A ‘save the date’ notice about a pre-conference workshop at the 2020 IAG conf. of relevance to all geographers.

Between Rapid Impact and Slow Scholarship

Institute of Australian Geographers Conference, 2020, Armidale

A one-day pre-conference workshop for all geographers,

facilitated by the Nature, Risk and Resilience study group

Monday 6/7/20, 9am-4pm

Like all academics, geographers now work in a context of increasingly urgent and high-profile climate change and socioenvironmental disasters, growing recognition of the slow violence current systems inflict on particular groups and places, rising frustration with the poor intellectual quality of much public debate, and calls for research to be demonstrably ‘impactful’. 

A major upshot is the need to contribute rapidly, substantially and practically to shared, pressing challenges at the same time as publicly articulating and defending the importance of long-term, careful scholarly work. For geographers, this challenge is complicated by internal questions about our discipline’s often precarious institutional status.

This workshop will bring together a diversity of geographers and other scholars to discuss the conundrum of how to do work that is, on the one hand, relevant, responsive and accessible, and on the other hand, careful, critical and scholarly.

It will be spearheaded by presentations from a number of scholars working on especially relevant topics, followed by interactive sessions with participants centred on key questions. The aim will be to generate discussion on the twin needs of responsive relevance and scholarly caution in academic work, and what this means for us as academics, individually and collectively.

More information will be available in the new year. This notice is a ‘save the date’ to help you plan your conference.

Any questions or comments, please contact the Nature, Risk and Resilience study group convenors   Lauren Rickards lauren.rickards@rmit.edu.au and Phil McManus phil.mcmanus@sydney.edu.au

Dr Lauren Rickards

Associate Professor, Sustainability & Urban Planning, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies

Co-leader, Climate Change Transformations Research Prog., Centre for Urban Research 

Deputy HDR Program Manager, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies

Editor, Dialogues in Human Geography

Convenor, Nature, Risk and Resilience Study Group, Institute of Australian Geographers

Lead Author, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group II

RMIT City Campus

Building 8, Level 11, Room 35

ph. 0427 679 043