In the face of urgent environmental and societal challenges, how do we move towards inclusive futures? What is the role of people in places? And what can be our role as (social) scientists?
In this course, we explore inclusive place-based approaches to development.
OtherWise, a WUR critical student organization, is launching a third edition of the Alternative Research Methods Training on 8th-12th February. This extracurricular course is aimed at MSc students curious about diverse approaches to research. This time, the focus will be on doing research remotely. Course description How to conduct research in a world that is […]
Members of the foodscapes cluster supervise a number of students who are looking at changing foodscapes in times of corona. We therefore introduce a blog series in which these students can share their work. This third blog is written by Paulien Dekkinga. Currently, the world faces a COVID-19 pandemic with many consequences in all parts of society. COVID-19 […]
On Thursday the 19th of November CSPS colleagues and friends met to discuss Gloria Wekker’s White Innocence. This was the second meeting in a series of reading groups organized by Dr. Sierra Deutsch with the CSPS Political Ecology research cluster. The mix of Dutch and international participants felt a lot of resonance with Wekker’s reading […]
In the November 2020 gathering of the Transformative Learning Hub, we focused on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Climate Change. Two Hub members, Robin van der Sluijs and Dave Pendle, kindly volunteered to lead this session and share their knowledge, experience and practice. Together we explored different ways of engaging with climate change and […]
Advanced Qualitative Research Design and Data Collection (GEO 56806) offers PhD candidates and advanced master’s students enrolled in the graduate programme: A fuller grasp of the analytical value of a range of qualitative methods relative to your own project’s research questions and epistemological/theoretical positioning The knowledge required to identify different methods’ particular logistical requirements and […]
The Transformative Power of Gardening: food literacy, connection and environmentally sustainable choices during COVID-19 By Jessica Breslau and Sofie de Wit Sparked by the covid19 pandemic food supply chains have been disrupted: food is more scarce, expensive, and difficult to access than before (OECD, June 2, 2020). Simultaneously, the pandemic has increased the number of […]
Members of the foodscapes cluster supervise a number of students who are looking at changing food(scapes) in times of corona. We therefore introduce a blog series in which these students can share their work. This first blog is written by Lisa Marijke van den Berg. How COVID-19 changed consumers’ motivations for local consumption Since the declaration […]
Transformative & Participatory Qualitative Research Approaches & Methods provides PhD candidates and early-career scholars conceptual and hands-on methodological engagement with transformative, participatory and action research approaches that use creative and arts-based research methods and techniques to foster the inclusion and engagement of diverse, often marginalised perspectives and to bring into focus, examine and transform narratives, […]
The focus for the 28 October 2020 Transformative Learning Hub gathering was how to engage with anti-oppression in our research, teaching and societal engagement. Why Anti-Oppression? Prompted by the murder on George Floyd and the global growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, a dialogue with colleagues at CSPS resulted in the decision to adopt […]
The 2020 CSPS Annual Day was held online on 8 October 2020. The interactive session was organised around the metaphor of trees growing together in a forest. Imagine for a moment each CSPS member as an individual ‘tree’ within the broader CSPS and WUR ‘forest’, a superorganism of sorts in which we together grow, adapt […]
The CSPS Foodscapes cluster is looking for BSc and MSc students interested in researching emerging foodscapes in times of uncertainty. Covid-19 has displayed many of the vulnerabilities and externalities of our current corporate food regime, such as unequal access to food, the dependence of our food supply on global supply chains, the exploitation of (migrant) […]
For more information: https://www.wur.nl/nl/activiteit/Understanding-the-psychological-and-social-environmental-determinants-driving-young-infant-feeding-practices-among-Rwandan-households-a-salutogenic-approach.htm The defense will be livestreamed via the following link https://weblectures.wur.nl/P2G/Player/Player.aspx?id=C217
Political ecologists recognize that environmental issues are political and therefore intricately tied to social and economic issues. We also understand that such issues have shared (political) root causes and that addressing ecological problems means addressing social and economic problems at the structural level as well. And although the PE Reading Group has included readings by […]
cover image by 帅 郭 via Pixabay For more information and to register: https://www.wur.nl/en/show/Critical-Gender-Studies-in-the-Life-Sciences-domains-.htm Introduction & objectives of the course Today, research in the life sciences done to support sustainable development is increasingly interdisciplinary and demands better understanding of roles of gender and other differences, such as race and colonial history. This course directly enables […]
Anthropometric determinism, the 19th century notion that the human body, individual personalities, cultural traits, and social groups can be reduced to numbers, is back. The critical social sciences were, essentially, forged alongside, and fighting against, this idea that informed pseudoscientific practices, namely Euro-American racist ideologies at the heart of so many anti-immigrant and refugee sentiments, […]
In the period of quarantine The Covid-10 crisis has isolated many people but it didn’t stop people from sharing stories about the situation and about what comes back after quarantine. In many countries one can witness a very contrasting set of discourses (see for an overview Matteo, 2020). Social cohesion and solidarity are praised, nationalists’ discourses […]
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 […]