Cultural Geography Blog

Very much looking forward to visiting this particular city...

I've been doing a lot of reading (and some writing) about Iceland ahead of my next visit there at the weekend. The Sagas are an important part of Icelandic identity, and are very much stories of the everyday geographies of people and their quarrels and feuds, often between family members. They are bloodthirsty and grim, and funny and powerful in their nature. Carol Hoggart has written a very useful piece in the journal Limina. This publishes pieces relating to history and cultural studies. Read the article on the University of Western Australia (PDF download) Description: Iceland at the time of Norse settlement (c.870) was territory unmarked by human culture. It was a space with no history, no myths, no stories attached to it – a land with no human meaning.  The ‘family sagas’ written in thirteenth-century Iceland (the Íslendingasögur) describe the past in a way that fills an empty terrain with significance – or as Jürg Glauser puts it, they perform a ‘semioticization of the lan

As mentioned in a recent post, I visited Bucharest a few months ago for what may be my final transnational meeting as part of an ERASMUS funded project, representing my school. I have also contributed to the final report for what is very likely to be my final ERASMUS project, and which is being signed off this week. ERASMUS was one of the (many, many) casualties of the catastrophic decision to leave the European Union.  ERASMUS has offered me the chance to travel and work with colleagues across Europe since 2010 when I first got involved, thanks to Karl Donert. I have worked on a number of projects over the years, on projects which received millions of pounds worth of funding. These have offered the chance for students at my school to visit other countries and connect with students in very different circumstances and work on collaborative projects over an extended period of time which have developed their own social and other skills. DigitalEarth - a major European network - working o

Visit the GeographyalltheWay page to find out all the details about a new opportunity for teachers. An inspection visit to Morocco will run over the October half term. It will be led by Mike McHugo and Richard Allaway. Morocco is a country which Richard has visited many times with his students, and he has already produced a number of excellent resource based on the country and in particular certain key locations which are visited by school groups. A sample itinerary: Day 1 - Friday Plan to arrive on an early morning flight to Marrakech. Lunch in Marrakech and an afternoon orientation tour around the medina/souk. Transfer to the mountain village of Imlil for an evening meal and hotel/reflection time. Day 2 - Saturday Breakfast followed by an orientation tour around the mountain villages of Arremd and Imlil (water/carbon cycle, water management, the impact of tourism, sustainable development, etc.). Opportunities to meet with members of the local community. Evening meal/reflection time.

One of my favourite pieces of classical music - playing on the radio this morning as I arrived at school.

We are now coming to the final stage of the GI Pedagogy project. The target audience is wide and you may be part of it... The project’s outputs and events are aimed specifically at supporting educators (Horizontal Priority: Supporting Educators).  This training will help teachers embed GIS within their curriculum.  It will support them to feel confident in teaching GIS as a fundamental tool for modern geography, not as a superficial add-on to existing methods. The training takes the form of a MOOC: an online course basically, with resources, videos and presentations. Feel free to check it out. Also feel free to follow us on Twitter @GIPedagogy.