New and emerging research in cultural geography

Presenting author: Elisabetta Crovara (University of Melbourne)

Coworking spaces are shared working environments where remote workers gather to work and interact. In the current times, when we are witnessing the desegregation of the traditional office and more people working remotely, coworking spaces have the potential of becoming "caring communities," namely spaces of belonging, characterised by systems of "mutual support, public space, shared resources and local democracy" (Care Collective, 2020).

To explore this potential, I propose a cultural geographical re-imagination of coworking research. Specifically, through sensory ethnographic fieldwork in coworking spaces in regional Victoria, my research aims to ascertain how people's everyday embodied practices of care and mobilities are changing in response to these new forms and spaces of work in regional areas. I argue that this research direction is crucial in two ways: first, it both connects the coworking project to broader political forces and makes the habitualised and meaningful everyday practices associated with coworking more visible; second, it recognises both their placed-based character and relationality, considering them as connected to wider social networks and communities. 

Presenting author: Tom Roberts (UNSW)

Other authors: Andrew Lapworth (UNSW ), JD Dewsbury (UNSW)

Throughout its history, geography has been a discipline concerned with the problem of how to rethink and reimagine 'the earth'. In recent years, some geographers have found creative resources in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and especially their concept of 'geophilosophy'. With the concept of geophilosophy, Deleuze and Guattari do not invoke a new subfield of philosophy; for them, philosophy is geophilosophy. This is not then a philosophy about the earth, rather the earth is seen as an abstracting force animating thought itself through elemental movements. Working against more foundational forms of earth-thinking that tend to reduce the 'geo-' to an already-constituted sense of 'world' or 'Gaia', they instead conceptualise the earth as an immanent surface of problems. If geophilosophy brings traditional philosophy down to earth, the motivation for doing so is not to ground ideas in the concrete contingencies of terrestrial reality and subjectivity. In turning to the light works of James Turrell, this paper presents how geophilosophy conversely makes thought more abstract by activating singular potentials that radically refigure what the subject can be.

Presenting author: Alysha Fewster (University of Newcastle)

A pervasive myth exists that imagines humans to be separate from nature.  This is perpetuated in artworks that present nature as a wilderness to be overcome, or an expansive, sublime unknown for humans to fear. There is, however, potential to re-imagine our relationship to nature as one interconnectedness and belonging, through meditative and reflective art practices.   

This paper explores our embodied connection to the natural environment, expressed through cinematographic and multi-sensory mediums. Within the artworks I am interested in meeting points - representing the borders of the body as they touch and merge with natural elements.  

In a video work, long auburn hair drifts and tangles in synchronisation with yellow and orange seaweeds, pulled by the ebb and flow of shallow ocean waters.  In another, a Teatree dyed rivulet passes over pale sand. Movement below the surface slowly reveals a hand which shifts and burrows, enjoying the textures of sand and water on skin.   

Through an artistic expression of geographic philosophies, my creative research seeks to position slow and simple interactions between people and natural environments as noteworthy, profound and foundational to the wellbeing of humans and the ecosystems of which we are part.  

Presenting author: Benjamin Felix Richardson (UNiversity of Auckland)

Like many other rapidly growing urban centers across the world, Auckland and Melbourne find themselves caught between the unending demand for land to accommodate new residential and commercial developments, and the need to preserve the agricultural institutions and environmental systems that make it possible to support urban populations. Land at the periphery of growing cities is far more valuable when developed for housing and commercial interests than when used to grow food or to serve other less profitable yet vital functions. Despite promises from governments to create sustainable and equitable futures, the people who make their lives in and around Auckland and Melbourne are subjected to rising costs for rent and food, ever-expanding urban sprawl, and greater vulnerability to the accelerating effects of climate change. Understanding what residents, farmers, property developers, and planners each value land for is now crucial for preserving (and improving) quality of life for our rapidly urbanizing global population.

Using my ongoing work in Auckland alongside existing research on both Melbourne and Auckland as case studies, I will refer to a selection of new (and old) perspectives on the political economy of urban development. I argue that geographers and anthropologists can offer unique insights into understanding the ever-more-total dominance of financial logic over our lives, and that these perspectives can help us carve out a better future than the one we were given.

Presenting author: Hedda Askland (The University of Newcastle)

Other authors: Meg Sherval (The University of Newcastle), Nicola Mai (The University of Newcastle)

Once upon a time, there was a rural geographer, a social anthropologist and a sociologist who wanted to travel the land and understand how this land would be nurtured for the future. They lived in a region of natural and cultural wonder, where the blue ocean meets golden beaches and where green gums climb along sandstone cliffs. The people who lived there were a mixture of peoples from many places. Some had lived there since the beginning of their time when Baiame came down from the sky to the land and created its rivers, mountains and forests. Others were descendants of people who travelled on ships from the West in search of new riches and territory on which to settle. Yet others were more recent arrivals, people who had travelled from both east and west in search for a land beholden with promise of a prosperous life and good living. The land was marked by the movement of these peoples, the animals and plants native to the land and those they had brought with them. It was, however, humans who had left the greatest marks on the land and throughout the region their seemingly ever-expanding search for movement and mobility had shaped the landscape and the communities hosted within. The region had attracted a group of people interested in exploring the land in a particular way, not just horizontally through expansive movement across space but also vertically. Rumours of treasure brought them to the region and as they dug, wide and deep, they found minerals and rocks that made them rich and powerful. But, as they dug, they also found ambivalence; a trickster emerged, black as the crow and sleek as a bluetongue lizard, dangerous and unpredictable. The trickster - a void made material in its form of emptiness - is dangerous, disruptive and unpredictable but may also, through playful interaction, allow the reestablishment of the land on a new basis. The three companions wanted to learn about this trickster and its stories. This paper will tell the story about how they aspire to get to know the trickster and how the people of the land anticipate its powers in the future.

Presenting author: Duncan McDuie-Ra (University of Newcastle)

This article explores the cultural value of, and desire for, skate spots in urban landscapes around the world, termed the 'skateboarder gaze' or 'skater gaze'. A spot is assemblage of objects, surfaces and obstacles (human and non-human) offering opportunities to perform skateboarding manoeuvres (tricks). The most coveted spots include ledges, handrails, 'hubbas' and embankments. This gaze reimagines the urban backstage, seeing space in ways otherwise unseen. When skateboarding is captured as image and/or video, this gaze circulates rapidly online, stitching otherwise ignored cross-sections of the city into a consumable blocks of space-time. In exploring this gaze and its ways of 'scripting' the city, I make three arguments.

First, as skateboarding becomes more popular, especially the Global South, it is not just the bodily act that travels but the skater gaze; animating the urban backstage across geographic scales. Second, once spots are repurposed by skateboarders, captured as image or video, and circulated digitally to millions of consumers of skate culture, the backstage is brought to the frontstage for an adjacent public, geographically scattered. Third, skate image and video archives otherwise forgettable patches of the city, creating an alternative cartography of streets, cities and regions. 

Presenting author: Lara Daley (University of Newcastle)

Other author: Sarah Wright (University of Newcastle)

Recent Indigenous scholarship and commentary on contemporary science fiction highlights the ways settler-colonial futurity is often (re)embedded in the world-building and imagined futures of many seemingly progressive narratives (Hunt, 2018; Kwaymullina, 2017; Whyte, 2018). The work of Indigenous thinkers as writers of, and commentators on, Indigenous science fiction, calls, instead, for the unmaking of settler futurities in ways that assert Indigenous belonging in all times. As Dallas Hunt (2018, p.84), a member of Swan River First Nation in so-called Canada writes: "What [a number of] Indigenous futurist texts ask of settler audiences is to sit with, or dwell in, the affective spaces of white fragility, to engage with narratives that consider the possibility of [their own] disappearance."

In this paper, we, as two white, settler/migrant science fiction nerds, try to respond to this call to sit with, and reflect upon, a decentering of presumed settler futures. To do this, we read speculative fiction through the work of two Aboriginal authors, Ambelin Kwaymullina's, the Tribe Series, and Claire G. Coleman's, Terra Nullius. As we engage with these works, we seek to engage with Aboriginal-led futurities and dwell with a past/present/future not invested in the continuance of settler institutions and possessive forms of belonging. This is not imagined as a way of somehow overcoming a shameful past by replacing it with a better future, but rather as way of potentially unlearning some settler investments in linear, colonising time, and seeking ways of respectfully relating to Aboriginal futures. 

Presenting author: Richard Carter-White (Macquarie University)

The opening of Paranoia Agent - Satoshi Kon's 13-episode anime TV series - transports us into the frenetic rhythm of morning rush-hour Tokyo. This scene gives way to an intensifying cacophony of voices on their mobile phones, speaking but not really listening. Soon, the spiritless repetitions of urban life are shattered by the emergence of a mysterious baseball-bat wielding boy - 'Lil' Slugger' - who is behind a (seemingly) random spate of violent attacks. What interests us about Paranoia Agent is less its recognisable critique of 'high-tech connectivity without relationality' (Fisch, 2018), and more how its exposition of unconscious contagion and imitative transfer exemplifies the affective nature of contemporary biopolitics.

In thinking the relation of affect and biopolitics anew, our paper draws together Esposito's 'immunopolitics' with Tarde's 'microsociology'. Following Esposito, Paranoia Agent can be understood as a depiction of the expropriating horror of communitas, and the immunising response of individuals undergoing the controlled internalisation of a threatening 'outside'. In contrast with Esposito's emphasis on intersubjectivity, Tarde's work on the unconscious affective dynamics of imitation and invention foregrounds the pre- and trans-individual processes bound up in the production of the social, around which a new type of collective individuation might be creatively imagined.

Presenting author: Kaya Barry (Griffith University)

Bed bugs are tiny critters that 'hitch a ride' on fabrics, bedding, and furniture, burrowing in and causing irritation as they feed on unsuspecting, sleeping humans. Bed bug populations are rising worldwide and are common in Australia's backpacker and farm hostels. The close quarters and 'dirty' nature of living in hostels means that backpackers encounter bed bugs as a mythic yet valid concern. Surprisingly, there has been little attention in geographical or tourism literature to the hardy bed bug, who's presence drastically reshapes the socio-material space of the hostel upon discovery. Even finding just one tiny bed bug is 'like yelling bomb in an airport' - rooms are evacuated, bedding and clothing is discarded, fumigation deployed, and the bites and stigma linger for weeks afterwards.

In this paper I attempt to unravel the intimate (and irritant) encounters that flourish in the communal spaces of the hostel. These are more-than-human places of inhabitancy that bring together highly mobile populations, seasonal variances, and the socio-material relationships that form within. Drawing on current political debates on seasonal migrant labour and interviews with backpackers living in hostels, I highlight broader implications of such 'communal' forms of living. 

Presenting author: Elena Tjandra (University of Melbourne)

In the context of increasing concern around the social and environmental impacts of the extractives industries, this paper offers a cultural geography perspective on the everyday and experiential aspects of living with mineral mining. Drawing on ethnographic research in a town adjacent to the Cuzcatlán underground silver mine in Valles Centrales, Oaxaca, Mexico, I put forward "mining presence" to consider the way mining manifests in a place where it does not physically occur. In other words, I explore the affective qualities of mining that bring the Cuzcatlán mine into neighbouring towns and into the intimate spaces of daily life.

The paper argues that the liveliness of the mine and the dynamics of place, in part, produce a sense of mining presence that is ever-present and lived with. Moreover, I show how absences such as the absence of the mine in the town, and the absence of endemic species, harvests and cultural practices work together to further compound a sense of mining presence. The aim of this paper then, is to extend understanding of life with mining, and in turn shed new light on the geographies of the extractive industries and the politics of place.

Key words: mining, extraction, affect, presence, Oaxaca, Mexico

Presenting author: George Burdon (UNSW)

Jennifer Walshe's Ireland: A Data Set (2020) is a collection of hybrid music compositions generated through a machine learning system. Walshe fed varieties of stereotypically 'Irish' music (including sean-nós singing, the Riverdance musical, and Enya) to an AI system, which then produced its own interpretations of such styles. These interpretations are subsequently performed by Tonnta, a (human) group of vocal performers. The unusual musical results sit somewhere between various possible descriptors: partly human and partly non-human; partly funny and partly serious; partly political statement and partly experiment in novel musicking technologies. Pertinently, the compositions also intersect with popular anxieties about the nature of human individuality, agency and expression within emerging networks of calculative and predictive technologies.

This paper uses Walshe's compositions as devices for approaching such anxieties by way of shedding light on the problem of composition more broadly - how social life is expressed as an ongoing endeavour of encounter, relation, collaboration or rupture between points that are no longer that of human individuals alone. In so doing, I foreground a conceptualisation of music composition as ontological process that expresses novel becomings.

Presenting author: Richard-Carter-White (Macquarie University)

Other author: Andrew Lapworth (UNSW Canberra)

The concept of community has been integral to important debates in continental philosophy, with a range of poststructural theorists engaged in dissecting, deconstructing and reconceptualising this familiar yet contested term. However, with some important exceptions, community has often remained unproblematized within mainstream geographical literature, with this concept commonly regarded as both the ‘natural’ scale of everyday social interactions and a site for new political identities to emerge. This paper draws on the biopolitical philosophy of Roberto Esposito in order to reflect on both the spatial imaginary of authenticity and fullness that commonly underpins invocations of the term, and the critical potential of rethinking community not as a property or substance that is shared among individual members, but instead as an experience of expropriation. For Esposito community amounts to a fundamental loss of the self: a relinquishment of subjectivity that is incommensurate with those notions of propriety or belonging that work to immunize the individual from the vicissitudes of community. The potentially fruitful challenge that this conceptual framework poses to geographic thought is explored in relation to the burgeoning field of camp geographies, a literature which has been profoundly influenced by divergent (and often implicit) interpretations of community.

Presenting author: Freya Croft (University of Wollongong)

Other authors: Dr Jenny Atchison (University of Wollongong), Associate Professor Michael Adams (University of Wollongong)

In the face of anthropogenic climate change and human impacts (such as pollution) the world's coral reefs are in a particularly vulnerable position. While tourism on coral reefs can contribute to their degradation, wildlife and nature-based tourism can also foster a sense of connection with the natural world, which has been shown to lead to behaviour change. Emerging research in geography has examined the role of emotions within the embodied experiences of wildlife tourism. This paper contributes to this research by examining the (often highly emotive) experiences of tourists at Ningaloo Reef (Western Australia) who undertake in-water interactions with marine megafauna. In particular it will explore the significance of time and the role of emotions through time.

While conventional narratives of conservation and tourism suggest that following an experience in nature, tourists are more compelled to engage in pro-conservation behaviours, my research challenges a linear understanding of time in relation to what people experience. By examining the experiences of tourists as they discuss their encounters, I seek to reimagine the temporal trajectory of conservation, by demonstrating how emotion traverses experiences of the information received beforehand and the recollection and remaking of memories afterward.

Presenting author: Anna Leditschke (University of South Australia)

Other author: Dr Julie Nichols (University of South Australia), Mr Darren Fong (University of South Australia)

Gathering, understanding and sharing human experiences is a pivotal part of cultural geography research. Academics and practitioners in this area work with a wide range of people, from differing socio-economic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Because of these reasons, there are differing expectations around how knowledges and experiences are analysed and shared with different stakeholders, and what ultimately becomes of this information at the end of a research project.

There are recognised complexities in the transfer, storage and presentation of knowledge, especially concerning Aboriginal and Indigenous communitiesglobally. This issue is often exacerbated by the increasing reliance on technology in the research process, as well as rights around ownership, in a digital format. This paper builds upon our priorresearch, which hasrevealed that while there has been increasing awareness around the rights and responsibilities of participants in relation to theownership of their data; more work can be done in this area. We argue that issues arounddata governance, data sovereignty and intellectual property in digital data managementis a concern for all ethical cultural geographers, especially those dealing with traditionally marginalised communities.

Presenting author: Lena Mirosevic (University of Zadar)

The Spanish flu epidemic is considered to be the worst, most dangerous pandemic of the early 20th century and affected almost the entire world. The pandemic began in the spring of 1918, with two more waves in the autumn of 1918 and the winter of 1919, when there was a particularly high death rate throughout the world.

The Spanish flu did not spare Croatia (which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) or the southern coastal region of Dalmatia. At the outbreak of the First World War, Dalmatian society was already encumbered with complex, unresolved agrarian relations, an economic crisis, and generally difficult socio-economic circumstances. The arrival and spread of the Spanish flu drove the population even further into recession. In addition to all this, the end of the First World War placed new political and military pressures on the Dalmatian populace, as a consequence of the collapse of the previous political set-up involving the dual monarchy, of which Dalmatia was a component.

There is not a great deal of information available about the Spanish flu in Croatia. No systematic research has ever been conducted, and only a few works have been published in the literature. The main sources used in this paper to analyse the occurrence of the disease and the mortality rate in Dalmatia were death registers and newspaper articles from the period observed.

Given the global significance of the Spanish flu pandemic, the aim of this paper is to establish the occurrence and spread of mortality caused by the disease in Dalmatia and its effect on the Dalmatian public. Although the epidemic took place in the shade of political and war events, there was nonetheless great public concern and the local authorities took basic epidemiological measure to suppress the disease.

Presenting author: Nina Williams (UNSW)

Other author: Dr Thomas Keating (Linköping University)

Writing about the environmental, political, and financial catastrophes that define the first part of the 21st century, philosophers Isabelle Stengers and Didier Debaise (2017) call for a new 'speculative' mode of thought capable of responding to a crisis of "lazy thinking", "false problems" and a rising "inability to think that what we care about might have a future". Today, destruction at different registers of the mental, social and environmental ecology demonstrate all too clearly that these crises of thought continue apace.

Against this backdrop, in this paper we explore speculative thinking as a call to develop a sense of openness - in the most expanded terms possible - to "what, in this situation, might be of importance" (Stengers & Debaise, 2017). Understood in these terms, and against convention, we demonstrate how diverse arenas of speculative thinking are not limited to thinking more 'abstractly' about the future. Rather, speculative thinking, we argue, presents methodological implications because speculation is a question of how to take care of the alternative as the sense of possibility within a given situation. 

Reference: 

Stengers, I. & Debaise, D (2017) "The Insistence of Possibles Towards a Speculative Pragmatism". [Online]

Presenting author: Joseph Cheer (Wakayama University)

Other author: Kazue Nakamoto (Wakayama University)

The emergence of a heightened pandemic consciousness foregrounds the gaze on therapeutic landscapes, underpinned by the desire for safe and healthy spaces and places. The genesis of therapeutic landscapes lies in health geographies, defined broadly as "the therapeutic process which takes place in various settings" (Gessler, 1992. p. 735). Specifically, it is a "metaphorical concept that continues to evolve, with innovative applications, to better understand the characteristics of place that contribute to the processes at play in the making of healing places and symbolic landscapes" (Williams, 2019, n.p).

In this treatise, we shape a 'new' cultural geography of Japanese onsen culture and its assemblages. Onsen is shaped around thermal hotsprings and beyond 'taking the waters', it is imitable and hardwired in Japanese cultural landscapes and omotenashi (hospitality). Furthermore, onsen transcends culture, and is a metaphor for the revitalization processes of people and the places in decline at the Japanese periphery. With intense urbanisation, precipitously ageing population and decline of the rural periphery, the urgency to revitalize and uphold onsen culture jostles against rapid cultural and economic change. We pose the question: how can traditional cultural icons such as onsen underpin rural revitialization? Therapeutic landscapes as a theoretical framework is applied.

Presenting author: Michelle Duffy (University of Newcastle)

Other authors: Paul Atkinson (Monash University), Jo Ailwood (University of Newcastle)

In the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the principal mitigation strategies were physical distancing and the dramatic restriction of socializing with others. Arts institutions were among the first to shut down as they are not considered essential services, despite the fact that they often support or initiate responses to social crises. The absence of live performances meant arts institutions had to reconsider their relationship with audiences and thoroughly rethink what they do. While many institutions uploaded videos of past performances, some dance companies created new performances specifically for online media that have provided an opportunity for dancers to remain active and visible during the COVID lockdowns.

We borrow the term iso-dance to collectively refer to these performances, a term that succinctly invokes both the medium (dance) and the conditions under which the performance is conducted (isolation). We examine how performances of ballet dancers from professional companies were informed by the home environment. We propose the examination of iso-ballet helps us understand relationships between video, bodily movement and the particular affordances of the home, as well as invite us to question the ways we inhabit and constitute places through creative, bodily practices.

Presenting author: Michaela Harris (Victoria University of Wellington)

Other author: Alyssa Ryan (University of Otago)

The craft beverage industries in New Zealand have transformed the hospitality sector since the end of the 'six o'clock swill' in 1967. This research seeks to understand the gendered aspect of the craft beverage culture and how this has influenced the experiences for both the sector and community. Due to changes in legislation coinciding with the cultural shifts, the way consumers interact and engage with the craft beverage and hospitality sectors were impacted. The expectations and demands were altered, influencing the New Zealand drinking culture. Traditionally, the markets for beverages have followed gendered lines with the beer industry being predominately male and wine focussing on female consumers.

The drinking culture reflected the labour market of the time and privileged the male audience. The rise of the craft beer industry shifted towards a female market and an increase of female brewers. An example of this drive towards female market has been the use of traditionally feminine iconography such as pastel colour palates and floral motifs. This research aims to understand how the gendered aspects of the drinking culture have shifted and contributes to the emerging research within the geography of beer. 

Presenting author: Alyssa Ryan (University of Otago)

Other author: Sean Connelly (University of Otago,) Etienne Nel (University of Otago), Mike Mackay (AgResearch)

The commodification of the countryside has led to the transformation of many rural regions in Aotearoa, New Zealand, with some landscapes being developed for viticulture. The wine industry plays a significant role in regional development as it challenges the prevailing 'zombie town' narrative currently applied to rural towns and their hinterlands by establishing education and employment opportunities, and revitalising service centres and townships. The wine industry can be conceptualised at different scales by visitors and locals and involves contrasting perceptions of the physical landscape, the built environment, and the socio-cultural experiences engrained in place. The social constructions imbued within these experiences can be romanticised to reimagine the wine landscape as an idyllic countryside. 

This research, which reflects on the initial findings of a current PhD, focuses on the intersection between agriculture and place identity, in which production and consumption come together in the form of a winescape. The winescapes discussed in this research showcase varying transformations, with Marlborough exhibiting traits of monocultural agriculture, and Central Otago exhibiting diversification across multiple agricultural sectors. This study aims to explore the relationship between rural identity, the commodification of the wine industry, and the influence of the rural idyll in constructing regional identities.

Presenting author: Sarah B Faulkner (University of South Australia)

Belonging is a notably subjective experience, a social process that is nuanced and complicated. Yet it also plays a practical element. Belonging can help bond people to a place; to build a stronger sense of togetherness, attachment, and acceptance. Exploring the settlement experiences of Syrian refugees on the island of Newfoundland, Canada, my PhD thesis particularly focused to their sense of place-belonging defined as feeling a sense of home.  By focusing on how notions of belonging and home are understood by settled Syrian refugees, I explored how these have impacted on their decisions to stay or leave Newfoundland following a period of initial resettlement. Within the context of rural settlement, I also examined what other place-based factors that have influenced Syrian refugees' decisions to stay or leave the island in recent years. Spending nine months in Newfoundland, a combination of friendship ethnography was used alongside elected photo elicitation and semi-structured interviews conducted with 28 adult Syrian refugees and 22 community stakeholders. 

Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic the research methods were adapted in the field to use a blend of both virtual and in-person qualitative approaches that aimed for a level of 'interactive' participation. Applying Jay Marlowe's approach to the role that narratives of the everyday versus the extraordinary play in creating barriers and bridges to belonging, I explored the integral role a sense of home has played in supporting Syrian refugees to settle and stay on the island, as well as mitigate many of the challenges faced by rural settlement. Understanding the complexities behind people's decisions to stay or leave is key to consider the intricacies behind people's movement trajectories, as well as clarify the distinction between notions of retention as it relates to belonging. 

Presenting author: Nicolas Guerra (Monash University)

Other authors: Carl Grodach (Monash University), Liz Taylor (Monash University)

A common assumption about urban social diversity is on the effects of living in multiculturalism as a practice capable of changing social structures that reproduce discrimination and segregation. However, few studies have empirically examined the context and conditions of these transformative situations that can be framed as encounter with the difference, leaving a wide scope to inquire about the role of urban planning discipline in such a framework. With that in mind, this ongoing PhD investigation aims to contribute on the understanding of the role of social diversity and neighbourhood spatial configurations over how encounter with the difference unfold on the public realm, considering that these dynamics have potential to support social inclusion, but little is known, empirically, on how they interact with space configuration and social diversity at the neighbourhood scale.

To investigate that, this study proposes a mixed methods research design structured by a multiple case study approach, considering Melbourne's metropolitan area as a research site and empirical context. Deploying spatial and demographic analysis across variated urban fabrics configurations, this research expects to represent a rich picture of the city's social diversity. Some selected neighbourhoods will be historically studied to investigate institutional settings that could be fostering diversity, and further analysed through structural observations and surveys to verify how encounters are happening on public space. This research expects to further unfold encounter dynamics and to contribute to urban planning framework on how to foster social diversity in cities. 

Presenting author: Charishma Ratnam (Monash University)

The changing character and uses of social, cultural, and physical landscapes are of longstanding interest to cultural geographers. In this paper, I identify the types of public spaces used by the Sri Lankan diaspora living in Sydney and Melbourne, and examine the meanings attributed to such spaces through these uses. To do so, I draw from interview data, photographs, and field observations in and around religious spaces, such as temples and churches. A majority of participants regularly used these spaces to maintain their religious practices, cultures, and identities. However, the data also illustrated that the Sri Lankan diaspora had more dynamic relationships these spaces. Observations and interviews further revealed that the diaspora sought to preserve their identities and cultural links to Sri Lanka through warm encounters with other diaspora members in everyday spaces, such as footpaths and "third spaces".

In this paper, I offer a valuable case study that presents seldom-heard narratives of an emerging diaspora in Australia. The findings highlight the importance of serendipitous encounters in public and everyday spaces to strengthen feelings of familiarity, community, and belonging for migrants in host cities. 

Presenting author: Emily Stevens (University of Auckland)

Other authors: Tom Baker (University of Auckland), Nick Lewis (University of Auckland)

The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, or the 'Dunedin Study' for short, is held up in international science circuits as the gold standard of longitudinal research studies. In the mid-1970s, 1037 Dunedin-born babies unwittingly agreed to have "almost all aspects of their physical and mental health examined" at regular intervals over the course of their life (DMHDRU, n.d., para. 1). Over 45 years on, the study's findings are constituting the basis of some big claims. Late last year, the study's leading researchers co-authored a book called 'The Origins of You', which reportedly "offers unprecedented insight into what makes each of us who we are" (DMHDRU, n.d., para. 3); and a recently aired TVNZ documentary titled 'Why Am I?' presents the study's findings as fundamental facts about what makes a person good, bad, happy or sad.

These texts mark an attempt to move 'the life course' beyond the cloistered research community to put it to work in wider worlds. Social scientists are yet to interrogate this attempt. In this paper, we offer a starting point for such an interrogation by tracing the practices, actors and agencies involved in the animation and dissemination of this alluring - but, to us, concerning - object and subject of study.