Can online meetings be generative and energizing! Yes, they can! On June 10th, we had the fourth meeting of our U.lab 2x journey, in which teachers and students at Wageningen University explore how to integrate head, heart and hands in Higher Education. Since The Netherlands went into ‘intelligent lockdown’ mid-March, we have been organizing our […]
Introduction Being an artist and being in quarantine, she did what artists have always done — make wonder out of limitation, privation, and boredom; illuminate the universal through the tiny aperture of the deeply personal. Maria Popova, April 2020, reviewing work by Sophie Blackall. Maria Popova poses a challenge for artists working within Corona restrictions. I had […]
Perhaps a useful for some of us: ‘Isolation measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 means that social researchers who have for doing fieldwork in a pandemic – specifically, ideas for avoiding in-person interactions by using mediated forms that will achieve similar ends. Social research has been conducted online for many years, of course. There […]
What would a healthy, generative Higher Education system look like? That’s the question we explore in the 4th session of our U.lab 2x project “Building Vertical Literacy in Higher Education” on May 6th, 2020. Using a method called ‘Social Presencing Theatre’ (SPT), we embodied various stakeholder roles to sense what the system feels like […]
As all of us watch, experience and manage the challenges and opportunities of these days, we are also forced to be lone warriors in self-quarantining and virtualising many private and academic aspects of life… Therefore, CSPS started a drawing challenge as an alternative way of giving our eyes a break and our brain a calming […]
** Special online discussion on rural-urban relations** by Bettina Bock and Jessica Duncansource cover photo: Daily Mail How are the interactions and dependencies between rural, peri-urban and urban areas changing at this moment? Let us know! Comment at #ROBUST #RuralUrban The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the foundation of our societies, painfully demonstrating the enormous difference […]
Teken hier de petitie. – Nederlandse versie manifest (pdf)– English version manifesto (pdf)– Tweet met aankondiging van deze petitie COVID-19 doet de wereld op haar grondvesten schudden. De coronapandemie heeft nu al talloze levens gekost en ontwricht terwijl hulpverleners keihard werken om zieken te verzorgen en verdere verspreiding te voorkomen. De strijd om de enorme […]
Today (10 April) I made my debut in the Dutch newspapers along with colleagues from Wageningen University and Breda University of Applied Sciences. The article was published in the online edition of the Volkskrant (see here), but a synopsis of it appeared in the printed version. The frontpage headline of the print edition was however quite […]
Scientists from Wageningen University & Research give a short lecture about the impact of the corona virus, focused on their field of expertise. Today we listen to Jeroen Warner, Associate Professor of Disaster Studies at CSPS. He talks about the social dynamics of the corona pandemic. The Netherlands are not very used to disasters and […]
Below you will find a copy of this still growing blog on Thinking about place and power – a site written and curated by Stuart Elden: https://progressivegeographies.com/resources/geographers-sociologists-philosophers-etc-on-covid-19/ “First posted 24 March 2020; last updated 2 April 2020. Thanks to those who have sent additional ones, especially Michael O’Rourke. A much more extensive, chronologically ordered, and […]
Wipe the dust, exhaleUncover hidden treasuresSense the space and shine! This haiku summarizes some of the outcomes of today’s online session of the U.lab 2x project ‘Building Vertical Literacy in Higher Education’ at Wageningen University. The aim of the session was to establish a shared understanding of the current reality of the higher education system […]
Even though the Rural-Urban edition of the Informed Cities Forum, scheduled to take place on 2-3 April 2020 in Lucca, Italy, was canceled, we believe that fruitful discussions are possible, even when we can’t meet in person. We are happy to invite you to join us for an Informed Cities webinar with Carolyn Steel, who was […]
Pathways Europe 2020 Greetings all, The Pathways team has been closely monitoring the status of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it is having around the globe. To give everyone better predictability, we have decided to postpone Pathways Europe 2020. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause you and deeply appreciate your understanding. While we will […]
By Robert Fletcher, Ivan Murray Mas, Macià Blázquez-Salom & Asunción Blanco-Romero | Cover photo Source: Ultima Hora The COVID-19 crisis shows what degrowth in the global tourism industry could look like. But it would need much more concerted planning to address the social impacts of this transition. From Overtourism to Undertourism Just a few short months […]
When crises like coronavirus come around, people like me get excited. Not because we’re insensitive to the real suffering of people, but rather because so much space opens up for us to reimagine life as we know it in revolutionary ways that support collective survival beyond destructive realities like global capitalism and neocolonialism. And when […]
There is growing discussion in many places concerning how to reform our universities in the face of common pressures we increasingly face to restructure along neoliberal lines. These blogs provides a clearinghouse for commentary both on this situation and on efforts to respond to it. In this way, it contributes to the central aim of CSPS to work […]
Subscribe: here This course interrogates the paradoxical difficulty in current times of thinking on, and engaging in, processes of radical transformation when we most need it. As Fredric Jameson puts it, it is easier to imagine the end of the world resulting from an ecological crisis than a change in the capitalist mode of production. […]
Exhibition to Examine Radical Changes Transforming the Surface of the World beyond Cities ‘From February 20 through summer 2020 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present Countryside, The Future, an exhibition addressing urgent environmental, political, and socioeconomic issues through the lens of architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas and AMO, the think tank of the Office for […]
This six-day (plus preparation) intensive PhD workshop will be held from 29 June – 7 July 2020 in Wageningen, the Netherlands. This course is planned to complement the 3rd biannual conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN) in Brighton, UK from 24-26 June 2020. The workshop gives motivated PhD students the chance to deepen their knowledge on […]
‘It feels like spring!’ On a rainy day in Wageningen, that’s the sensation that remained after an intensive morning of working together with over 20 teachers, educators and students from Wageningen University and outside. During this introduction session of the U.lab 2x project ‘Building Vertical Literacy in Higher Education’ we worked with tools offered by […]
For three days (July 8 – 10, 2019) artists, academics, and diverse economies thinkers gathered together in Wageningen to discuss their work and understandings of art and diverse economies. The workshop was organized by Oona Morrow, Anke de Vrieze, and Chizu Sato, and drew upon the past exchanges around art and diverse economies within the Community […]
During the last three days of January 2020, the Foodscapes cluster of CSPS organised a writing retreat in Utrecht. We had rented two rooms in the Kargadoor, a socio-cultural centre which uses the income from the rooms for its cultural activities. Our rooms offered place for twelve writers at a time. A total of fifteen […]
February 21 | 13.30 -16.00 | Lumen 1 + 2 By Edward Huijbens (GEO), Bas Amelung (ESA), Machiel Lamers (ENP) and Arjaan Pellis (GEO) This event will facilitate healthy and critical discussion amongst scholars and students alike on how to engage with the current global crisis of climate change to which international travel is a […]
This course offers advanced instruction in the skills needed to successfully write and present an academic research paper, as well as in professionalization for an academic career more generally. Lessons will address the various stages of paper writing (outlines, abstracts, literature reviews, overall structure, writing style and strategies, submission for publication), conversion of papers into […]
What counts as knowledge is usually understood as valid and objective only if based on reasons and not on emotions. In this course, we fundamentally challenge that assumption and take emotions seriously. We will examine concepts and frameworks related to the study of human emotions. We will examine how the emotional solidarity is the ground […]
February 3, 2020 | 14.00 -18.00 | NcountR at Impulse, Wageningen Speakers: Prof. Dr. Christina Grasseni & Drs. Vincent WalstraDate: Monday February 3thTime: 14:00 – 18:00Location: NcountR at Impulse (Buildingnumber 115, Stippeneng 2) Abstract SeminarProf. Dr. Cristina Grasseni and Drs. Vincent Walstra engage in a European project addressing food procurement in relation to citizenship (see https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/foodcitizens). This project […]
We invite all PhDs from the four chair groups to present, or be present, at the CSPS Work in Progress Day. The casual full-day program includes presentations, peer feedback, lunch, workshops, wellbeing counselling, and dinner. Our intentions are to strengthen the CSPS PhD community and to enter in dialogue about common challenges that PhDs encounter. Presentations can be about any stage of the process and can be in any expressive form. Skype is available for those who are abroad on fieldwork.
To register: https://forms.gle/x8BHG3ZLnE3RcyP59
Deadline: 30 December 2019
As part of the promotion for their forthcoming book ‘The Conservation Revolution’, Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher have been developing a white board video that aims to convey the key messages of the book, and our ideas for convivial conservation, to a broader audience, so as to help translate more critical work into something more […]
Wednesday December 18th, 2019 | 15.00 – 17.00 | Leeuwenborch building Room C62 | Wageningen University In her lecture, An Ansoms will reflect on how different discourses on land reform -centred on rights, conflictuality or efficiency- have played a role in the reorganisation of Rwanda’s rural economy. Since 2007-2008, Rwandan authorities embarked upon an ambitious […]
Thursday November 21, 2019 | 13.30 -16.00 | Leeuwenborch building, room V72 This research seminar is organised by the Political Ecology@WUR cluster of CSPS. Presentations: Neoliberal authoritarianism as environmental governance: Conservation, biodiversity decline, and denial in Bolsonaro’s Brazil Laila Sandroni (University of São Paulo) | Robert Coates (Wageningen University) The picturing of environmental crisis as […]