The conference theme, Remembering, reimagining geography, is offered as an opportunity to critically consider how geography evolved the way it did, its influences on human and more-than-human worlds, and the contribution the discipline can make to more just and sustainable futures.
Hero image (above): Dale Harding, SPINE 3 (RADIANCE), 2018, Plaster, haematite oxide, 4.450 x 12.000m, UA2018.25.3, The University Art Collection, the University of Sydney
Traditional ownership of lands, waters and skies of contemporary Australia is the foundation of First Nations Peoples’ continuing sovereignty since before colonisation.
Acknowledging Indigenous ownership of this continent is especially important given the long and controversial history of Geography as a colonial discipline.
If geography is the science of 'writing about the earth' then the history of geography is inherently a history of many voices, chiefly that of Indigenous Peoples.
Yet in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and elsewhere, Indigenous geographies have been systemically appropriated, undervalued and actively disrupted, a process often promoted by and recorded through the study of geography.
2021 marks the centenary of the first university geography program in Australia at the University of Sydney. While Geography, in and beyond Sydney, is a dynamic discipline - with the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘who’ changing markedly over time - more structural changes are needed.
Who gets to write Geography? Whose Geographies are written? Under what conditions? And what Geographies are ultimately produced and accepted?
Reckoning with this fraught history requires surfacing the discipline’s imperial foundations and establishing new infrastructures of geographical knowledge that promote equitable relations between diverse humans and non-humans.
The conference theme of Remembering, Reimagining Geography is offered as an opportunity to critically consider how geography evolved the way it did, its influences on human and more-than-human worlds, and the contribution the discipline can make to more just and sustainable futures.
It is also an opportunity to remember and engage, from our different positions and places, the already existing life-sustaining systems of governance and legal orders of Indigenous sovereignties.
With its foci on the construction of spatial relations and the intersections of humans and the natural world, geography sheds distinctive light on the challenges to understand and respond to the multiple, entangled crises and ontologies of the twenty-first century.
This conference will provide a space to ask questions, share knowledge and ideas, celebrate achievements and imagine alternative futures within an agenda to 're-imagine the earth' in ways that promote plural and transformative geographies and acknowledge ongoing First Nations sovereignties.
Given the current health context and our ability to meet and engage in ways not previously possible, the format of the 2021 conference is a hybrid online conference combined with in-person events.
We wish to foster the discipline and the communities that support geography in ways that are safe, inclusive and fun. We understand that many of us miss the face-to-face social interaction but also that the health context varies across the world and that further changes are likely.
We welcome you to join us in your preferred format for a combined Australian and New Zealand conference that remembers and reimagines geography for a better future.
The Call for Abstracts commences from 18 February, however due to planned website maintenance the abstracts cannot be submitted until after 4 March. An announcement will be made when this is ready.
For your planning, the following sessions are calling for abstracts. For full session description and session primary contacts please download the Sessions and Call for Abstracts PDF (pdf, 282.3 Kb)
Session Number | Session name |
1 | Border Studies in Australian and New Zealand Geography |
2 | Reimagining the geographies of diverse children and childhoods |
3 | Physical geographies and processes of coastal systems |
4 | Climate adaptation justice in theory and practice |
5 | Geography education: Reimagining its visibility and enactment |
6 | Remembering and reimagining embodied geographies |
7 | Health and economies in the web of life |
8 | Understanding the relationships between extractive activity and landscape change: theoretical and methodological challenges |
9 | Embodied methodologies: contributions and challenges to the field |
10 | Beyond Tesla: Remaking Electro-mobilities for Sustainability and Justice |
11 | Harnessing the palaeoanthropocene |
12 | Speaking from our places: protocols and practices acknowledging who we are and where we stand in our academic praxis |
13 | Geographies of Activism and Acquiescence |
14 | Critical approaches to development, justice and participation in a time of crises |
15 | Remembering the promises of food security: reimagining a different food future |
16 | Remembering, Reimagining Political Space |
17 | New and Emerging Research in Cultural Geography |
18 | Disrupting Housing: digitalization and innovations in housing |
19 | Housing for human and non-human flourishing |
20 | Housing for human and non-human flourishing |
21 | Actually existing digital geographies in the antipodes (and elsewhere) |
22 | Alternative Urban Imaginaries: Counter mapping and creative cartography |
23 | Alternative Urban Imaginaries 2: Storying Radically Interdependent Counter-Cities |
24 | Regenerative, Resilient and Really Diverse, New Economic Geographies |
25 | Roundtable on geography under ‘change plan’: experiencing, adapting to, and resisting university restructuring |
26 | Contesting green finance |
27 | Rupture and the reimagining of nature-society |
28 | Research under climate change: between rapid impact and slow scholarship |
29 | Stakeholder Capitalism? Exploring the Practices and Politics of Commercial Responsibilisation |
30 | The geography of the post-pandemic economy |
31 | 'Geographers Declare Action' Workshop |
32 | Rethinking Counter-urbanisation: Explorations into Australian internal migration away from the cities |
33 | Indigenous Legal Geographies |
34 | Settler-Colonial Urbanisms - Convergences, Divergences, Limits |
35 | Infrastructures of settler colonialism |
36 | Open Session: Indigenous Peoples Knowledges and Rights |
37 | Shifting legal geographies of tenure |
38 | Garnering legitimacy through the law: the untapped potential of (legal) geography research |
39 | Legal Geography: Perspectives and Methods |
March 2021: Registration opens
30 April 2021: Last date for early bird registration
15 February 2021: Call for sessions closes
20 February 2021: Sessions confirmed
21 February 2021: Call for abstracts
5 April 2021: Abstracts close
24 April: Abstract confirmation
For all conference enquiries, please contact:
Professor Phil McManus
Email: iagnzgs2021.conference@sydney.edu.au
Book a stay in our spacious & newly refurbished Camperdown accommodation and enjoy proximity to the hustle and bustle of Sydney’s vibrant CBD with Rydges Camperdown. Visit the charming boutiques and restaurants that line Newtown’s lively King Street and enjoy the thrilling entertainment at the ICC Sydney and Enmore Theatre.
Our well-appointed Camperdown accommodation options include spacious rooms with desirable amenities. Each of our 146 recently refurbished rooms includes an ensuite bathroom, LCD TV, FREE wireless Internet access, tea and coffee making facilities.
Guests can make bookings direct to hotel
1. Via Email: reservations_rydgescamperdown@evt.com
Please quote Block Code GEO2021
2. Via Phone: +61 9516 1522
Please advise you are attending the conference at USYD and to quote Block Code GEO2021
Adina Apartment Hotel Sydney Chippendale are offering conference guest a discount of 20% off their best available rate.
To book please follow the link to their website and type in the Promo code SOG21 when finalising your booking.
If you have any questions please contact Julie Gibson at jgibson@adinahotels.com.au.
Veriu Broadway is available for contact from 08:00 – 20:00 Mon-Fri. To book discounted accommodation please send your booking request to groups@punthill.com.au or call 1300 964 821 and Veriu Broadway will respond to your enquiry as a matter of urgency.
Please state you are booking as part of IAG NZGS Conference Group.
All guests booking with our Veriu Central property as part of Browning and Lee’s Wedding party will receive the following:
· 15% off Best Available Rate
· Flexible cancellation Policy
For more information on the rooms available please read the Veriu Broadway Hotel Accomodaton guide (.doc, 212 KB)
Currently, the University Colleges are not taking casual accomodation bookings.
Budget accomodation options are located near Central station such as the YHA.