar nor secure. Landscapes from their perspective are foreign, exclusionary, and even threatening. At various times these senses of exclusion rupture the thin veneer of normalcy, bringing to the fore the contested nature of landscapes.
The forthcoming special issue of Landscape Research seeks to engage with and tease out these ruptures. In this endeavour, we are mindful that, according to Wilbur Zelinksy (1973, p.70) culture wields a power so great that only ‘…a half-wit or a fool would openly flout…’ cultural norms. The contributors to the Special Issue are proudly such folk! Embodying a diverse range of personal and professional backgrounds, each contributor critically engages with contested landscapes teasing out how memory and memorialisation serve as complex artefacts in processes of remembering and forgetting, celebration and denial, inclusion and exclusion.
This is an online event, you can register your attendance here.
For any queries, email Emily Shakespeare, Communications Manager.
