Click here to read the full story: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402416094X

On a Tuesday evening in Lagos, the sun sags low behind snarled traffic, horns scream in a chaotic chorus of frustration, and the air hums with the promise of rain. Amid this chaos, Rita steps out of her rickety bus and watches a young man flick a soda wrapper to the dusty curb, although a bin stands inches away. In that instant, trash ceases to be refuse and becomes a question: what if this scrap of plastic holds the key to a new economy?

For Rita and her peers – Nigeria’s municipal solid waste entrepreneurs, awareness is the unseen scaffold that transforms litter into livelihoods. They speak of public education as infrastructure in its own right: a network of conversations, radio dramas, and town hall gatherings that reposition waste from burden to bounty.

They teach families to recognise the hidden value in reused bottles, organics, and sachets, inviting them into freemium-to-premium models where free doorstep collection and hands-on training eventually evolve into subscription services. This gentle progression overcomes psychological barriers, builds trust, and proves that sustainability and profit need not be mutually exclusive.

Also, while walking the winding lanes of Abia State during a two-month radio drama series sponsored by the Coca-Cola Foundation, I heard calls surge from listeners eager to join Rita’s recycling network. Each ring was a vote of confidence, a signal that stories pitched in Pidgin and local dialects can carry ideas across socio-economic divides. Yet awareness alone cannot fill gaps in sorting infrastructure or surmount the throw-away culture and religious teaching that insists “what happens is God’s will.” Entrepreneurs confront these beliefs with culturally attuned outreach, partnering with religious leaders whose words can steer congregations toward shared responsibility for the streets they walk and the water they drink.

Moving up to Northern Nigeria, on the edge of Kano’s sprawling markets, I sat with a group of waste operators mapping out a circular economy pilot project. They spoke of turning sachet waste into construction blocks and organics into biogas, a vision of closed loops in which nothing is truly discarded. Their sketches, scrawled on scrap cardboard, hinted at a future where waste-to-energy plants hum at the city’s periphery, powered by community participation and robust public–private partnerships. In this emerging ecosystem, regulators impose fines for illegal dumping, while entrepreneurs provide cleanup crews and equipment, fostering awareness in action.

Yet, as the sun set on that day when trash truly became treasure, several questions lingered: How can awareness campaigns be fine-tuned to address regional beliefs in fate without alienating faith communities? What metrics will capture the slow turn of households from indifference to active segregation? In a landscape where smartphones are both commonplace and costly, which digital platforms will sustain engagement beyond the novelty phase? How might universities codify waste management training to seed the next generation of eco-entrepreneurs? What role do gender and informal networks play in shaping the benefits of the burgeoning circular economy? Crucially, can these awareness-driven systems withstand the shocks of future public health crises that alter waste streams overnight?

The day when trash becomes treasure hinges on more than bins and trucks; it depends on a collective shift in how communities see themselves and their discarded matter. As the night deepens and the city lights flicker on, that vision remains an invitation to explore, question, and build an infrastructure of awareness that will turn our waste into the world’s next wonder.

Follow me on this page and my handles as my research attempts to answer some of these questions.

Read more about this story in my recent publication.

Etim, E., 2024. Leveraging public awareness and behavioural change for entrepreneurial waste management. Heliyon, 10(21). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584402416094X

The post What if this scrap of plastic holds the key to a new economy? appeared first on The Geog Blog.

Have you been sneezing a lot lately? If so, you aren’t alone! At least this is what Nottingham residents and visitors described in an online questionnaire distributed by a team of researchers from University of Nottingham. During early spring, we asked participants to share their experiences and emotions about this year’s allergies to tree pollen. For anyone who has prior experience with hay fever the following words may have come to mind more than once: “tired”, “ill”, “itchy”, “annoyed”, “exhausted”… and the list goes on and on, ranging from mildly unpleasant feelings to very negative ones (Figure 1).

Figure 1: How does hay fever make you feel? We asked residents and visitors of Nottingham to express their feelings about this year’s hay fever caused by tree pollen using one word. Words in larger font collected the most answers, while those in smaller only appeared a few times in the responses.

Hay fever (Allergenic Rhinitis) is a common allergenic condition caused by a reaction to pollen and other dust like particles that are found in the atmosphere. According to academic literature more than 1 in 4 adults and nearly 1 every 6 children have experienced hay fever at least once in their lives. Recent studies have also shown that rising temperatures due to climate change will result in longer allergy seasons and stronger symptoms. For this reason, a team of researchers from the departments of Geography and Biosciences led by Dr. Michela Mariani decided to investigate the impact of hay fever in the Nottingham City Council (NCC) area. The full team includes Dr. Faidra Katsi, Alastair Wills and Prof. Simon Gosling. We presented our study to representatives of Nottinghamshire County Council and UK Health Security Agency at an event at the University of Nottingham’s City as Lab venue at Castle Meadows Campus on the 8^th of July 2025.

We presented our main aims:

1. to map allergenic tree pollen across the Nottingham City Council area
2. to allow participants to share their thoughts and experiences about hay fever, and brainstorm the potential drivers and effects of mapped pollen distributions.

Those invited to the event had the opportunity to hear about how we collected our data and our main findings and also we gave them the opportunity to interact with our results using the University’s PARM (Projection Augmented Relief Model), which is a 3D printed model of Nottingham, developed and printed by Dr Gary Priestnall in the School of Geography, augmented from above with projected maps, images and animations (Figure 2). Our study was part of the “Telling Stories” theme around Nottingham and funded by the City as Lab initiative of University of Nottingham.

Figure 2: We presented our results on a 3D-printed model of the city of Nottingham at the University of Nottingham’s City as Lab.

How did we get to this map? First, we needed to collect pollen from around the city using some special funnels (traps) installed on lamp posts across the city (Figure 3). At the bottom of the lamp posts we attached a flyer with a link to our online questionnaire where participants could share their experiences about hay fever.

Our pollen traps consist of a funnel, filled with filter tips and covered with a mesh to keep everything in place. Once they are installed on the lamp post they start collecting tree pollen. Trees produce pollen, tiny particles of different shapes and sizes, to help them reproduce. The main period of tree pollen production is early spring. After trees produce pollen, air will transport those pollen grains and eventually some of them will fall into the funnels where they are “trapped” within the filters. We left those traps in place until early April to capture the pollen released by trees. We then separated the pollen from the filters.

Figure 3: Have you seen our pollen traps (funnels that collect pollen) in your neighbourhood? An image of the lamp post on the left and on the right a map with red dots showing all the points where we installed the pollen traps.

Once we counted the pollen, we created a map of the areas with higher and lower pollen levels. Our preliminary results show that areas in the south show the highest pollen levels, while northern areas present lower pollen levels. We are currently exploring what could be causing such patterns, considering tree density, wind direction and the potential influence of pollution from vehicle traffic. We are aiming to unpack these findings more in the future so stay tuned!

Let’s take a closer look at our results from the surveys now. If we think of ourselves as “moving pollen traps” when breathing, we may start to understand why so many participants expressed unpleasant experiences about this year’s tree hay fever period. For 33% of the survey responders their hay fever symptoms were worse than normal. More than half of the participants described their symptoms (sneezing, runny and blocked nose, coughing, itchy, watery eyes among others) to last between several weeks to several months (Figure 4). The vast majority of the participants (77%) have used over the counter medication but only a third of them have visited their GP regarding their symptoms. As temperatures rise the pollen-release period becomes longer, so it is not surprising that 53% of the participants experienced hay fever often or very often.

Figure 4: We asked survey participants to tell us how they have experienced hay fever this year (2025). Our respondents told us that 33% of them had worse than normal symptoms, 77% used medication to ease their symptoms, 53% of the participants experienced hay fever often or very often and 54% of them had hay fever symptoms lasting between several weeks to several months.

It is surprising how such a small particle like pollen can affect us. Pollen is well hidden in Nottingham, but with the right tools we can discover it, count it, explain it and share our ideas with all of you experiencing hay fever this year! We salute you with a tissue and we will be back with more scientific findings in the future.

The post Sneezing city: mapping allergenic tree pollen in Nottingham appeared first on The Geog Blog.

I first visited Midtdalsbreen and Blåisen, two outlet glaciers of the plateau icefield Hardangerjøkulen in Norway and the field sites for my PhD, in September 2023. Since then, I’ve been back twice: once in July, and then again in September 2024. Forty-three days, spread across a single year. This has given me the unique opportunity to see the changes in these environments firsthand, and the change is profound.

The plateau icefield Hardangerjøkulen, Norway.

The Hardangerjøkulen icefield is modelled to disappear completely by 2100. Such predictions are as stark as they are unsettling. The icefield is not a passive and dying relic of a cooler era, but an active part of the environment. Meltwater from the icefield provides drinking water, nourishes ecosystems, supplies rivers and lakes, and powers three hydroelectric power plants which produce around 3000 gigawatts of energy annually. Research is often framed in statistics like these, and for good reason. However, repeat visits to Hardangerjøkulen have offered a dual perspective- one shaped by my research findings, and the other by my personal experiences of these landscapes.

When I first saw the glaciers in September 2023, after a year of zooming in and back out of aerial imagery, the first thing that struck me was the sheer amount of sediment amassed and deposited in the glacier forelands. I suppose this observation is to be expected, since my PhD is focused on landforms and sediments formed at the outlet glaciers. The closer you get to the ice, the more the ground beneath your feet seems to belong to another planet. It reminded me of passage from Christiane Ritter’s introspective memoir of living on an Arctic island north of Norway for a year: “The stony land, the whole monstrous barrenness, clings to me like a bad dream.” For Ritter, the Arctic’s desolation was ominous, alien. For me, the raw landscape of Midtdalsbreen and Blåisen offered the chance to piece together their histories and potential futures.

A key part of my fieldwork involved collecting data from the sediments (“dirt”) within moraines – ridges of debris deposited at and around the margins of glaciers. The “dirt” inside glacial landforms, such as moraines, contains distinctive features that can tell us how the landforms were formed, where they were deposited, and how the glacier was behaving at the time. This information is particularly important if we want to understand how these outlet glaciers are responding to current climate change – knowledge that can help us understand glacier systems and improve predictions of future change.

Kneeling in the sediment in front of one of these moraines, a small plastering trowel in hand, I saw – or rather heard – my first sign of change.

Investigating the sediment inside a moraine at Midtdalsbreen. Photo credit: Sarah Dyson- my wonderful field assistant.

A second.

A crack that echoed off the bedrock walls and a small wave of water which nearly reached my boots. The tell-tale signs of a small chunk of ice calving off the front of the glacier into the small but growing proglacial lake. It was a reminder that the ice is not as impassive and immovable as it sometimes seems. These small melt and calving events in the summer months are not uncommon. The glaciers undergo summer melt and small winter advance cycles, but the expansion of proglacial lakes is a telltale sign of glacial retreat. By using aerial photos dating back to the 1960s and mapping meltwater pathways at Midtdalsbreen, we’ve been able to track these changes. Over the last 60 years, the glacier has retreated down into a hollow and water is now pooling in a growing proglacial lake. This shift in glacial hydrology is likely to have cascading effects on the glacier system and its behaviour.

A summer.

A key part of my fieldwork, alongside looking at the dirt inside moraines, was conducting drone surveys of the two glaciers and the landscapes emerging at their margins. Our aim was to use drones to capture repeat photos at the start and end of the summer melt season, so we could see how much the landscape had changed around the glacier margins. Using these photos, we can use a processing technique called Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry to create 3D models of the landscape. Where you have two of these 3D models, you can subtract them from each other to calculate how much the glacier and surrounding landscape has changed.

It was a season of transformation, seen not only through numbers but also through the landscape’s evolving terrain. Early in the summer, we discovered an exposed block of glacier ice that had separated from the active glacier and been buried by glacier dirt (layers of sands and gravels). The sands and gravels were partly protecting the buried ice from melting – exposed ice melts much faster. However, when I returned in September, the ice had vanished entirely, and the once-distinctive exposure was nearly unrecognisable. Only the GPS alone could confirm that it was the same spot. For me, this moment underscored the transient nature of these features, emphasising the need to document them.

Getting ready to fly the drone over the foreland of Midtdalsbreen. Photo credit: Sarah Dyson.

A year.

My first visit to Hardangerjøkulen in 2023 was one of reconnaissance – I was checking my mapping and locating sites for further investigation. When I returned the following year, armed with a notebook full of quick sketches, GPS co-ordinates, and photographs, I found that the once familiar ice-marginal landscape had reconfigured itself dramatically. Meltwater channels had shifted, the ice had retreated and reshaped itself, and some of my sites earmarked for sedimentary investigation no longer existed.

It is one thing to study predictions and see changes in imagery; it is quite another to stand in the front of these glaciers and be able to see these changes within just one year.

I hope that we can establish a repeat surveying programme at Hardangerjøkulen so that we can continue to assess the glaciers, and how their landscapes are changing in response to climate warming. Witnessing the retreat firsthand, I’m left wondering what these glaciers will create and uncover as they recede into the mountains and onto the plateau, and what research and questions we might be able to answer as they do.

Measuring an exposure height before creating a sediment log at Midtdalsbreen.

The post A year, a summer, a second: a dual perspective on glacial change appeared first on The Geog Blog.

Navigating historical archives in search for extreme climate events presents a range of challenges and limitations, stemming both from the broader complexities of historical research and the unique context of the specific country under investigation. As part of the Integrated Climate Resilience Understanding (Belize) project, the group has analysed an extensive collection of published and unpublished historical records housed in repositories across the UK, Belize and Spain. The aim was to identify extreme climate events, such as droughts, hurricanes, and floods that occurred in Belize from the second half of the 18^th century until its independence in 1981, and to assess their impacts on the local population and environment.

Belize has a peculiar and complex history. Inhabited by independent Maya groups in the northern region, the country was first visited by the Spaniards in the 1530s. Although Belize was nominally annexed to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Spaniards never settled permanently in the region. Rich forest resources started to attract British loggers, who by 1716 had begun settling the area around modern-day Belize City and performing regular commercial activities, raising Spanish concerns. It followed a century fraught with military skirmishes between the Spanish forces coming from southern Yucatan and the fragile British community, which eventually obtained the complete control of the area from 1798. In 1871, the settlement became a crown colony under the name British Honduras and grew heavily dependent on mahogany exports, with agriculture remaining largely secondary until the mid-20th century. The colony officially changed its name to Belize in 1973 and obtained independence in 1981.

The history of Belize as a contested space between two rival imperial powers has significantly shaped the documentation of its past. Collections of colonial Belize documents are dispersed across several countries. Records from the Spanish colonial presence, spanning the 16^th to late 18^th century, are primarily housed in Spain, with the Archivo de Indias in Seville and the Archivo Nacional in Madrid serving as the most important repositories. Historical records produced by British settlers from the 18^th century onward are mainly preserved in the UK, particularly at The National Archives in Kew and the Cambridge University Library. Additionally, a relatively small yet important collection is held by the Belize Archives and Records Service in Belmopan, Belize (BARS).

One of the main limitations experienced in studying the available historical documentation was the reduced number of sources available for colonial Belize. The country was only partially occupied by the Spaniards and by the early 19^th century, British settlers had established themselves primarily in the central-northern regions. In addition, the gradual and fragmented expansion into Belize from the mid-19th century led to a scarcity of historical sources, particularly for the western and southern areas of the country. The number of historical records produced increased dramatically from the second half of the 19^th century with the publication of local newspapers and of several annual colonial publications. However, great amounts of documentation were completely lost due to the severe hurricanes of 1787, 1931 and 1961, which destroyed large parts of Belize City, the former capital and main repository for colonial documentation. Furthermore, in 1962, a significant quantity of materials was destroyed following instructions from the Colonial Office in 1961. These directives, sent to all colonies undergoing independence processes, mandated the disposal of documents from the colonial administration that could be perceived as reflecting racial prejudice. This explains the gaps in colonial records from certain decades within the collections in Belmopan.

Such limitations have made our search for weather anomalies even more challenging. Climate related information can potentially appear in every kind of historical record, from private letters to official records, newspapers, illustrations and financial reports. However, reliable insights on extreme events, particularly prolonged anomalies such as droughts, typically come from long-term settlers, whose extended presence in specific regions allowed them to recognise which events were abnormal. The scarcity of European settlers living in Belize during the Spanish colonial period hampers the reconstruction of historical weather events for the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The permanent British settlement established from the 18^th century provides the environmental historian with a larger amount of historical records. Official letters of colonial administrators and British newspapers from the late 18^th century documented the occurrence of severe hurricanes and flooding at the end of the century. Reports on mahogany logging activities from the mid-19^th century offer valuable climate-related insights, as logs were transported by river floods during the wet season, and any hydrological changes caused by weather anomalies were typically documented in newspapers or colonial reports. Long droughts began to be reported from the mid-19^th century, as prolonged dry spells increasingly stressed the fragile water supply system, which was already barely sufficient to meet the needs of the growing urban population even in normal conditions.

Figure 1. Cover page of the Annual Report of
the Ministry of Agriculture for the year 1975

Figure 2. Letter written by British Honduras Superintendent William Stevenson in 1855 on the boring of an artesian well as a potential solution to the scarcity of potable water (BARS, R 26).  

However, challenges exist also in the reconstruction of climate anomalies of the 19^th century. As colonial Belize was largely dependent on forestry resources, agriculture was still limited by the early 20^th century. The scarcity of agriculture-related documentation for this period is a major drawback, as reports of agricultural and farming activities typically provide lengthy descriptions of weather anomalies and their impacts on plantations. The increasing economic importance of agriculture in the first half of the 20^th century coincides with the appearance of important records for historical climate reconstruction. The annual colonial reports of the Department of Agriculture, published from 1935, documented numerous extreme climate events across the country and highlighted agricultural adaptations and strategies to respond to challenges such as the droughts of 1949 and 1955. In a similar way, starting from the 1930s, a growing number of meteorological stations were established across the country, recording monthly precipitation. These records, which complemented the first instrumental data collected in Belize City since the 1860s, have proven essential for studying rainfall variability and identifying the duration of exceptional droughts and wet periods.

For more information on ICARUS and our latest activities, please check our Twitter @ICARUS_Belize and our website https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/icarus/. See also the previous blogs https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/2023/03/27/integrated-climate-resilience-understanding-icarus-belize/ and https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/2023/08/08/climate-change-and-agriculture-in-tropical-countries-integrated-climate-resilience-understanding-icarus-belize/.

The post Historical Records and Extreme Climate Events in Colonial Belize: Challenges and Limitations (ICARUS, Belize) appeared first on The Geog Blog.

It began with a simple, yet profound moment back home in Nigeria. Watching children play near an overflowing dumpsite, I could not help but wonder about the invisible forces shaping this stark reality. As someone who grew up witnessing both the resilience and challenges of urban life in a developing country, waste was not just a nuisance; it was a constant backdrop for daily living. Years later, studying in England, I marvelled structured waste systems, yet found myself reflecting on their imperfections.

This contrast—two worlds dealing with the same issue in profoundly different ways—ignited a passion to understand how cultural norms, regulatory frameworks, and social behaviours intersect to shape waste management. This inspired my research, which seeks not only to explore these systems but also to find ways to learn from each other.

Municipal solid waste goes beyond trash piling. It is a living, breathing system of economic, technological, environmental, legal, cultural, and social factors, all of which are intertwined and affect each other. In this vast web of connections, we find complex challenges in municipal solid waste management (MSWM), such as regulatory instruments and the cultural and behavioural patterns that play their parts. At the University of Nottingham, my research which is Sponsored by Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) aims to investigate not only how waste is managed, but also how people think about it, act on it, and adapt to new systems when crossing borders.

This study seeks to understand how “practices can emerge, persist or change when connections between certain elements are made, sustained or broken” (Shove et al., 2012:9)

Nigeria, a developing nation, and England, which has an advanced waste system, face unique yet interconnected challenges. In Nigeria, systemic issues, such as inadequate infrastructure and informal waste practices, dominate. Whereas England grapples with fly tipping and public resistance to waste policies that are designed to improve sustainability.

This mixed-method research seeks to examine the extent to which immigration might serve as a lens to explore the intersection of regulatory instruments, culture, and behavioural patterns in waste management. This study seeks to combine surveys and interviews with waste stakeholders (policymakers, waste operators, council authorities, professional associations, immigrants, and residents). Thus far, over 1,300 survey responses and 25 interviews have been collected, with additional plans to enrich the dataset.

What changes in waste management behaviour might occur because of contact with culturally dissimilar people?

The movement of Nigerian immigrants to England and vice versa offers a fascinating opportunity to study how cultural practices influence the adaptation to new waste management systems. Using Acculturation Theory, this study shall explore how immigrants negotiate between their cultural norms and the waste systems of their host country. This understanding might help to reveal the broader role of culture in shaping environmental behaviour and inform more inclusive waste management policies.

Without paying attention to differences (as in specificity), identifying waste and discarding problems properly and aligning solutions for them will not succeed’ (Liboiron & Lepawsky, 2022:99).

In addition to acculturation theory, social practice theory shall be applied to understand waste behaviour as a part of daily life shaped by social, cultural, and material factors. By combining these theories, this study seeks to balance individual behaviour, agency and structural influence.

This study has the potential to reshape waste management systems by addressing cultural differences and structural barriers. For Nigeria, lessons from England’s systems may inspire better governance and infrastructure while avoiding the pitfall of replicating inappropriate practices. For England, insights into immigrant experiences can help to develop policies that are both effective and inclusive. This research is a journey toward fostering waste management systems that honour cultural diversity while addressing systemic inequities. By bridging the gap between policy and practice, and between cultures and contexts, we take a step closer to a cleaner and fairer future.

—

Stay connected for updates on the findings and join me in imagining waste management that transcends borders.

Recent publications

1. Etim, E., Choedron, K.T. and Ajai, O., 2024. Municipal solid waste management in Lagos State: Expansion diffusion of awareness. Waste Management, 190, pp.261-272, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2024.09.032.
2. Etim, E., 2024. Leveraging public awareness and behavioural change for entrepreneurial waste management. Heliyon, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e40063.
3. Etim, E., 2024. Bridging the Gap: Transforming Waste Management Awareness into Action. Cleaner Waste Systems, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clwas.2024.100173.
4. Etim, E., et al., 2024. Systematic review of factors influencing household food waste behaviour: Applying the theory of planned behaviour. Waste Management & Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/0734242X241285423.

The post Exploring waste management across borders: Bridging cultures and policies appeared first on The Geog Blog.

Climate change is an increasing threat to working conditions. Some of the most vulnerable workers globally are facing risks of environmental extremes and economic exploitation.

To support organisations developing strategies to improve worker welfare in India we have designed and made freely available an online self-guided training module on the topic of climate change and working conditions in India’s brick kiln manufacturing sector. Building on successful mapping of the brick kiln industry using satellite data, and these data being applied to a survey mapping mechanism (the GeoAI App), we are now combining environmental data to further understand – and ultimately improve – working conditions.

Using climate modelling data, four key climate change impacts are modelled at the state level and the impacts can be assessed at various climate change model parameters (from 1.5, 2 and 3 degrees Celsius of warming) and three social-pathways. These risks include heat stress, water stress, precipitation, and air pollution. All impacts are present in India, but they are more extreme in some locations than others, which will mean different impacts for workers in the kilns.

Risks of the four climate hazards faced by kiln workers and their distribution across India based on the climate modelling used for the training module. All regions have risk, but in some it is larger than others.

Protecting the welfare of workers is paramount. Kiln workers often face dual risks of climate change risks whilst they work contributing to poor working conditions, as well as economic and social risks. For example, bonded labour – where a worker is bound to an employer through debts – is common in the kilns and can lead to lack of choices. Climate change is also leading to concerns of debt exacerbation as workers must adapt to more extreme weather, rather than being supported by the kiln owners.

Those on the ground working with inspectorates and civil society organisations (CSOs) educating and assisting kiln workers required methods to understand the impacts and actionable recommendations. This is why we developed the “Environmental Impacts Training Module: Assessing Risks to Workers in India” to outline the risks workers across the kiln industry might be facing, how this is likely to impact working conditions, and provide recommendations to assist multiple groups (workers themselves, kiln owners, CSOs, and policymakers).

The module is currently available in English, but we will be producing alternative language versions in the future to expand the access of the toolkit and its training ability. Further, we know that the brick kiln industry expands further than just India and, in the future, addressing the environmental impacts on workers in other geographies.

We also know that the kiln sector is seasonal, and the working population is often migratory, and thus potentially exposed to spatial variations in climate change impacts during their work in the months between April and October when kiln work is unavailable. Seeking to assess these impacts may shed light on why bondage is more likely in the kilns and how working patterns may shift in a changing climate; ultimately helping workers access support and CSOs/governments to more directly target their interventions.

By engaging with the training module, we hope to share the knowledge we have accumulated on kilns and their working conditions to a wide audience and provide actionable recommendations to improve worker welfare in the long-term.

The post Protecting worker welfare through climate change training appeared first on The Geog Blog.

A blog by Cristian Croitoru, Third Year Undergraduate Geography student

Back in mid-July 1984, the University of Nottingham staged a key event that helped define the field of cultural and historical geography. Held at Hugh Stewart Hall, the Iconography in Historical Geography: Symbols and Images of Past Environments conference was convened by Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels. This small yet significant symposium planted the seeds for what would become one of the most important works in the field: The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cosgrove and Daniels, 1988).

Original Event Programme. Click to enlarge.

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend the 40^th anniversary of the 1984 conference. Hosted by the School’s Cultural and Historical Geography Theme, this event was not just a nostalgic look back; it was a celebration of a legacy that continues to shape our field today. Dr Jake Hodder opened the conversation discussing the significance of small symposia and edited collections in shaping geographical fields. But beyond the conventional atmosphere, what was it about this conference that enabled the creation of The Iconography of Landscape? Was it the diverse and multidisciplinary nature of the gathering? Or the questioning of established ideas that attendees highlighted throughout the conversation?

Daniels himself spoke of the need to problematise established ideas. The conference presented an alternative vision of historical geography shaped by theory. Dr Susanne Seymour and Professor Charles Watkins discussed their experiences of attending the 1984 conference and how subsequent collection has influenced their teaching and research. As Seymour’s tutee, I came across Daniels and Cosgrove’s book early in my undergraduate studies – especially Brian Harley’s chapter on Maps, Knowledge, and Power. While non-geographers might consider maps a cliché within our discipline, their centrality in understanding spatial forms of knowledge across the social sciences and humanities cannot be overstated. For me, contributions, like Harley’s, taught me that maps are far more than coordinates on paper, they are tools for understanding complex spatial relations of power across societies and histories.

Next, Professor David Matless and Professor Mike Heffernan reflected on the edited collection. Matless, who helped compile the index for the book, discussed the practicalities of word processing in the late 1980s, including showing an excerpt of the original index printed by dot matrix which he found in his office. Heffernan reflected the reception the book received including some scepticism from the more-traditional Cambridge School concerning its theoretical contribution. However, in time the book was viewed as a timely contribution that geographers valued as they sought to venture into landscape studies and theories of visual culture (see della Dora et al., 2011 for commentaries).

The session then dived deeper into the chapters’ individual contributions, with three attendees discussing their interaction with the different essays from the collection, as well as providing a glimpse of their PhD journeys. Dr David Beckingham, whose research focuses on social regulation, drinking, and drunkenness, explored Mark Harrison’s essay on symbolism, crowd patterns, and their representational significance in nineteenth-century English towns. The Black Lives Matter movement is exemplary of the book’s continuing relevance. Certain areas, such as Bristol City Centre, have a particular symbolic impact on how protests are planned, mobilised, and reported, making them critical spaces for advancing scholarly discourse in spatial politics, urban geographies, and memory studies.

Upholding the topic of symbolic landscapes and their de-sanitisation, Dr Peter Martin considered Brian Osborne’s essay on The iconography of nationhood in Canadian Art as a lens on shifting debates of indigeneity and its representation in non-indigenous art. While there was an emerging sentiment to explore indigenous iconography, represented through Western art techniques, to diversify the discipline, Martin’s suggested a change in the ways we approach the subject. Rather than speaking for indigenous groups, recent work emphasises the inclusion of indigenous narratives in our discussions. This change challenges us to move beyond representation to actual engagement, ensuring that indigenous histories are told authentically and respectfully.

Closing the symposium was Enrico Priarone, a visiting PhD student from the University of Genova. Priarone presented a quali-quantitative analysis of landscape changes in the Upper Val di Vara (Liguria, Italy). Priarone’s work uses a blend of visual analysis and the concept of “landscape of practices” to reconstruct the evolution of landscape through photography, cartography, and comparison. The analysis facilitates discussions that span historical and quantitative comparisons of land use and forest distribution from the early twentieth to today. Subsequently, the latter complements qualitative descriptions of place from local populations. Priarone’s work expands our understanding of rewilding processes and the dynamic relationship with the changing landscape.

Finally, let us raise a glass to those contributors no longer with us! In their memory, I am crossing my fingers that my frantic notes taken from this session have morphed into an account not only highlighting the book’s importance but the necessity of celebrating and continuing a tradition; a tradition of challenging established ideas. Sometimes, one walks out of these events with a head spinning with ideas. Other times, they encourage new bodies of work in cultural and historical geography and beyond. Here is for keeping the flame alive, celebrating those who lit it before us, and paving the way for the future.

Relevant material

della Dora, V., Lorimer, H., Daniels, S. (2011). Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds) (1988) The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Progress in Human Geography. 35(2), pp.264-270. [Online]. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132510397462.

Daniels, S. (2009). The making of The iconography of landscape. Cultural Geographies. 16(1), pp.12-15. [Online]. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14744740090160010106.

The post Reflections on Iconography in Historical Geography at 40 appeared first on The Geog Blog.

This week, Associate Professor Dr Stephanie Coen launched a new interdisciplinary virtual lab with her colleague Dr Joanne Parsons from the University of Manitoba (Canada). The Environments Designed for Gender Equity in Sport & Physical Activity Lab – or EDGE Lab for short – focuses on the gendered environments of sport and physical activity. As a health geographer (Coen) collaborating with a clinical physical therapist (Parsons), Dr Coen sees the Lab as a platform to advance a truly biosocial approach to geographies of health, sport, and physical activity by bridging social science and clinical perspectives. The blog below introduces EDGE Lab and is cross-posted from the EDGE Lab blog. You can visit the Lab website to learn more about the EDGE vision and goals at edge-lab.org.

Read the blog here! 

The post Launch of the EDGE Lab! appeared first on The Geog Blog.

At the time of writing, I am nearly two years into my PhD research, which centres around Nottingham’s environmental transformation, specifically looking out how notions of social justice and place are considered within the city’s journey to carbon neutrality. Procedural justice is extremely pertinent within this: making sure that local people are included in decision making processes and are empowered to have a voice about what happens within the places they live. With this at the forefront of my mind, and with the best will in the world, I set out to plan my ‘community visioning’ workshops aided by the school’s wonderful ‘Engagement Hub’ funding.

My first decision was location. With social justice at the heart of my work, I wanted to support local organisations and use a space that felt welcoming for everyone (not the university, art galleries or other spaces that might feel ‘privileged’ or ‘elite’). I therefore decided to go with Heathfield Community Centre in Basford, home of The Pythian Club and The Chase Neighbourhood Centre in St Ann’s, ran by St Ann’s advice centre. These organisations are both doing incredible work around social justice and community engagement in areas that have high levels of deprivation and inequality.

With rooms booked, workshops planned and public engagement training certificate in hand, I was feeling excited for the prospect of engaging with and co-producing knowledge with community members. I had a really fulfilling and well received trial run of the activities at Green Hustle, which also helped boost my confidence. Flyers were put up in local spaces, on social media and Linkedin; councillors, faith groups, community organisaitons were emailed with information for their networks and sign-up forms.

Figure 1 Green Hustle engagement activity

Figure 2 Community map created at Green Hustle

The day of the first workshop quickly approached. Zero responses on my sign-up form. After a brief panic during which I considered cancelling the event, I thought to myself “It’s fine, people know about it and will come regardless of whether they have signed up using the link”. I carried on my day as planned – quick stop off at Doughnotts to get treats for the community members, to Sainsbury’s to get refreshments, sorting out my maps, making sure I have enough flipchart paper, checking over my activity timings, travel to the space, set up.

I sat in the empty room for around half an hour after the event ‘started’ before deciding that no-one was going to show. I failed. How am I going to explain this in my thesis? Will my supervisors think I am not working hard enough? Does this mean my work doesn’t matter? I’ve wasted the money I was trusted with. What am I going to do with all these donuts?!

Figure 3 The leftovers

Firgure 4 Workshop set up

My next workshop is in three days time and I am entering it with a certain level of fear and apprehension. This feeling is also bolstered by a negative response I had from a community representative: why am I doing this research? Why am I including communities that have ‘been researched’ before and nothing has come of it? Why am I getting peoples hopes up? While upsetting, these experiences have also encouraged me to be more critical about my work moving forward – people are currently faced with a raft of different and intersecting crises, so is it really fair of me to expect that they will willingly give up their Monday evening to come and talk about the future of their communities when so many lives are entrenched in the present condition?

After a second, more substantial panic, I realised that people’s absence from engagement with this work is telling and rich data in and of itself and will certainly add a level of interest to my methodology chapter! Ultimately I know that these hurdles are going to make me a more reflexive researcher, helping me deal with future ‘failures’ I will no doubt face throughout my career.

The post Learning from fieldwork ‘failure’ – lack of engagement with my community engagement project appeared first on The Geog Blog.

As recent research in the School of Geography has shown, conferences are always affected by the environment and atmospheres that surround them. A notably unique affective atmosphere greeted me as I arrived into the city of Bodø in Northern Norway to attend Arctic Congress 2024 – a joint conference between UArctic, High North Dialogue and the International Arctic Social Scientists Association (IASSA).

Promotional sign at Bodø airport.

Situated 50 miles above the Arctic Circle, Bodø receives nearly 24 hours of daylight at this time of year – a geographical phenomenon that delegates fully embraced at the conference’s opening drinks reception. Catching up with old friends and colleagues and being introduced to new ones while the sun poured continuously through the enormous windows of the Ramsalt Hotel, it was only by checking our watches/phones that we realised that 10pm, 11pm and indeed 12am had already passed us by. Returning to my hotel overlooking the beautiful Bodø harbour, I closed the (thankfully black-out) curtains and tried to get some sleep before the conference proper began.

Midnight sun in Bodø.

With light comes darkness however, and there were constant reminders over the subsequent days of the conference that a troubling shadow was looming large over proceedings. The current geopolitical situation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has of course had profound implications for geopolitics around the world, but this has been felt particularly acutely in the Arctic. This difficult geopolitical reality was unavoidable at the conference, and almost everyone in attendance had either been impacted directly by the troubling situation in Ukraine, or knew someone that had. The absence of many Russian colleagues who had been denied entry to Norway to attend the conference was keenly felt. Various panels and sessions had been arranged to discuss the issue and reflect on what the future of Arctic social science research might look like without access to Russian territories, colleagues and research participants. Indeed the conference even made headlines in the local Norwegian news, as concerns were raised that Russian spies were possibly lurking amongst the delegates. There was a palpable sense across the conference that a promising (and yet always precarious) thirty-year period of truly circumpolar Arctic research, collaboration and engagement had now come to an end, and that this had been replaced by an anxious uncertainty regarding what the coming months, years and decades might bring.

Other political issues were also at the forefront of the conference. Bodø is situated in Sapmi, the lands of the indigenous Sami community that span across Northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Many members of the Sami community were in attendance at the conference, and leaders from the Sami Council and Sami Parliament gave articulate and impassioned speeches at the plenaries describing the challenges their community faces both in relation to climate change, but also in terms of political recognition and involvement in confronting it. Members of other indigenous groups from across the Arctic and sub-Arctic including Inuit, Nenets and Métis representatives were also present. Many of the panel sessions were devoted to the promotion of indigenous knowledges for both understanding and tackling various environmental issues, including sea ice retreat, permafrost thaw and depleting biodiversity. Studying the Arctic as I do from the UK can at times make these vital and complex issues feel very far away. But chatting with these people and hearing stories of the intense and complex challenges they face in their day-to-day lives – but also their resolve in tackling these challenges – was a humbling yet inspiring experience.

A Sami joik performed at the conference opening ceremony.

Although primarily an event focussed on social science, the organisers had also ensured that the arts and humanities were also given a prominent footing. A cultural programme including concerts, exhibitions and film screenings accompanied the academic discussions, and it felt like every corner of Bodø had been requisitioned for these purposes. Importantly, indigenous contributions were again at the forefront. At the opening ceremony, delegates were treated to a beautiful joik (traditional Sami song), while burgers and wraps containing meat from the reindeer herded by Sami were also on offer throughout the conference. Indigenous artwork was also on display in galleries across the city, with intricate Iñupiat beadwork positioned alongside a mural produced by the Nenet community showcasing the contemporary Arctic and its challenges. Despite common assertions that the region is somehow ‘empty’, these various activities and displays certainly showed that the Arctic is of course alive with culture and creativity.

Artworks by indigenous creators on display at the conference.

With no nighttime to differentiate one day from the next, my time in Bodø went by all too quickly. Before I knew it, it was time for the closing ceremony and conference gala dinner. This was hosted in a tent inspired by the traditional Sami lavvu and food cooked on an enormous barbecue was shared amongst the newly-formed conference community. A personal highlight of the entire conference was getting to watch a performance of katajjaq (traditional Inuit throat-singing) by two Inuit performers. The whole tent was completely mesmerized, and chatting to one of the performers afterwards she joked that it was the only moment during the whole conference where nobody said a word!

The conference gala dinner held in a lavvu (image courtesy of @IASSA_SocSci on X).

The contrast between the difficult topics discussed at the sessions and the uplifting interactions between the international delegates over the five days of the conference was certainly the element I will remember most about Arctic Congress 2024. As we find ourselves in a new phase of Arctic geopolitics and research – one that sadly seems to be shrouded in darkness and disunity – it is important to remember that those of us researching the region remain committed to working together where possible to shed crucial light on the complex challenges it faces.

The post Northern Light in Darkened Times: Attending Arctic Congress 2024 appeared first on The Geog Blog.