Practicing Diversity in Higher Education in Geography: Exploring Spaces of Diversity and Their Barriers in a Geography Department in Switzerland

Recent feminist geographic scholarship has urged geographers to distance themselves from androcentric and Eurocentric approaches, and to open up the discipline to diverse perspectives. Whereas numerous studies have focused on diversifying and decolonizing geography through recruitment practices, mentoring, and knowledge production, only a few have analyzed how diversity translates into teaching practices, particularly in contexts where diversity is relatively well-established among staff. Based on a questionnaire survey among the teaching staff, a content analysis of course syllabi, and a quantitative analysis of the department’s employee data, this article explores to what extent diversity within the department leads to diversity in teaching practices. By developing a framework of spaces of diversity, we analyze three spaces that potentially enable practicing diversity in teaching: The department’s academic space promotes free choice of research and teaching topics and flexible working conditions; the department space enables individuals to engage in shaping geographical teaching; and the knowledge space promotes diversity as an ideal. We found, however, that practicing diversity in geography is challenged through traditional and neoliberal university structures and formal and perceived hierarchies. Moreover, there is a need for concrete diversity practices on individual and institutional levels to actively bring diverse perspectives into the classroom

Mapping microbial selves: field notes from a dirty parenting project

Microbes exist everywhere on, in and around us. They are both ubiquitous and largely invisible, at least until they make their presence, or absence, felt. Recent years have seen a heightened sensitivity to microbial threats in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread concerns about antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to antibiotics. At the same time, there is also a growing interest in the microbiome as a source of ‘wild immunology’. From this viewpoint, the human body is comprised of, embedded within, and dependent on its exposure to an ecosystem of microbes, and the absence of such exposure is linked to the development of auto-immune conditions such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Inspired by an emerging body of work in the humanities and social sciences which looks to engage with so-called lay knowledge and understandings of microbial forms (including bacteria, viruses, and fungi) and processes (such as contagion or digestion), this Field Note explores the piloting of ‘body mapping’ as a research method to engage with families to explore their collective understanding of their children’s microbiome

Creating safety amidst chronic contamination: a mixed-method analysis of residents’ experiences in a Southern Italian steel town

This study analyses how residents create safety in Taranto, Italy, a city located next to one of the largest steel plants in Europe. Combining long-term ethnographic research with an online-based survey, our study shows that most respondents recognise and criticise the presence of environmental risks in their daily lives but encounter such risks in complex ways. Contrary to previous scholarship suggesting that pollution can result in alienating residents from their lived environment, this research shows that acute awareness of environmental risks does not necessarily undermine attachment to place but rather can co-exist with or even strengthen it. Our findings propose first that residents experience and understand environmental risk mostly through air pollution, but often situate risks outside of their own neighbourhood and inscribe different meanings to such risk. Second, residents mitigate environmental risk through practices aimed at creating safety, such as moving away from the industrial area or using everyday practices and reflecting on their responsibility for actions. Third, we argue that residents create safety through an attachment and entitlement to place and emotional detachment from pollution and institutional failures. Finally, in line with residents’ concerns about safety and how to secure it, this study embraces a shift in its analytical focus from risk to the quest for safety. By doing so, it provides novel insights into environmental risk perception in industrially polluted areas and reveals the often-contradictory sentiments and practices that such areas invoke in residents

Complicating notions of violence: An embodied view on violence against women in Honduras

Feminist geographic analysis has demonstrated that violence inflicted on women is embodied, experienced and personal and at the same time, linked to global socio-political and economic processes and patriarchal norms. Consequently, violence is a complex system instead of a norm located in certain places. In heavily militarised societies, patriarchal power regimes are even more prevalent because states’ security strategies promote a masculinist understanding of protection as to who should be protected and by whom – and from what. This study draws on feminist geopolitical analysis and explores how feminist activists in Honduras experience and resist violence in their everyday lives. The research is grounded in interviews, focus-group discussions and participant observation with Honduran activists. The findings demonstrate that violence and its effects are first embedded in women’s everyday lives through feelings of fear and unsafety on the streets, at the workplace and at home. Second, violence operates through structures and institutions such as the military and police, impunity for violence against women and the juridical restriction of reproductive rights. Third, the internationally financed war on drugs and ‘development’ projects contribute to violence, thus, there is a link between intimate experiences of violence and global economic and military powers that sustain violence. Activists therefore argue that, for their needs, the state’s and international organisations’ security approaches are inadequate. The paper weaves together feminist visions of collective self-care and discusses activists’ strategies against violence. This study contributes to a growing feminist geographic scholarship linking women’s bodily experiences with violence and responds to calls for complicating notions of violence

Imaginarios Espaciales e Identidad Colectiva en las Luchas por los Derechos Humanos de las Mujeres en Honduras

En los años recientes, el análisis geográfico sobre los movimientos sociales ha enfatizado la influencia que tienen los conceptos, las experiencias vividas y las percepciones de espacio de las y los protagonistas en el surgimiento de la acción colectiva. Tanto los abordajes culturales a los movimientos sociales en América Latina como la investigación feminista han revelado que la acción colectiva está moldeada por sus percepciones en cuanto a los desafíos institucionales y sociales, que están enraizados en la cultura autoritaria y patriarcal prevalente en sus sociedades. Este artículo combina los abordajes geográficos y culturales a los movimientos sociales así como las teorías feministas transnacionales para analizar la movilización por los derechos humanos de las mujeres en Honduras luego del golpe de Estado en 2009. Investiga cómo un grupo de activistas urbanas y rurales que incluía a feministas, mujeres rurales, líderes estudiantiles y comunitarias adoptaron discursos y prácticas de los derechos humanos para responder al golpe. El artículo se basa en entrevistas y discusiones en grupos focales para sugerir, en primer lugar, que las protestas en respuesta al golpe moldearon los imaginarios espaciales de las entrevistadas y considera particularmente la manera en que los imaginarios espaciales de las feministas urbanas se fusionaron con aquellos de las mujeres rurales bajo el marco colectivo de los derechos humanos. En segundo lugar, el estudio demuestra que la identidad colectiva como mujeres defensoras de los derechos humanos fue crucial para el surgimiento de la acción colectiva y también dio paso a la consolidación de una red nacional. Este estudio de caso contribuye a la investigación sobre la acción colectiva de las mujeres para negociar los derechos de las mujeres, los derechos humanos y la justicia social en los procesos políticos cambiantes

Body mapping as a feminist visual method. Exploring the field through the body

Scholars of health ethnography, psychology, education, and geography use body maps—life-sized drawings of bodies—to understand people’s personal experiences with (ill) health, trauma, violence, migration, and other social phenomena. Most of the literature focuses on body mapping as a participatory data collection method with multiple functions in research, community activism and health education. However, there is a lack of evidence on the possibilities of using body mapping to explore the field with research participants. In this article, I present how I used body mapping in an exploratory workshop with residents from Taranto, South Italy, an area with high industrial pollution. I argue that creating and discussing body maps helped the participants to reflect on their everyday challenges and relationships in contexts of polluted environments