PCF Talk #59 – Agenda Monthly Meeting – Hybrid
This is a hybrid event, please join in person, or via the zoom link below!
Theme: Mixed Methods & Design Strategies (PCF Thematic Research Group)
09:00 - 09:10
Introduction of the day:
This Meeting is organised by the PCF Thematic Group ‘Mixed Methods and Design Strategies’. This transversal thematic group wants to contribute to methodological approaches that are fundamentally spatial, and take social, affective, mnemonic, and heritage values (to name a few) explicitly into account. The group focuses on multiple forms of mapping (GIS, mental, stakeholder, etc.), as well as sensorial and design research; and we are revealing the subjectivity of stakeholders’ perspectives by other means, allowing inequality and conflicts of interest to be foregrounded in building theory, and creating the means by which societal actors may be able to identify, address and ideally resolve spatially grounded conflicts of interest.
I Public Event
09:10 - 10:00
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Amit John Kurien
Dr. Amit John Kurien, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at RV University in Bengaluru, contributes significantly to understanding water and mapping through interdisciplinary research that bridges environmental science, social dynamics, and spatial analysis. He is an environmental social scientist interested in the multidimensional issues at the convergence of environmental change and rural societal dynamics, examining the political ecology of land use change that shifts cultivation. His specific research interests are on the interface of forest management, agricultural practices, land tenure systems, and livelihood changes aimed at informing environmental conservation and development problems in the Jhum landscapes. A notable aspect of Dr. Kurien’s work is the application of remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to study land use changes. He analyses the nature and the causes of the expansion of plantations and the intensification of shifting cultivation and their consequences for people’s food security, socio-economic differentiation, and livelihood sustainability in Garo Hills, Northeast India. Dr. Kurien advocates for interdisciplinary research and methodological pluralism to address complex human-environment issues. He uses remote sensing and GIS, qual-quant social science methods, and archival data in his work, and is a conservation biologist by early training.
Presentation Title: Mapping for understanding, mapping for change
Maps are ubiquitous products of human imagination that have trickled into our lives. They define and control the way we perceive and think about landscapes and waterscapes. However, it is acknowledged now that maps are products of a reductive way of interpreting the world that both assorts and restricts the realities we see. They are thus replete with the power and politics of the ones who make the map as they cater most to the goals they aspire for. I provide an overview of the purposes and consequences of mapping that we often take for granted. I then engage with the politics of mapping and some of the social issues associated with the deployment of GIS technologies, especially for marginalized groups of people who do not have the power to control the outcomes of these maps and the realities they represent. I propose that one way to think of mapping in democratic circumstances where citizens and local people are stakeholders of the mapping project is to hand the power of mapping to the people at the lowest rung of the political hierarchy, i.e. the marginalized. Academies of learning and communities of action need to pay attention to both facets when thinking about mapping for understanding and change.
Break
10:00 - 10:15
II PCF Community Engagement - Methodology brainstorm/group discussion
10:15 - 11:00
The second part of the meeting is dedicated to sharing and discussing the methodological approaches adopted by the various PCF thematic research groups. In particular, we will focus on the topic of mapping, and we have asked each thematic group to give a 5-minute presentation on the mapping methodologies employed within that group.
We have provided the following prompts:
- Small Ports, Big Challenges: Mapping... but what? Or: How and in what ways can Spatiotemporal Datasets revise understanding of Port-City Territories?
- Coastal Cities: How and in what ways can Layered Approaches Using Maps inform Design Strategies?
- Human-Centred Port City Transitions: How and in what ways can Stakeholder Mapping be guided by Narrative Approaches?
- Everyday Infrastructures: How and in what ways does Ethnographic Mapping add understanding of Everyday Infrastructures?
Value Case Approach
Break
11:00 - 11:15
III Open Maps: Georeferencing the Port City Atlas
11:15 - 11:45
Speakers: Jules Schoonman, Yvonne van Mil, Vincent Baptist
Following up last year’s Open Maps Meeting, Jules Schoonman (digital curator at TU Delft Library) will introduce the PCF community to the Allmaps platform, which allows for georeferencing and disseminating digital maps through practices of Open Science. As a hands-on exercise with the entire PCF group, we will georeference the map series of the Port City Atlas, made available by Yvonne van Mil through 4TU.ResearchData.
In addition, we hope this practical group activity will help raise concluding questions on some of the most dominant ways in which PCF engages in mapping methods and activities, and how existing research workflows can and should be adapted to facilitate working with and interpreting heterogeneous cartographic material.
IV PCF Announcements
11:45 - 12:00