UPD Department of Geography News and Events

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-05: Kevin Fox on geographic inquiries initiated by the Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute

2026-04-20T13:26:00.004+08:00

When Derek Gregory published Geographical Imaginations in 1994, the book puts emphasis on relational understanding of individual worlds as intertwined with global-universalisms. Gregory was not the first one to discuss permutations of imagination in relation to geography. Hugh Prince, David Harvey, Yi-Fu Tuan, Katherine McKittrick and Jen Jack Gieseking added different interpretations, case studies, and situated ecologies to expand the scope and reach of geographical imaginations.

It is perhaps in this spiritual vein that Kevin Fox's version of geographical imagination as formalized by founding The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute (The GIEI), stems from pluralizing the concept (like Gregory) and providing multi-scalar and multi-cultural examples of meaning-making that situate individuals and collectives in space and place.

For the fifth Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026, the Department of Geography (DGeog) of the University of the Philippines-Diliman together with the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) proudly present a talk: Inner Geographies: Imagination, Experience, and Global Citizenship by Kevin Fox on Friday, 24 April 2026. To be delivered via Zoom, the talk starts at 5:30PM-Philippine Standard Time (11:30AM CET).

The talk introduces the work of The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute (The GIEI), a non-profit initiative working across three interconnected geographical dimensions: the global, the local, and the inner. The GIEI translates key ideas from human geography into accessible and participatory forms, expanding popular understandings of geography to include the internal dimensions of perception, imagination, and meaning-making that shape how individuals locate themselves within an interconnected planet.

The name draws inspiration from the Detroit Geographical Expedition & Institute (1968–1971), an experiment in local, community-based geography that sought to democratize knowledge production and center marginalized perspectives. Building on this legacy, The GIEI extends geographic inquiry inward, treating the inner world as a legitimate site of exploration. From this foundation, it develops participatory approaches to global citizenship education through interconnected practices including research, storytelling, simulation, advocacy, and lexicon-building.

Central to this work is The World as a Village of 100 People, a civic-assembly simulation that translates global inequalities into lived, dialogic experience. The process unfolds across three phases—orientation, imagination, and transformation—guiding participants from understanding global systems, to inhabiting diverse perspectives, to collectively envisioning alternative futures.

Moving from The GIEI’s earlier work in visual and audio storytelling toward a broader institutional vision (The GIEI 2.0), the talk reflects on the shift from project-based initiatives to the design of scalable frameworks for global citizenship learning.

Kevin S. Fox is a human geographer and the founder and director of The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute. With over 20 years of experience in global citizenship education, his work explores how individuals and communities understand their place within an interconnected world. He has developed programs that integrate storytelling, simulation, and field-based learning to make global systems more accessible and participatory. A National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow and Inner Development Goals Ambassador, he works at the intersection of human geography, critical pedagogy, and imagination to advance new models of global learning. Originally from Connecticut (USA), he currently lives on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly resource talk / lecture given by academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and partners that engaged in multiple publics, and based locally and abroad. The talk ranges from the sharing of research findings to pedagogical practices and field-based experiences. This month’s Heo/Geo Lecture Series is facilitated by two research clusters at the UP Department of Geography: Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE) and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) of the United Nations.

To participate in the event, click this link to register. You can also click this link: https://tinyurl.com/4bmbjrz2

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Works cited:

Fox, Kevin S. The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute

https://www.geographicalimaginations.org/about/

Gieseking, Jen Jack. 2017. Geographical Imagination. In International Encyclopedia of Geography (eds. D. Richardson, N.Castree, M. Goodchild, A. Jaffrey, W. Liu, A. Kobayashi, and R. Marston). New York: Wiley-Blackwell and the Association of American Geographers.

Gregory, Derek. 1994. Geographical imaginations, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.

McKittrick, Katherine. 2006. Demonic Grounds Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Prince, Hugh C. 1962. The Geographical Imagination. Landscape 11: 22–25.

Tua, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota Press.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-04: Kukasina Kubaha on the archive and queerness in a Thai borderland

2026-03-22T14:04:00.005+08:00

How do we queer the archive?

In the late 1980s, Thailand’s first lesbian magazine was published. Although most of the readership were concentrated in Bangkok and other metropols, there were entries from ‘women loving women’ from Patani —the borderland of Thailand and Malaysia where the Muslim minority are a majority. This is an area where Queer stories have been silently erased from history. Much has been said about male homosexuality in Islamic history and culture, and while there is a rise in feminist scholarship in Patani, it only seems to focus on the experiences of cis-female and heterosexual women. Furthermore, there is a tendency to compare the feminist movements that are happening in Patani to the Middle Eastern Arab world, but few have compared the situation to neighbouring Islamic societies such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei Darussalam.

For the fourth talk in the Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026, it is with pride that the U.P. Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) announce a jointly-sponsored talk: Mapping Sapphic Patani, Tracing the Southeast Asian “Queer Regional Imagination" to be given by Kukasina Kubaha from the University of Hamburg via Zoom. The talk is on Friday, 27 March 2026 at 5:30PM [UTC +8 Philippine Standard Time (PHT) / 11:30AM UTC +1 Central European Time (CET)]. The talk is also in celebration of the National Women's Month in the Philippines.

In this project presentation, Kukasina Kubaha intends to trace the queer movements in Islamic Southeast Asia, especially in works of art, to see the negotiations between the self and religion, the conversations, and the influences they had on each other. Thus, mapping and archiving the ‘queer regional imagination’ (Gopinath, 2018.) The project will touch upon two main notions: the archive and Queerness. By delving into entanglements of Southeast Asian queer art networks along with its connections to outside the region, the talk intends to ‘queer’ the archive both in terms of the thinking about the archive as not static, and to tell more stories or Queers who are often left out of main historiography, while also challenging the notion of archival violence and how the archive can be imagined otherwise.

Kukasina Kubaha is a translator, writer, curator and dreamer of better worlds. She is currently completing a Master’s degree at the Universität Hamburg, where she is pondering the question of the archive and how to build a counter-archive of queer women in Thailand's Deep South through literature, film, and contemporary art. Her recent historical fantasy, ‘Nidra Nirat: A Dream Depository’ is published with New Naratif (https://newnaratif.com/nidra-nirat-a-dream-depository/) and a collage of prints she made based on her archival research is exhibited in the upcoming edition of Southeast Asia Queer Cultural Festival which can be found here: https:// seaqcf.net/. Her curatorial projects also aim at using art as a form of activism and advocacy.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly lecture given by academic scholars, field-based geography practitioners, members of the local community, and spatial justice advocates to share their knowledge- and practice-based research undertakings. Jointly presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), the Heo/Geo Lecture Series which previously underwent several iterative rebranding positions geography as a discipline that not only straddles the realms of natural/physical and social sciences, humanities, political ecologies, regional and area studies, GI technologies and geospatial storytelling, it is also a vibrant and convivial space that welcomes multiplicities and plural voices. The name Heo/Geo is itself an accommodation to the various understandings, meanings and pronunciations of geography in its indigenous and vernacular forms and the Anglicized name that has since been adapted in the local lexicon.

This Heo/Geo Lecture is presented by the Human Geography (HUG) and the Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanities (MELANGE) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations.

To participate in the lecture, click this link to register via Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/2phrrfdp

References:

Gopinath, Gayatri. Unruly visions: The aesthetic practices of queer diaspora. Duke University Press, 2018.

Geographers Conduct Workshop on Peer Review at PSSC

2026-02-25T16:13:00.003+08:00

The Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC) invited three resource speakers for a workshop called Peer Review in the Social Sciences for the whole day on Monday, 16 February 2026.

The three geographers -- Drs Vanessa Joy Anacta, Yany Lopez and Joseph Palis -- are members of the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and full time faculty of the University of the Philippines-Diliman Department of Geography.

Attended by 24 participants coming variously from the cities of Bacolod and Quezon City, the workshop divided the topics into four major areas pertaining to effective, mindful and reflective peer review: fundamentals, processes, writing and ethics. Two breakout sessions were facilitated to allow the participants to reflect as a group and individually, on the prepared manuscripts for review.

The resource speakers represent a broad swath of experience in peer review for journal and book publications. They provided examples of standard practice from the regions where they spent considerable time when completing their doctorate degrees: Europe, the United States and Australia. While standards vary, the resource speakers emphasize the different review practices consistent with the goals of specific publishers (single/double/triple blind reviews as well as transparent, collaborative and post-publication practices). Also proceeding ethically in the peer review undertaking, and developing mentorship mentality especially for early career researchers are the essentials in reflective and constructive peer review.

Feedbacks from the audience range from the challenge in searching qualified peer reviewers, to realizing that peer review can be an opportunity to frame 'flaws' as remedial.

To know more about the peer review for geography, contact geography.upd@up.edu.ph or visit the Department's website or PGS.

Geography Lecture: Michael Pretes on conducting and data-gathering for research in geography

2026-02-25T14:31:00.003+08:00

Do you want to know more about how to conduct geographic research? While standard practice is far from homogenous and/or universal, here's a chance to know more about gathering and collecting data in geography.

Professor Michael Pretes from the Department of Geosciences of the University of North Alabama will share insights on practiced-based research in geography. Dr Pretes teaches courses about world geography, economic geography, geography of music, geography of islands, and geography of national parks. He has travelled to all seven continents (including Antarctica).

The onsite talk is going to be on Thursday, 26 February 2026 at 2:30PM in Pavilion 2248. Geography juniors and seniors and graduate students are invited to join the talk.

This Geography talk is sponsored the UP Department of Geography through the Graduate Program and the Undergraduate Program and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) of the United Nations.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-03: Sayd Randle on her book 'Replumbing the City'

2026-02-24T12:37:00.010+08:00

In a 2022 article on water and storage focused on Los Angeles, political ecologist Sayd Randle opined: "[T]he infrastructural ecology ... demands new spatial and infrastructural practices for the thousands of residents sited above the aquifer, an arrangement that raises questions of environmental justice rarely associated with urban space" (Randle, 2022, 2295). For what are the ways the seeming urbanization of nature reflect local and global situations of resource storage, particularly subterranean water, and how does it shape spatial and social relations.

For the third Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026 jointly sponsored by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), Sayd Randle will discuss water storage in a talk titled Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles, which is also the title of her book which came out in 2025. The talk happens on Friday, 27 February 2026 at 5:30PM (UTC +8) via Zoom. Dr Randle's talk marks the 100th lecture since the Department of Geography initiated the Heo/Geo Lecture Series which is the rebranded name after earlier iterations.

Moving between shower drains, aqueducts, rain gardens, and even kitchen sinks, Replumbing the City traces the enormous urban waterscape of Los Angeles in a state of flux. For more than a century, the city of Los Angeles has relied on faraway water for the vast majority of its municipal supply, but climate change is making these distant sources much less dependable. To adapt, Angelenos - including city engineers, advocates at NGOs, and residents - are developing new water supplies within the space of the city. Sayd Randle’s ethnography examines the labor of replumbing LA’s sprawling water system, detailing how a desire to sustain unlimited and uninterrupted water provision for paying customers is reshaping the urban environment and its management. Tracking how such projects redistribute the work of water management, the book explores thorny questions of how the labor of climate adaptation should be mobilized and valued.

Sayd Randle is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Singapore Management University. Trained as an environmental anthropologist, she studies processes of urban ecological transformation with a focus on infrastructure, water, and climate change. Her peer-reviewed research has been published in a wide range of outlets, including American Anthropologist, Antipode, City & Society, Environment and Planning E, Journal of Political Ecology, and WIREs Water.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly lecture given by academic scholars, field-based geography practitioners, members of the local community, and spatial justice advocates to share their knowledge- and practice-based research undertakings. Jointly presented by the UP Department of Geography and PGS, the Heo/Geo Lecture Series which previously underwent several iterative rebranding positions geography as a discipline that not only straddles the realms of natural/physical and social sciences, humanities, political ecologies, regional and area studies, GI technologies and geospatial storytelling, it is also a vibrant and convivial space that welcomes multiplicities and plural voices. The name Heo/Geo is itself an accommodation to the various understandings, meanings and pronunciations of geography in its indigenous and vernacular forms and the Anglicized name that has since been adapted in the local lexicon.

This Heo/Geo Lecture is presented by the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research group of the Department and is in line with the SDG #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations.

To participate in the lecture, please click this link to register: https://tinyurl.com/yvtantve

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References:

Randle, S. (2022). Holding water for the city: Emergent geographies of storage and the urbanization of nature. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5(4), 2283-2306. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211047387

Randle, S. (2025). Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles. University of California Press.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-02: Mike Pretes on sovereignty resources and the "economic space" of small states

2026-02-18T19:07:00.001+08:00

For the first onsite Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026 (and the second for the year), the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) are co-sponsoring the talk Sovereignty Resources and Economic Development in Small Island Countries by Dr Michael Pretes on Monday, 23 February 2026 at 10:30AM in Pavilion 2246-2248 (Conference Room).

Dr Pretes' presentation explores how small, isolated island states have made use of “sovereignty resources” such as postage stamps, passport sales, fisheries rights, satellite slots, offshore banks, tax haven status, and internet top-level domains to achieve relatively high levels of economic development. The presentation identifies various kinds of sovereignty resources and examines how the revenues derived from them have been invested in global financial markets using sovereign wealth funds, thereby enlarging the “economic space” of these small states. Case studies from the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans illustrate both how marginal island states can engage with globalization to their own advantage and how sovereignty itself can create new resources.

Michael Pretes, PhD, a native of San Francisco, California, is Professor of Geography at the University of North Alabama in the United States, and Research Fellow in Geography and Environmental Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He holds degrees from the University of California-Berkeley, Northwestern University, and the Australian National University. He is a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. His research interests include economic development in islands and remote regions, tourism, national parks, the history of geography, and geopolitics, with a regional focus on North America, Polar Regions, southern Africa, and Australia and Pacific Islands.

This Heo/Geo Lecture is presented by the Human Geography (HUG) and the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-01: Enrique Gallardo on sustainable energy pathways in the Philippines

2026-01-24T19:24:00.002+08:00

A global energy transition is well underway.

Fueled by dystopian scenarios of the climate crisis, governments, big business, and civil society organizations around the world have been on overdrive to rapidly scale sustainable energy. On all fronts, sustainable energy is being mainstreamed — from efficient cook stoves to green buildings, from LEDs to ocean energy, from rooftop solar to low-enthalpy geothermal. The Philippines itself is on an aggressive trajectory in increasing its renewable energy capacity, with a target to source at least 50% of all its energy needs from renewables by 2040, and 70% by 2050. This includes major portfolios on biomass, geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind, with increasing explorations in ocean energy.

On Friday, the 30th of January 2026 at 5:30PM via Zoom, Enrique Gallardo will deliver a talk with a title Renewable Energy and Geographic Contestations in the Philippines for the first Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026. Presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), this Heo/Geo Lecture is the first among many diamond celebrations of PGS which turned 75 last December.

Enrique Gallardo Jr has over 20 years of renewable energy work experience, ranging from missionary electrification initiatives to the launch of the first green energy auction program in the Philippines. He has worked extensively with the Department of Energy, various distribution utilities / electric cooperatives, international development organizations, and the private sector. He obtained a Master of Science degree in Renewable Energy Systems and is currently completing his PhD in Philippine Studies, with a research focus on the global energy transition and its impact on Indigenous communities and geographies. At present he is teaching a course on the concepts and principles of land use at the UP Department of Geography.

The talk provides a glimpse how the pursuit of so-called sustainable energy pathways is fomenting rapid land conversion, encroachment into critical spaces, and social conflict. On balance, the presentation also explores the necessity and benefits of renewable energy development in the country, specifically in the context of building energy resilience and security in an increasingly volatile world. Attention is also accorded to possible solutions, or at least convergences, that enable the pursuit of energy resilience while mitigating its impact on vulnerable communities and spaces.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly resource talk / lecture given by academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and partners that engaged in multiple publics, and based locally and abroad. The talk ranges from the sharing of research findings to pedagogical practices and field-based experiences. This month's Heo/Geo Lecture Series is facilitated by the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research group of the UP Department of Geography. The talk is in line with the SDG #3 (Good Health and Well Being), #7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), 10 (Reduced Inequalities), #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), #13 (Climate Action) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations.

To participate in the lecture, click this link to register or just paste this link to your URL: https://tinyurl.com/44fthdye

Department of Geography and Faculty Get Recognition for 2025

2025-12-26T17:28:00.001+08:00

The U.P. Department of Geography and faculty were recently recognized for various awards and achievements in quality assessment (QA), One UP professorial chairs and faculty grants, and as University Scientist.

The UP Department of Geography has earned recognition as a Data Champion from the UP Diliman Quality Assurance Office (UPD-QAO) for its significant contribution to the University's rankings. The recognition was conferred on 5 December 2025, during the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings Symposium.

Meanwhile, 10 members of the faculty received the One UP Professorial Chair and Faculty Grant recognition for teaching and research excellence and public service. This is for the One UP 2025-2027 cycle.

Finally, UP conferred Jake Cadag the Scientist 1 recognition for his excellence in research and innovation, and scholarly leadership.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-12: Jessica Jacobs on the use of filmmaking and storytelling in community-led projects

2025-11-29T00:11:00.010+08:00

In a Film Quarterly interview in 1970, Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha extolled that "we must be able to conceive of people all over making films in any form, in any shape, in any manner ... in every different way." His exhortation might as well apply to the newer and more progressive call to involve communities in employing film to tell local narratives using site-specific modes of production. In geography, the shift to the digital somehow opened up different modes and approaches in visual storytelling. Geographer and filmmaker Jessica Jacobs said that because "film is ... integral to the way people in the 21st century understand their world ... [it] helps geographers achieve a better understanding of how we experience our lived environment" (2016, p. 453).

For the 12th and last Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2025, the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) together with Film Geographies (Films in Place), the Film Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), the Geographic Society of UP (GeogSoc) and the Junior Philippine Geographical Society (JPGS) present Place-making intangible heritage and climate mitigation with storytelling to be delivered by Jessica Jacobs on Thursday, the 4th of December 2025 at 5:00PM in Pavilion 2248. In her presentation, Dr Jacobs will talk about the research endeavor called Storytelling for All.

Storytelling for All was a community-led research project providing heritage focused filmmaking workshops to Bedouin communities in the South Sinai. The films created from this project include a series of short felted animations made by Bedouin women from St, Catherine's and Dahab. Each film offers a different story of a unique place, told by the people who live there.

The project set out to critically engage with the ways in which Bedouin cultural heritage, particularly women’s heritage, has been romanticized, extracted, or rendered invisible within national development agendas, tourism economies, and Eurocentric academic frameworks (Jacobs 2020). While there is a reasonable amount of digital content available online about Bedouin culture, the vast majority of it is about men and produced by men. This presentation argues that community practices of handcrafting held by women are a form of matrilineal knowledge transfer that, if adapted for digital use, can contribute to a future oriented practice able to support climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as being a form of engagement with a hard to reach community that can contribute more broadly to sustainable economic development.

For her presentation, Dr Jacobs will discuss the films produced by the project and argue that the stories they contain not only offer advice on sustainable practices for climate change mitigation and adaptation they also show us vital the role of matrilineal intergenerational knowledge transfer is, in keeping this knowledge, alive.

The Heo/Geo Lecture by Dr Jacobs is preceded by a 2-hour film workshop called 'Crafting Your Research Story with Film' from 2:30-4:30PM on 4 December in Pavilion 2248. To join in this workshop, please click this link to participate, or just paste this link to your browser: https://forms.gle/zzE6UQ8CajhRhHXr6

Dr Jacobs is a Research Fellow at the Queen Mary University of London. Her work focuses on heritage and tourism in the Middle East with a particular interest in how heritage is visualized, remembered and enacted through the production of tourist space. Dr Jacobs' research methods and outputs use filmmaking, creative mapping and other community focused strategies that aim to engage a wider audience within the scope of academic research and knowledge production.

Dr Jacobs is the founder of Film Geographies, an online forum for films and filmmaking as a form of academic practice and knowledge production. Film Geographies organise two annual calls for films AAG Shorts and RGS-IBG Shorts, to promote films by geographers and films about geography. Founded in 2016, Film Geographies now have over 150 films online.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly lecture given by academic scholars, field-based geography practitioners, members of the local community, and spatial justice advocates to share their knowledge- and practice-based research undertakings. Jointly presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), the Heo/Geo Lecture Series which previously underwent several iterative rebranding, emplaces geography as a discipline that not only straddles the realms of natural/physical and social sciences, humanities, political ecologies, regional and area studies, GI technologies and geospatial storytelling, it is also a vibrant and convivial space that welcomes multiplicities and a plurality of voices. The name Heo/Geo is itself an acknowledgment of the various understandings, meanings and pronunciations of geography in its indigenous and vernacular forms as well as the Anglicized name that has since been adopted and adapted to the local lexicon.

Dr Jacobs's lecture is the inaugural MELANGE Lecture speaker presented by the MELANGE research group of the UP Department of Geography. MELANGE stands for Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanites, and the lecture is in line with the SDGs #4 (Quality Education), and #13 (Climate Action) of the United Nations.

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Notes:

Gordon Hitchens (1970). The Way to Make a Future: A Conversation with Glauber Rocha, Film Quarterly, 24.1 (Autumn, 1970), pp. 27-30.

Jessica Jacobs. (2020). Fabricating herstory: Using embroidery to map Bedouin tribal borders in South Sinai. Journal of Arts & Communities, 11.1-2, pp. 109-127.

Jessica Jacobs (2016). Filmic geographies: the rise of digital ﬁlm as aresearch method and output, Area, 48.4, pp. 452–454.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-11: Mylene De Guzman on pedagogy-based service learning in geography

2025-11-16T23:09:00.006+08:00

Extension work and services in the academic setting can engender multiple approaches, not to mention definitions that hover around 'outreach', 'town-gown relations' and the provision of 'human capital-enhancing inputs' as Anderson and Feder prefer to call it (2003, 2).

Like most academic units in the UP System, the Department of Geography of UP Diliman provides extension services to its multiple publics. Mobilizing specific undergraduate and graduate courses, the extent of the Department's various partnerships with local communities result in a range of field-based undertakings. From capacity-building skills rooted in geographic technologies and methods to the co-production of specific and particular outputs deemed important by the communities, the Department learned various (geography) lessons that not only recognize that the ever-shifting priorities of communities require reflexive innovations, but also in maintaining and sustaining multi-scalar relations.

For the month of November, the focus of the Heo/Geo Lecture Series is in presenting a version of the Department of Geography's model (if you will) of service learning culled from several years of grounded pedagogy-based engagements with local communities as well as public and private organizations. Mylene De Guzman, a member of the faculty of the UP Diliman Department of Geography will present Geography Beyond the Classroom: Service Learning as Pedagogy on Friday, 21 November 2025 at 5:30PM via Zoom.

The presentation highlights the processes and reflections of service-learning activities of the Department from 1995 to 2024. Service-learning combines classroom instruction with community service and is a vital component of several courses offered in the B.S. Geography curriculum. Service-Learning in Geography (SLG) courses enable students to acquire practical work experience using techniques, knowledge, and ideas learned as geography students while serving various publics. Fieldwork is an essential part of conducting geographic research, and the SLG courses are designed to train students in conducting fieldwork and collecting and analyzing empirical data using geographic theories, concepts, analytical techniques, and methods. The presentation examines the incorporation of service-learning into the undergraduate and graduate curricula, reflects on the challenges that faculty handlers have faced, and charts novel ways of conducting geographic research that incorporates service-learning in Philippine higher education.

This presentation is an excerpt of a joint publication of nine faculty members of UPD Geography titled 'Integrating Service Learning in Geography in Philippine Higher Education' which came out in the Winter 2024 issue of the Pennsylvania Geographer. SLG not only fulfills the university’s mandate as a public service university, as stated in the UP Charter of 2008 (Republic Act No. 9500) but also serves as a reflexive examination of the collaborations and partnerships between Geography as an academic unit and as "a step towards addressing ... social concerns by applying learned skills and knowledge to benefit local communities" (De Guzman et al, 2024, 2).

Dr Mylene De Guzman is an Assistant Professor in the UPD Department of Geography. Her research interests span labor geographies, lesbian geographies, risk perception, geonarratives, digital geographies, and geographic education and pedagogy. Dr De Guzman’s research employs the aca-fan lenses in studying K-Pop acts both as an analytical and reflexive frame in relation to moving image, geographies of music, spectatorship, and positionality. She is currently the Vice President for Internals and Memberships of the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and an active member of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). She is currently serving as the Managing Editor of the Korean Social Science Journal (KSSJ), the official journal of the Korean Social Science Research Council (KOSSREC). But more than these academic commitments, she cares and serves two senior cats: Coco and Pepper.

As in previous iterations, the Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly resource talk / lecture given by academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and partners that engaged in multiple publics, and based locally and abroad. The talk ranges from the sharing of research findings to pedagogical practices and field-based experiences.

Dr De Guzman's lecture is co-organised by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society. It is also presented by the Human Geography (HUG), Geographies of Disaster and Hazards (GEDI), Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE), Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanites (MELANGE), and the Geographic Information Systems and Techniques (GIST) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education), #10 (Reduced Inequalities), #3 (Good Health and Well Being), #15 (Life on Land) and #13 (Climate Action) of the United Nations.

To virtually attend the talk, please click this link to participate: https://tinyurl.com/4y4f752k

*Notes

While the members of the faculty constantly review, evaluate and reflect on the conduct of each class with an SLG component, one of the Department's SLG courses -- the Geography Field School [Geography 192 (Field Methods in Geography)] -- has received the following recognition both in UP System and UP Diliman: 2017 Gawad Pangulo Award for Excellence in Public Services, and 2016 Best Extension Program of Degree Granting Units.

*Citations

Anderson, J.R. and Feder, G. (2003). Rural extension services. Policy Research, Working Paper 2976. World Bank: The Agriculture and Rural Development Program and Development Research Group.

De Guzman, M., Martinez, M.S., Garcia, E., Palis, J., Anacta, V.J., Cadag, J.R., Amorsolo, D.S., Ocampo, L.A. and Gutierrez, D. (2024). Service Learning in Geography in Philippine Higher Education, Pennsylvania Geographer, Volume 62, No. 2 - Fall/Winter 2024, 1-22.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-10: Yaw Ofosu-Asare on landscape, decolonisation and everyday design

2025-10-09T09:46:00.011+08:00

In The Four Seasons of Ethnography (2014), scholar and writer Sarah Amira de la Garza asserted that a Eurocentric perspective has insinuated itself to the wisdom traditions of local communities everywhere in ways that insist on domination, superiority and ownership. Providing a 'rich tapestry' and culture-specific contexts to emphasize lived experiences, scholar Yaw Ofosu-Asare employs storied-ethnography as a qualitative methodology that finds kindred affinity to postcolonial theory and participatory research towards "centring and valuing the narratives of those traditionally marginalized in scholarly research" (2025, p. 10). Through counter-acts, storied ethnography and creation-centered ontologies, there is an active refusal in the "erasure of lifeworlds" (Gagnon, 2024, p. 100).

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series presents a lecture titled Land, Story and Design: Cultural Geographies of Care and Decolonisation from Dr Yaw Ofosu-Asare from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University on 17 October 2025, Friday at 5:30PM (Philippines Standard Time / 7:30PM AEST) via Zoom.

The talk explores the geography of design as lived practice, showing how communities inscribe memory, resilience, and identity into landscapes through storytelling, ritual, and everyday design. Reading from his most recent book African Design Futures (2024), Ofosu-Asare centres the narrative of Efua from Edina, a coastal town in Ghana, to illustrate how coastal life, market spaces, and communal rituals embody forms of environmental care and spatial knowledge. These ideas may find echoes in the Philippines, where Indigenous practices, local markets, and rituals also root people’s relationship to land and sea. Alongside this, Dr Ofosu-Asare draws on Decolonising Design in Africa to pose a provocation: in seeking to decolonise, how do we avoid creating new hierarchies of knowledge? Together, these perspectives invite us to see landscapes not only as sites of ecological management but also as cultural geographies where futures are imagined and lived.

Yaw Ofosu-Asare is a Ghanaian designer, educator, and researcher based in Australia whose work bridges decolonial design, critical pedagogy, and African futures. He is the author of Decolonising Design in Africa: Towards New Theories, Methods, and Practices (Routledge, 2024) and African Design Futures: Decolonising Minds, Education, Spaces, and Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). With a PhD in Education, his research explores the intersections of Indigenous knowledge systems, storytelling, and visual communication as tools for liberation and transformation.

Currently he is a Lecturer in Communication Design at RMIT University, where he guides students in connecting theory and practice through industry-partnered studios and critical approaches to design pedagogy. Alongside his teaching, Dr Ofosu-Asare designed for grassroots organisations, educational institutions, and global social change movements, blending community-based design with speculative thinking. He also contributes to projects on climate justice, disability inclusion, and cultural sustainability. His work is rooted in a deep commitment to equity, memory, and creative reimagination.

Dr Ofosu-Asare's lecture is also presented by the Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanites (MELANGE) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) of the United Nations.

To participate in the lecture, please register through this link: https://tinyurl.com/5bvfkrjn

Works cited:

De la Garza, S A (2014). The Four Seasons of Ethnography: A Creation-Centered Ontology for Ethnography, In The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2nd edition (M K Asante, Y Miike and J Yin [eds.]), Routledge, pp. 151-173.

Gagnon, T (2024). Storying Against Dispossession: Nurturing Memories of Other Worlds, In Embodying Biodiversity: Sensory Conservation as Refuge and Sovereignty (T V Gagnon [ed.]), The University of Arizona Press, pp. 79-104.

Ofosu-Asare, Y (2025). Reimagining foundations: Storied-ethnography as a pathway to decolonized design education, Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, pp. 1-29.

Ofosu-Asare, Y (2024). African Design Futures: Decolonising Minds, Education, Spaces, and Practices. Springer Nature/Palgrave Macmillan.

Ofosu-Asare, Y (2024). Decolonising Design in Africa: Towards New Theories, Methods, and Practices, Routledge.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-09: Chris Sorio on spatial justice among Filipino migrants in Canada

2025-09-06T18:15:00.015+08:00

In writing about urban labor migration of Filipinos in Canada, Philip Kelly emphasized the spatiality of class in studying mobilities because "class subjectivities might be complicated by the spatiality of migration, which is an ... important feature of the global economy" (Kelly, 2012, p. 154). While scholarly materials have been written about Filipinos in Canada in relation to assimilation and identity, labor migration and transnational habitus, few have been written about migrant geographies from the perspective of a labor organiser and worker.

For the ninth lecture for 2025 of the Heo/Geo Lecture Series of the UP Department of Geography and co-sponsored by the UP Center for International Studies (UP CIS), Chris Sorio will talk about narratives of Filipino labor migrants: his and other Filipino workers in Canada. Sorio's talk titled Radical Routes: Filipino Migrant Narratives and Spatial Justice in Canada happens on Friday, 12 September 2025 at 5:30PM Philippine Standard Time (5:30AM Eastern Standard Time) via Zoom.

The talk is preceded by a screening of filmmaker Alfredo Ruzol's short film Recipe for Change which focused on Chris Sorio, and which was shown in Toronto in 2024. The Philippine Reporter which covered the event in Seneca Polytechnic singled out Ruzol's film, thus "[t]he documentary revisits Sorio’s harrowing experience during the Marcos Sr. dictatorship in the Philippines. At just 21 years old, Sorio was arrested and tortured by soldiers in Manila in 1982. Now living in Toronto, he continues his activism to ensure that this dark chapter of history is not forgotten."

Sorio's presentation, on the other hand, examines the lived experiences of Filipino migrants in Canada through the lens of spatial justice, drawing upon radical geography to illuminate the intersections of displacement, labour, and resistance. By foregrounding personal narratives and community histories, it explores how Filipino migrants navigate and contest the socio-spatial inequalities embedded within Canada’s immigration and labour systems. The analysis highlights the ways in which migrants transform everyday spaces—such as workplaces, community centres, and domestic environments—into sites of agency and solidarity. Through this exploration, the presentation aims to shed light on the broader implications for understanding migrant geographies and the pursuit of spatial justice in contemporary Canada.

Chris Sorio is currently the secretary general of Migrante Canada—a grassroots organization supporting temporary foreign workers and immigrants. He is currently an MA student in critical human geography at the Environmental and Urban Change of York University. Alfredo Ruzol is a filmmaker and media producer who pursues untold stories about climate justice, human rights, social issues, and peacebuilding. Recipe for Change was recently shortlisted in the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2025.

The event is co-sponsored by the UP Diliman Department of Geography, the Center for International Studies, and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS). The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly resource talk / lecture given by academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and partners that engaged in multiple publics, and based locally and abroad. The talk ranges from the sharing of research findings to pedagogical practices and field-based experiences. This month's Heo/Geo Lecture Series is facilitated by two research clusters at the UP Department of Geography: Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE).

To participate in the event, click this link to register. You can also click this link: https://tinyurl.com/2t9b6b8t

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-08: Trina Isorena on the consultative process towards landscape management and restoration

2025-08-22T19:12:00.009+08:00

Consistent with one of the extension goals of the UP Department of Geography, which is to engage with local government units and communities, and forge partnership activities, this month's talk for the Heo/Geo Lecture Series highlights the partnership aspect in relation to landscape management and restoration.

For the eighth Heo/Geo Lecture Series, this talk draws from the experience of the Protect Wildlife Project, which developed an iterative method for piloting and scaling up Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES) as a means of securing additional funding for landscape restoration and management. These case study landscapes are located in the watersheds of Mt. Mantalingahan Protected Landscape in southern Palawan, Mount Matutum Protected Landscape in South Cotabato, and Bataan National Park in Bagac, Bataan. The talk which will be presented by Dr Trina Isorena is titled Paying for Nature’s Work: Cost-Based Valuation Strategy to Support Local PES. The lecture is jointly sponsored by the Philippine Geographical Society and the UP Department of Geography and will happen on Friday, 29 August 2025 at 5:30PM PHT.

The talk details the establishment of landscape-based PES systems starting from framework development, piloting, and replication to diversify the sources of funds for watershed protection, restoration, development, and management. It also includes the processes involved in setting up multiple PES agreements between watershed and protected area managers, as well as users and consumers of ecosystem goods and services.

Dr Trina Isorena is currently a senior lecturer at the UP Department of Geography where she handled graduate and undergraduate courses on river systems and watersheds, as well as digital cartography. Trina specializes in natural resource management, spatial planning, and the application of GIScience to environmental governance. Her interests include rural water management, land cover change analysis, REDD+ national forest monitoring system, resource tenure, community-based natural resource management, indigenous peoples’ rights, and ancestral domain mapping.

In her role as the Protect Wildlife Project’s Spatial Planning and GIS Manager, Dr Isorena contributed to the interdisciplinary team that developed the said PES system.

The monthly Heo/Geo Lecture Series was first conceived as a Brown Bag Colloquium and later easing into Geography Webbynar during the pandemic period. It was later rebranded as the Heo/Geo Lecture Series to capture not only the multiplicities of the discipline's specializations, but also on how it is pronounced in light of the increasing directive to provide space for geography's vernacularisation. Formally, the Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a discipline-based hobnobs where geography (as well as geography-adjacent) studies, extension and community work, industry pep talks, and spatial practices come together to meet and discuss. Sponsored by the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research group of the UP Department of Geography, the talk is in line with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals #6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), #14 (Life Below Water), #15 (Life on Land).

To participate in Dr Isorena's lecture, please register via this link or just click this: https://tinyurl.com/6zwurcef

Faculty & Staff Planning Workshop 2025 in Mataas na Kahoy, Batangas

2025-08-20T16:22:00.015+08:00

The UP Department of Geography is currently in a 3-day planning workshop for staff and faculty. The workshop is being held in Mataas na Kahoy's Shercon Resort in Batangas.

Clockwise from left: KS, MS, FFH, MSM, JP, EG, MCH, DG, CB, DSA, CC, ACC, JRC, LAO, YL, VJA, ES, AG

The first workshop focuses on Quality Assessment and post-iAADs (Internal Academic Assessment and Development System) evaluation that tracks the department's academic and extension outputs consistent with its vision and goal. Two other workshops focus on graduate and undergraduate concerns ranging to admission and curriculum mapping. Faculty resources in relation to student demand will be assessed in terms of future recruitment. The graduate program (the current MS Geography and the proposed PhD program in geography) hopes to dip from the deep pool of faculty with PhDs. Finally, professional development including faculty development and succession plans will be reevaluated with the return of faculty with PhDs and new full-time and part-time (at least temporarily) hires.

Staff development involves streamlining everyday administrative tasks. The Department recognizes and appreciates the contribution of the department's non-teaching staff in relation to carrying out the complicated programming of everyday departmental activities.

The workshop also allowed time for the members of staff and faculty to perfect their synchronized swimming skills.

Photos & Video: YL & JP

2025 Geography 192 Team Caluya conducts P3DM in Barangay Sabang, Caluya Island, Province of Antique, July 16-18, 2025

2025-07-19T17:28:00.026+08:00

Is the inclusion of diverse local knowledges a guarantee that there will be shared stewardship of the community? Can community mapping help redefine social cohesion in relation to risk and disaster?

Figure 1: A panoramic view of Sabang shoreline (photo: D. Gutierrez)

When the Participatory 3D Mapping (P3DM) was introduced by the UP Department of Geography through the Geography 192 (Field Methods) class to Barangay Sabang in Caluya Island, Province of Antique, the response from the community was immediate and enthusiastic. P3DM has the potential to be transformative in translating the knowledge systems of the community into something materially concrete where the community themselves can take an active role in updating the 3D map based on shifting demographics and environmental changes.

Figure 2: 3D topographical model of Barangay Sabang (photo: E. Garcia)

Taking place from July 16-18, 2025 and with close coordination with the Caluya Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (MDRRMO) and Municipal Planning and Development Office (MPDO), a 3D model of Barangay Sabang was co-created by community participants with the assistance of the Geog 192 class under the supervision of three UP Geography professors. Mapping and plotting households were undertaken along with identified vulnerabilities and locally-derived capacities. The 3-day activity not only identified the hazards specific to the area but also conducted a risk assessment of the community.

Figure 3A: Community at work in assembling the 3D map (photo: V.A. Imperial)

Figure 3B: A barangay health worker and a kagawad consult with Jia Garcia in assembling the 3D map (photo: D. Gutierrez)

Like most community endeavors that place premium on local knowledge, capacity-building, and giving agency to the community to undertake their own plans mindful of the barangay’s vulnerabilities and capacities, P3DM allows them to take an active role in assessing and planning their mitigation strategies in the event of a disaster.

Figure 4: The community participants, members of the LGU, and the UP Department of Geography posed in front of the completed 3D map (photo: V.A. Imperial).

So to respond to the question posed above, local knowledges alone will not guarantee successful stewardship of the environment, it is in the empowerment of local decision-making that the community’s sustainable futures can be achieved.

Acknowledgements: MPDO head Carlo Caballero, EnP; MDRRMO head Juniffer Ysug; Sabang barangay captain Joel Alvarez; Geography 192 field class students Stephen Gaius Buenaventura, Juvirn Mae Garcia, Vinz Angelo Imperial, Florence Mikhail Dale Lazarte, Christian Mark Lobo, Glendale Lovitos, Hannah Sophia Melendrez, Knisha Ysabelle Payuran, Jose Antonio Miguel Santisteban, Justine Ravert Tan, Luis Miguel Teran, Ureil Rey Toledo; and the UP Geography professors Emmanuel Garcia, EnP (team leader), Darlene Gutierrez PhD, Joseph Palis PhD.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-07: Hanna Aguilon on empowerment through GIS technology

2025-07-10T17:07:00.001+08:00

In today’s data-driven world, it is evident that GIS has become even more a vital tool for visualizing and analyzing spatial data, solving real-world problems, and making informed decisions. From managing infrastructure to tracking environmental changes, monitoring utilities, and enhancing public safety, GIS has proven its value across industries.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series in cooperation with the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) presents a talk from Hanna Camille Aguilon. The talk titled Teaching the Tools: Empowering Professionals through GIS Technology will happen on Friday, 18 July 2025 at 5:30PM via Zoom.

As a GIS instructor working with professionals from diverse backgrounds and technical abilities, Hanna's role extends beyond simply teaching software features and capabilities, it also involves making these tools relevant and useful in their field of work. It involves translating complex GIS concepts into practical applications and tailoring content to meet the specific needs and goals of professionals working in real-world environments.

Hanna Camille G. Aguilon is a Senior GIS Specialist/Instructor under the Training and Technical Support Division of Geodata Systems Technologies, Inc. She is a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Geography from the University of the Philippines Diliman. As an instructor, she conducts introductory and advanced ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, and ArcGIS Enterprise courses for clients from different industries. She has also been involved in multiple GIS projects for different governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series in its rebranded form aims to bring together academic geographers, geography-minded scholars, GIS industry professionals, and members of the community to share their knowledge in a broad spectrum of geography-related concerns, be it research in higher education, skills training from industry professionals in geospatial technology, or community-led advocacies that involve peoples and collectives to engage in endeavors to ultimately bring about social and spatial justice. Hanna's lecture is one in a series of Heo/Geo's initiatives to involve Geography alumni in enriching the technical knowledges and skills of the Department's students, faculty and staff through lecture and hands-on training.

This Heo/Geo Lecture is facilitated through the Geographic Information Systems and Techniques (GIST) research cluster under the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals #9 (Industry, Innovation, Infrastructure) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations Sustainable Development.

To participate in the talk, register through this link: https://tinyurl.com/4er522tj

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-06: Joycel Dabalos on the literary imagination of disaster

2025-06-15T18:41:00.006+08:00

How does fiction imagine a disaster? How does the imagined disaster disturb/redefine the Filipino concept of family?

For the sixth Heo/Geo Lecture for 2025, Joycel Vincent Dabalos' talk titled Rain and River: How Fiction Imagines Disaster and Disappearance, shares how he creatively wrote his two young adult stories populated with Filipino characters dealing with the wrath of disaster while carrying their distinct (yet playful) Filipino family identities. The lecture which is co-presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) will include his writing politics—how he perceives tangible world and how his stories offer an alternative world. The talk will take place via Zoom on Friday, 20 June 2025 at 5:30PM.

Joycel Vincent V. Dabalos is a creative writer and literature educator. He penned "Kulimlim: Mga Imahen ng Paglaho" (2024) and "Heterotopic Dissidences" (2025). He is currently completing his PhD in Philippine Studies (Presidential Scholarship Grant) at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He obtained his MA in Language and Literature from De La Salle University Manila. He is a fellow for maikling kuwento of the 12th Palihang Rogelio Sicat held at UP Los Baños. His poems have been featured in the Heights Ateneo, Kawing Journal, and panitikan.ph. His latest poem "The Long History of Virus" will be published in ANI 42, the literary journal of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. His research interests span heterotopic spaces, queer disaster, narrative theory, literary ecology, and creative writing.

Jointly presented by the Geographies of Disasters and Hazards (G-DASH) and Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanities (MELANGE) research clusters of the UP Department of Geography, the talk satisfies the Social Development Goals of United Nations Sustainable Development especially #4 (Quality Education) and #15 (Life on Land).

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series started out as the Brown Bag Lecture Series/Geography Webbynar but later rebranded as Heo/Geo to accommodate the multiple ways Geografia/Heograpiya is perceived. The lecture series in its present iteration serves and provides a space where practical, discursive and embodied discussions and performativities from academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners and civil society can come together and share ideas to popularise the discipline of geography.

To register for the lecture, please click this link to participate.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-05: Laura Rodríguez Castro on ancestral knowledges and on research that is participatory and politically grounded

2025-05-06T12:45:00.007+08:00

In Epistemologies of the South, Boaventura de Sousa Santos acknowledges that the transformation of the world comes from alternative perspectives that 'reinvent social emancipation on a global scale' (2016).

Along these lines and embedded in Latin American (Abya Yala) ancestral knowledge, sentipensar (feeling-thinking) has developed as a way of feeling and knowing the world. From the experiences of Colombian fishermen (Escobar 2014; Fals Borda 2015) to the ancestral living of the Mayan Tzeltal in the Chiapas highlands of Mexico (Méndez Torres et al. 2013), feeling and thinking processes are experienced as interconnected and fundamental to living in harmony with mother earth (Pachamama).

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series, co-sponsored by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS), presents a talk entitled 'Decolonial feminisms, power and place: Sentipensando (feeling-thinking) with rural women in Colombia' by Laura Rodríguez Castro. The talk is scheduled on Friday, 9th of May 2025 at 11:30AM (PHT) and 1:30PM (AEST).

In this talk, Dr Rodríguez Castro reflects on embodying and understanding feeling-thinking and its entanglement with undertaking participatory research that is politically grounded in decoloniality and feminisms. She proposes that feeling-thinking addresses epistemic questions of the praxis of decoloniality, including how we embody research, how we understand place and how we unlearn to feeling-know other worlds.

Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro is a Colombian Vice-Chancellor Senior Research Fellow and educator at the Faculty of Education's Sustainability, Environment and the Arts in Education Research Centre at Southern Cross University, Australia. Her research focuses on Southern knowledges of anti/decoloniality and feminisms, critical and public pedagogies, memory studies and rurality. Her work also contributes to methodological debates on arts, visual and participatory methods. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Intercultural Studies. Laura’s book with Palgrave Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place: Sentipensando with Rural Women in Colombia (2021) explores how rural women enact and imagine decolonial feminist worlds.

As in previous iterations, the Heo/Geo Lecture Series aims to bring various geography practitioners from the academy, civil society, industry and community to share their geography-informed research, pedagogies and practices that operate in multiple scales. This lecture is facilitated by the Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE) research groups of the UP Department of Geography. It also satisfies the Social Development Goals #4 (Quality Education) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations Sustainable Development.

To participate in our Lecture Series, please register through this link or paste this in your URL: https://tinyurl.com/ms572xk8

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-04: Chantelle Bayes on relationships between practices of research-creation and geographies

2025-04-17T16:17:00.006+08:00

What activities connect writers with environments and how do these connections sit alongside environmental and social justice aims?

For the 4th Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2025, that question will be discussed by Dr Chantelle Bayes who will give a talk entitled Writing with Place: More-than-representational Geographies and Creative Writing Practices on Thursday, 24 April 2025, at 5:30PM PHT (7:30PM AEST) via Zoom. More-than-representational geographies are the non-tangible aspects of geographies such as affects, practices, and processes. Dr Bayes' talk considers the relationships between practices of research-creation and geographies.

It’s well known that many writers, researchers and creatives have moments of inspiration while undertaking some sort of mundane activity from walking and commuting to cleaning. Knowing this, many writers and researchers have sought to engage with place as an intentional practice whereby they undertake activities such as walking to facilitate their thinking and making. These creative practices also inform our understanding of cultural geographies by diffracting experiences of place including the mundane, the intangible, the affective and the embodied.

In Dr Bayes' research, writers most often talked about four activities in place that formed part of their writing process: walking, swimming, surfing, and gardening. Walking was by far the most noted activity with a deep history in connection with storytelling. The two main processes at work during such activities are firstly a close attention to place, and secondly an inattentive engagement with place through day-dreaming, creative thinking, thought making, and editing. These two processes are not always separate but may occur simultaneously, or like a camera lens drifting in and out between the two. Being in place and engaging with local geographies impacted the writing process in several ways by bringing attention to the ways that places, authors and texts are entangled in relationships of care, damage, or disruption. Dr Bayes will discuss anecdotes from several writers who use place-based creative practices so we can consider what this does to our shared understanding of geographies.

Dr Chantelle Bayes is a creative writer, researcher and educator living in Queensland, Australia. Her research areas are the environmental humanities, arts-based environmental education, contemporary literature and creative writing practices. Her book Reimagining Urban Nature: Literary Imaginaries for Posthuman Cities came out with Liverpool University Press in 2023. She is currently working at Southern Cross University as a postdoctoral research fellow on the ARC funded project 'Climate Country: Advancing Child and Youth-Led Climate Change Education with Country'.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a joint project of the University of the Philippines Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS). The Lecture Series is a monthly resource talk / lecture given by academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and partners working in multiple publics based locally and abroad. The talk ranges from the sharing of research findings, pedagogical practices, and field-based experiences. This month's Heo/Geo Lecture Series is facilitated by two research groups at the UP Department of Geography: Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE), and in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals #4 (Quality Education), and #15 (Life on Land).

To participate in the lecture, click this link to join: https://tinyurl.com/2dvuj8du

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-03: James Vandenberg on urban agriculture's role to strengthen the resilience capacities of cities

2025-03-10T15:34:00.004+08:00

In 2013, critical human geographer Chiara Tornaghi asked this question:

Is access to urban land for food-growing guaranteed across the spectrum of society?

In the third Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2025, James Vandenberg looks into these issues. The talk will take place on the 21st of March 2025 at 5:30PM via Zoom. Titled Cultivating Urban Resilience with Urban Agriculture the talk is co-sponsored by the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and the UP Department of Geography.

The liveability and safety of cities is increasingly challenged by global polycrisis, that is, entangled crises with synchronizing and amplifying inter-system dynamics that produce novel emergent harms which are greater than the sum of their parts. Consequently, cities must prioritize multifunctional resilience strategies that improve their ability to cope and adapt with disruptions and transform structures and processes which limit their current or future adaptive capacities. Accordingly, the emergence of a range of novel urban agriculture practices, which extend beyond community gardens, to also include building integrated rooftop greenhouses and indoor vertical plant factories are increasingly acknowledged for their cross-sector and cross-scale urban resilience benefits.

As will be discussed throughout the lecture, innovative approaches to urban agriculture have the potential to strengthen the resilience capacities of a city's social, environmental, economic, institutional, and infrastructural subsystems. However, questions remain as to how to ensure such urban agriculture driven resilience strategies are implemented equitability, take into account spatial and temporal trade-offs, and contribute to the harmonization of societal values and ecological justice.

James Vandenberg is a 4th year Predoc in the Urban Studies Working Group, within the Department of Geography and Regional Research Department at the University of Vienna, Austria. After completing his BA in International Relations and Development at the University of British Colombia and the University of Amsterdam, he completed an Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters in Urban Studies which was included 4 semesters at 6 universities in Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid. His current research delves into the multifunctionality of Urban Agriculture to better understand the connection between food and resilience. This pursuit is aimed at illuminating strategies that help contribute to humanities ability to both feed the estimated 10 billion people expected to inhabit earth in 2050, while simultaneously preparing cities to adapt to the climate change impacts of a 2-degree world.

Presented by the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research cluster by the UP Department of Geography, the talk satisfies most of the Social Development Goals of United Nations but especially #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and #15 (Life on Land).

To participate in the lecture, please click this link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9tahr4

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-02: Annie Pacaña on wires as metaphors for hopeful urban entanglements

2025-02-18T12:32:00.010+08:00

A map of lines drawn overhead, a landscape of wires power the city. Hanging on every post, crossing the sky, dangling in loops, it is a metaphor for entangled lives. The string of low and high voltage utilities, enabling telecommunication and internet connections, make up paragraphs of society's virtual proximity, physical distance, and emotional disconnection. Life’s inequalities are told in stark contrast of the density of wires in one location to the next.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series co-sponsored by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) presents Landscape of Wires, an artist talk by Annie Pacaña - a faculty at the UP College of Fine Arts. It is happening on 21 February (Friday) at 5:30PM via Zoom. The talk is in conjunction with Assistant Professor Pacaña's on-going exhibit, Live Wire, which runs from 14 February to 2 March 2025 at the NO Community-run Space (45 Matimtiman St., Teachers Village East, Diliman QuezonCity). It is also Geography's contribution to the National Arts Month (February).

While Live Wire celebrates the ephemeral yet embedded-in-life architecture that choreographs the linear entanglements of exigent wires interspersing Metro Manila's landscape, the talk is a continuation of Pacaña's earlier work Linescapes. With theoretical inspirations that range from Guy Debord and Michel de Certeau to Kevin Lynch and Rob Kitchin, Live Wire's genealogical similarity with Linescapes acknowledges various creative geographies as glimpsed from walking-in-the-city, psychogeography, flânerie, gestalt and countercartography. Like other artist-cartographer who engages with creative spatialities, Pacaña's talk discusses a landscape of urban wires that traverse the city that mimetically parallel random intersecting lives of individuals and collectives. Or as Pacaña claims: The city has become more legible in this alternate way of mapping urban experience (Pacaña, 2019, Creating Spaces of Contemplation from the City’s Chaos through Linescapes).

Annie Pacaña is a visual artist who contemplates urban experience, applying countermapping strategies in creating memory maps from the visual chaos of Metro Manila. She utilizes digital vector line drawings (linescapes), and photographic abstraction of urban forms (kaleidoscapes) to process and reimagine her experiences as she moves about the city. She creates photography-based, digitally-processed prints, collages, and moving image works translated into both outdoor and indoor immersive projections, TV display installation, and reflected and refracted light projection on found objects (car window and windshields). As a curator, she started Matereality in 2022, an exhibition platform for works exploring one’s lived experience through varying material explorations of artists who are mothers. In 2023, Pacaña initiated Sound Visuals (now on its fifth iteration), a platform to experience the intersection and exchange of moving image, music/sound art, and dance. With a background in graphic design, Pacaña began her artistic practice with her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. Her works explore psychogeography, investigating the city as the self while connecting with others thru transdisciplinary collaborations with other visual artists, contemporary dance choreographers, and sound artists/musicians. Pacaña is currently an assistant professor at the College of Fine Arts, and a director of the Office of Community Relations at the University of the Philippines (Diliman).

Pacaña is also involved in Art Fair Philippines 2025 which runs from 21-23 February 2025 at Tower Two | Booth 51, Core Contemporary Art, Ayala Triangle, Makati City. Core Contemporary Art presents Cross Currents at Art Fair Philippines 2025，a dynamic cross-cultural exchange between artists from Malaysia and Philippines. Within this framework, also discover an accompanying salon-style presentation, Surround Me With All The Beautiful Things, which delve into the human desire for beauty, examining how it shapes our perceptions, emotions, and connections with the world.

As in previous iterations, the Heo/Geo Lecture Series aims to bring various geography practitioners in the academy, civil society, industry and community to share their geography-informed practices that operate in multiple scales. This lecture is facilitated by the Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE) research group of the UP Department of Geography. It also satisfies the Social Development Goals #4 (Quality Education) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations Sustainable Development.

To participate in our Lecture Series, please register through this link or simply paste this to your URL: https://tinyurl.com/2yvufaey

IGU-CSRS: Call for Abstracts, Pt 1

2025-02-09T08:57:00.003+08:00

32nd International Geographical Union-Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems (IGU-CSRS Colloquium)

New Ruralities: Contestations and Iterations on Rural Spatialities

University of the Philippines Diliman & University of the Philippines Baguio

1-6 December 2025

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

In the Handbook of Rural Studies (2006), Paul Cloke argued that the shift from the functional and political-economic lenses in studying rural studies, to a more socially-constructed framing where the “importance of the ‘rural’ lies in the fascinating world of social, cultural and moral values that have become associated with rurality, rural spaces and rural life” (2006, 21) opened the rural geographies to conceptual and methodological richness.

In recent decades, rural areas have undergone profound transformations influenced by factors such as globalization, technological advancements, climate change, migration, and shifting economic paradigms. These forces challenge traditional notions of rurality and spatial organization, compelling scholars, policymakers, and local communities to re-examine and redefine rural spaces. Additionally, rethinking established concepts and approaches in the study of the rural along with the recognition that, following Michael Woods (2009, 855), there is an “uneven capacity of rural geography in different national contexts to engage appropriate conceptual tools”. Rural spatialities, therefore, can benefit from the blurring of boundaries, the recognition of multiple rural relationalities, and the connections that are forged from these complex entanglements.

The idea of 'new ruralities' centers on the multiple meanings and dynamic character of rural systems, as tied to wider local, regional and international linkages and processes. New ruralities are about development trajectories that are created by new connections, opportunities, and innovations. They are about adaptation and resistance that facilitate the reproduction of rural identities and experiences. Lastly, new ruralities include new perspectives that illuminate unique spatialities of the rural across locations and contexts.

The 32nd IGU-CSRS Colloquium provides a valuable platform for scholars, practitioners and policy makers to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and develop a deeper understanding of rural spaces to contribute to more informed and effective rural development strategies geared toward sustainability.

The four (4) sub-themes cover a broad range of topics that reflect the complexities of rural spaces and their evolving nature in the context of local and global challenges:

1. ITERATIONS: recurring patterns, practices, and historical continuities

2. TRANSITIONS: structural, socio-cultural, economic, and environmental shifts

3. NEGOTIATIONS: navigation of policies, markets, and socio-environmental changes

4. CONTESTATIONS: conflicts over land, resources, identities, and power

We invite scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit their panel, paper, or poster abstracts of not more than 300 words through this link: http://bit.ly/3CzPvzN. The deadline for submission is 21 April 2025.

32nd IGU-CSRS Organizing Committee

E-mail: igu.csrs.ph@gmail.com

Microsite: https://sites.google.com/up.edu.ph/igu-csrs2025

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Texts Consulted

Cloke, P. 2006: Conceptualizing rurality. In Cloke, P., Marsden, T. and Mooney, P.H., (eds.), Handbook of rural studies, London: Sage, 18–28.

Woods, M. 2009. Rural geography: Blurring boundaries and making connections, Progress in human geography, 36(1), 125–134.

Woods, M. 2011. Rural geography III: Rural futures and the future of rural geography, Progress in human geography, 33(6), 849–858.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2025-01: Ony Martinez on place-based realities of community-engaged mapping

2025-01-25T18:17:00.002+08:00

Consultation, collaboration, outreach and shared leadership are some of the key words/terms that characterise the works of community-engaged geographers involved in participatory mapping practices and advocacies.

Community-engaged learning emphasizes collaboration and participation to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for both students and community partners. By connecting concepts with real-world applications, this approach enables students to actively contribute to solving local challenges while developing critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills. It facilitates the connection between higher education and local communities by fostering community awareness and encouraging the involvement of students in addressing pressing local issues.

For the first Heo/Geo lecture for 2025, the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and the UP Department of Geography through its Geographic Information Systems and Techniques (GIST) research group, cordially invite you to a lecture of UPD Geography faculty Ma. Simeona Martinez titled Participatory Tools and Mapping Methods for Community-Engaged Learning. This online talk will be on Friday, the 31st of January 2025 at 5:30 in the afternoon.

In Ony Martinez's community-engaged research, mapping and spatial tools contribute to place-based learning by enabling students and communities to visualize places at various scales and explore the distribution of spatial features such as infrastructure or resources in relation to potentials and risks in their locality and surrounding areas. In effect, spatial tools help educators and students bridge the gap between abstract knowledge and community realities. Similarly, maps serve as essential resources for community members to identify challenges and devise strategies to address these issues collaboratively.

This lecture introduces practical tools and participatory mapping methods that educators can integrate into their teaching practices to promote collaborative and experiential learning. These methods, traditionally used for community appraisal, mobilization, and planning, facilitate working with communities in documenting community assets and in addressing spatial issues in a collective and engaging way, where students co-produce meaningful outputs in partnership with community members and support organizations. Through participatory mapping, students and communities can collaboratively document assets and analyze community issues. Drawing on both literature and personal experience, the presentation will reflect on the contextuality of place, forms of participation, and the role spatial technologies in fostering critical place-based and community-oriented learning.

Prof Ony Martinez teaches mapping methods and the use of Geographic Information Systems for collaborative research in diverse areas such as hazard and disaster risk reduction, land cover change, and development planning. She also develops learning modules on digital cartography and basic techniques in analyzing and interpreting remotely-sensed imagery. She is co-convenor of the Program on Alternative Development in the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS- AltDev) and a member of the core research team of Counter-mapping PH Network.

The talk given by Ony Martinez is the 85th lecture since the Department of Geography re-instituted (and subsequently rebranded the Geography Colloquium into the Heo/Geo Lecture Series) a space that invites academics, civil society, community and industry practitioners to share their research, advocacy, and technology-knowledge to geography students, faculty and staff. Prof Martinez's talk fits most of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by United Nations Sustainable Development, but especially #10 (Reduced Inequalities) and #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).

To participate in the talk, please register through this link: https://tinyurl.com/54zf2uwd

Geography Lecture 2025: Naoki Fujiwara on suburbanisation and relocation in the Philippines

2025-01-24T16:39:00.007+08:00

The UP Department of Geography through the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research group, and the Geography 105 (Economic Geography) class present Naoki Fujiwara of Hiroshima University.

His talk titled Spatial Politics in Suburban Areas, Philippines happens on Thursday, 30 January 2025 at 11:30AM in the Geography Conference Room of Pavilion 2 Building of the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

The lecture is open to the public.

Abstract

In transforming new spaces suburbanization simultaneously involves an influx of new residents. The growing populations entails not only land conversion and the establishment of new collective housing but also an increase in ‘new voters.’ This paper compares the relocation projects in Metro Manila to develop suburban areas, such as Bulacan province, and how they brought about the transformation of political structure consolidated by feudalistic nature with similar historical change in Japan. In Japan, following the aftermath of the World War Two up to the oil crisis in 1973, the national government had to establish a great deal of collective housing, called ‘Danchi,’ in order to deal with the lack of housing supply in urban areas after the carpet bombing air raids of the war. In Osaka too, large scale collective housing was set up in suburban areas, but it enhanced the political participation of residents to local and national governments due to unhappy with their uncomfortable living conditions in ‘Danchi.’

In the Philippines, the number of relocation sites in suburban areas has been increasing in the wake of displacement from the ‘danger zone’ along the river as well as infrastructure projects. It concomitantly enables a critical moment to transforming local politics in accommodating relocatees from Metro Manila. I first examine the differences between the history of development in Japan and that currently taking place in the Philippines. Second, drawing on the case of Pandi, Bulacan, I explicate the context of political change in the wake of relocation projects in the 2010s at local and national levels. In doing so, this paper situates the term spatial politics that is critical to a better understanding of political change in the urban age.

Naoki Fujiwara is a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. He received a PhD in Political Science from Kobe University, Japan. His research interests include urban politics, spatial politics, neoliberal urbanization and gentrification in the Global South.

Obituary: Crisanto Angeles, 1947-2025

2025-01-14T17:12:00.002+08:00

Crisanto "Mang Cris" Angeles was a foundational member of the Geography family since it separated from Geology and became an independent academic unit in 1983. Mang Cris served the department with commitment and loyalty and was there when ways of doing things shifted from analogue to digital and while the discipline itself went through various turns, shifts and changes. From the department's inception in 1983 until he retired 30 years later, he was a beloved member.

Our Department deeply mourns his passing and we wish to extend our prayerful sympathies to his family and loved ones.