Food Geographies Research Group - Friday 19 January
The RGS-IBG Food Geographies Research Group (FGRG) invites session sponsorship proposals for the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2024. The conference will take place in London and online, from the evening of Tuesday 27 August to Friday 30 August 2024. Please check the dates and details for proposals below as we are following a different process this year, and provision for hybrid sessions continues to be limited.
Session sponsorship allows FGRG to coordinate sessions on the topic of food geographies, to avoid clashes and advertise sessions more effectively. We request preliminary submissions to be made by 19 January 2024. The FGRG will provide feedback on sessions submitted and assist with final submissions made directly to the RGS-IBG by 1 March 2024
The Conference will be chaired by Professor Stephen Legg, with the theme of mapping. You can find out more here.
The Royal Geographical Society particularly welcomes submissions for the conference programme which engage directly with this theme, as well as others focusing on all areas of geography.
The Food Geographies Research Group (FGRG) aims to sponsor a set of sessions reflecting the diverse range of research interests pursued by members of the FGRG. We encourage and welcome interesting session proposals that advance the sub-discipline, but priority will be given to sessions that speak directly to the conference theme e.g. mapping geographies of food (practices, processes, power relations). The Committee will review session proposals and may provide feedback to convenors, if necessary, to align with the theme.
Topics might include but are not limited to:
- Mapping regional, urban and rural and urban food systems and interconnections.
- How mapping can reveal or obscure the role and function of food supply chains, and logistics and essential forms of infrastructure.
- Mapping food cultures, consumption, and dietary transitions
- Advances in GIS for food systems and agricultural research, including mapping and modelling of the impact of climate change on food production (including new developments such as LIDAR, AI and machine learning).
- Mapping alternative food networks and systems, including different scales and cartographies of engagement beyond local and global.
- Mapping conventional food networks and systems, including geographies of food inequality and injustice, and how these can be enriched by alternative forms of mapping and cartography.
- Historical approaches to global commodity networks, colonialism and food.
- Challenges and potentials of to the limitations of mapping practices for food geographies, including their enabling and creative capacity to engage (or not) wider publics in thinking about human and non-human connections to place.
- Citizen-science or open source mapping of community food practices such as foraging and community-led mapping exercises.
- New participatory approaches to mapping in food geography research, and alternative forms of mapping, including indigenous or resistant forms of cartography.
- The role of mapping-focussed urban planning in the creation of foodscapes and food environments (e.g. food deserts, “obesogenic” environments).
- How food can challenge borders, boundaries and other spatial concepts enabled by cartography and mapping, and the new spatial concepts that can emerge.
- How mapping can address the challenges of edible urban landscapes, including questions of visibility and accessibility.
We will also sponsor session proposals less related to mapping which address important areas of food geography research, in following areas, for example:
- Food poverty and injustice
- Urgent/emerging issues relating to any area of food geography
- Original / Groundbreaking work on food production or consumption
The FGRG particularly welcomes relevant sessions from ECRs or PhD students.
We also strongly support co-sponsorship of sessions with other RGS-IBG groups. Please check the RGS-IBG website for details of other research groups
Sessions may take the form of presented papers, panels, practitioner forums, discussions or workshops. Innovative sessions and formats are encouraged. Proposals should include:
- Title of session
- Name of Co-sponsoring groups, if applicable
- Name and Contact Details for Session Convenors
- Abstract, outlining scope of session - 300 words max
- Number of session timeslots that are sought (Session timeslots last 1 hour 40 mins)
- Indication of preferred organisation of session, e.g. 4 x 20min presentation, plus 20min discussion or 5 x 15min presentation, with 5min question for each. We welcome formats that depart from this structure and creative formats, specified in advance
- Whether you envisage an online, in-person or hybrid format. Please note that the RGS-IBG anticipates very limited support for hybrid formats, so reasons/justifications for why a hybrid format is necessary would be necessary for your final submission to the RGS-IBG
We are accepting proposals for sessions until 19 January 2024, and hope to offer feedback and/or inform people of sponsorship decisions by 26 January 2023.
Please note that these do not have to be finished proposals, or proposals with full presenter lists. This early deadline will allow you to use session sponsorship to help advertise your Call for Papers throughout February, and to pursue co-sponsorship from other relevant research groups.
We encourage early proposals and discussion of potential sessions. These should be sent to:
Jack Pickering, Food Geographies Research Group Conference Officer
jack.pickering@sheffield.ac.uk
and
Muneezay Jaffery, Food Geographies Research Group Conference Officer