Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world

This paper surveys the return to materialist concerns in the work of a new generation of cultural geographers informed by their engagements with science and technology studies and performance studies, on the one hand, and by their worldly involvements in the politically charged climate of relations between science and society on the other. It argues that these efforts centre on new ways of approaching the vital nexus between the bio (life) and the geo (earth), or the ‘livingness’ of the world, in a context in which the modality of life is politically and technologically molten. It identifies some of the major innovations in theory, style and application associated with this work and some of the key challenges that it poses for the practice of cultural geography

Stakeholder engagement does not guarantee impact: A co-productionist perspective on model-based drought research

Stakeholder engagement has become a watchword for environmental scientists to assert the societal relevance of their projects to funding agencies. In water research based on computer simulation modelling, stakeholder engagement has attracted interest as a means to overcome low uptake of new tools for water management. An increasingly accepted view is that more and better stakeholder involvement in research projects will lead to increased adoption of the modelling tools created by scientists in water management. However, we cast doubt on this view by drawing attention to how the freedom of stakeholder organizations to adopt new scientific modelling tools in their regular practices is circumscribed by the societal context. We use a modified concept of co-production in an analysis of a case of scientific research on drought in the UK to show how relationships between actors in the drought governance space influence the uptake of scientific modelling tools. The analysis suggests an explanation of why stakeholder engagement with one scientific project led to one output (data) getting adopted by stakeholders while another output (modelling tools) attracted no discernible interest. Our main objective is to improve the understanding of the limitations to stakeholder engagement as a means of increasing societal uptake of scientific research outputs

What mentors do and why relationships matter: Perceptions of effective mentoring practices

In our research project, Mentoring in Initial Teacher Education, we have explored what mentors actually do to help student teachers learn to teach. In this paper, we share key literature on mentoring practices that helped us design mentor and student teacher questionnaires to identify which practices were perceived to be most effective. These include mentoring practices ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of teaching. Inside practices allow student teachers to learn from mentors whilst they are teaching, for example through live coaching and co-teaching. Practices outside of teaching include co-planning and giving feedback. Our analysis of the questionnaire data, together with mentor interviews, revealed that both mentors and student teachers believed that a wide range of practices were effective (to varying degrees). We focus in on three practices: observing experts, co-planning and co-teaching, and giving feedback, and share findings about how mentors optimise the effectiveness of each practice. We identify practice-specific and overarching features, concluding that relationships between mentors and mentees underpin effective decision-making, and enable mentors to adapt their approach to meet the needs of mentees. Our research led us to develop an online mentor toolkit to help mentors develop and refine their repertoire of practices

Heritage designation and scale: a World Heritage case study of the Ningaloo Coast

© 2015 Tod Jones, Roy Jones and Michael Hughes As heritage research has engaged with a greater plurality of heritage practices, scale has emerged as an important concept in Heritage Studies, albeit relatively narrowly defined as hierarchical levels (household, local, national, etcetera). This paper argues for a definition of scale in heritage research that incorporates size (geographical scale), level (vertical scale) and relation (an understanding that scale is constituted through dynamic relationships in specific contexts). The paper utilises this definition of scale to analyse heritage designation first through consideration of changing World Heritage processes, and then through a case study of the world heritage designation of the Ningaloo Coast region in Western Australia. Three key findings are: both scale and heritage gain appeal because they are abstractions, and gain definition through the spatial politics of interrelationships within specific situations; the spatial politics of heritage designation comes into focus through attention to those configurations of size, level and relation that are invoked and enabled in heritage processes; and researchers choice to analyse or ignore particular scales and scalar politics are political decisions. Utilising scale as size, level and relation enables analyses that move beyond heritage to the spatial politics through which all heritage is constituted

Living cities: towards a politics of conviviality

[This article was published without an abstract]