Dear All

A reminder that the deadline to submit an expression of interest for this session is Monday 4 February 2013. 

Best Wishes

Drew

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RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, 28-30 August 2013

Call for Papers

'Arctic Geographical Traditions? Practices, Politics and Institutions'

Organizers: Andrew Foxall and Richard Powell (both University of Oxford)

(Session is co-sponsored by History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group and Historical Geography Research Group)

This session brings together human geographers and other scholars interested in the Arctic in order to explore different constructions of the region.  In the nineteenth-century, competing national ethnographic traditions emerged based on histories of exploration in the northern latitudes.  As disciplines became established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arctic spaces were approached in competing ways across different polities and scholarly communities. This has had consequences for the ways in which the Circumpolar Region continues to be understood today.

This session aims to uncover some of these histories, so as to illuminate contemporary political debates.  As an envisaged 'frontier', albeit one that has moved periodically back and forth from being at the 'periphery' to the 'core' of global attention and geographic inquiry, the Arctic poses a number of interesting historical, epistemological and ontological questions for geographers.

We would welcome paper submissions from scholars working on any of the following or related topics:

- Epistemic construction of the Arctic as a 'region' or 'frontier'

- Conceptual and theoretical designations of 'the Arctic'

- The construction of 'knowledges' about the Circumpolar Region, including where relevant the role of geographical institutions

- Historical discussions of national traditions of Arctic geography and/or geopolitics and/or anthropology and/or ethnography

- Different understandings behind the contemporary geopolitics of the Arctic

- Other papers that intersect with the session themes

Please send expressions of interest and / or title and abstract (no more than 250 words) to Andrew Foxall ([log in to unmask]) by Monday 4th February 2013.

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Dr Andrew Foxall

Lecturer in Human Geography

School of Geography

Queen's University Belfast

Belfast BT7 1NN

Northern Ireland, UK

Office Tel.: +44 02890 97 3360

ESRC PostDoctoral Fellow

School of Geography and the Environment

Oxford University Centre for the Environment

South Parks Road

Oxford

OX1 3QY

Office Tel.: +44 01865 275835