During the pandemic, many prominent global leaders and scholars have called for placing science above politics. This commentary argues that such rhetoric dangerously oversimplifies science and politics as insular from democracy and geographical context. The theory of co‐construction from science and technology studies reveals the pandemic’s geographic intersection with other threats to democracy such

Local, traditional or indigenous knowledge play an important role in disaster risk reduction (DRR), and many policy recommendations now call for the integration of local and expert views. While these attempts at integration are indeed promising, they are often built on assumptions that local knowledge is inherently separate from, or even subordinate to, expert perspectives. This article presents an

Resilience has recently emerged as a conceptual and operational buzzword spanning every facet of the international development agenda. The rise of resilience provides renewed opportunities for geographers to critically engage with the policy sphere and shape ongoing discourse over the nature of resilience programming. Yet, while aspects of the political economy of resilience have long been acknowledged

Climate change plays a role in the increased intensification and frequency of bushfire seasons, although it promotes hot and dry conditions rather than directly causing fires. Prompted by the severe fire season in late 2019 and early 2020 in SE Australia, this Commentary notes the complexity of the causal chain leading to such events; and focuses on the importance of ignition sources and fuel supply

In the Society’s first virtual AGM, the President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) The Rt. Hon. the Baroness Chalker of Wallasey reflected on three ambitions: to improve public health everywhere; to put nature conservation into all decision making as a fundamental requirement of sustainable development; and the central importance of clear communication.

Geographers have shown how mobile phones are transforming urban economies in Africa by altering the temporal and spatial nature of commercial transactions. Less well documented is how young people in Africa are using mobile phones to navigate the interplay between personal hopes, social expectations, and financial uncertainty associated with urban life. Drawing on qualitative data from youth in two

Recently, much scholarship has been dedicated to exploring China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A majority of this work has focused on global dimensions of the BRI, typically considering notions of a changing geopolitical landscape or South–South cooperation. However, these grand narratives often displace local realities, especially in the arenas of local political conflict and environmental degradation

While water networks were built at the same time as modern cities to avoid epidemics, today urban water studies seldom take into account the criterion of quality, which, however, remains essential in characterising drinking waterscapes. Papers defining drinking waterscapes focus on the importance of certain factors – topography, socio‐economic levels, cultural or political aspects, among others – to

As a geographical tool, epidemiology represents a distinct way of seeing and knowing disease. Used as a governmental rationality to control animal disease, changes in epidemiological practice have been understood as technological evolutions. In doing so, however, this view disguises the “messy realities” of epidemiology, the relationship between different epidemiological practices, and the work required

This paper examines the multiple temporalities of lifestyle migration through the study of the Houniao (“snowbirds”), mostly retirees from northern China. It attends to their seasonal migration to Sanya and Haikou, and explores the reconstruction of everyday practices, experience, and identities in association with their perceptions of past, present, and future. Personal biographies and national socio‐economic

Inspired by Japanese faith groups, organic food production has witnessed surprising growth in East Asian countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, over the past two decades. The rapid expansion of East Asian trans‐national organic food production networks is closely linked with religious practices and beliefs, such as ahimsa (non‐killing). The complexities of transnational organic production

The economic crisis which has affected the southern EU countries since 2008 set in motion new migration trends. In the case of Portugal, post‐crisis migrations have been in two main directions: northwards to more prosperous European countries, and southwards to former colonies in Africa, notably the oil‐producing state of Angola. Focusing on this latter migration, the paper is structured around two

This themed section was initiated after the 2016 Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society‐Institute of British Geographers, which had the overall theme of Nexus Thinking, and which included assessment of geographical dimensions of the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus. In this short editorial introduction, we outline the context for this assessment, and introduce the particular focus of the

In January 2010 we learnt that within London the best-off 10th of the population each had recourse to 273 times the wealth of the worse-off 10th of that population (Hills et al. 2010, An anatomy of economic inequality in the UK Report of the National Equality Panel, Government Equalities Office, London). It is hard to find any city in an affluent country that is more unequal. This wealth gap did not

Current governance configurations have been signalled as a key driver for, but also a potential solution to, food insecurity and sustainability challenges. In this context, cities are becoming key transition spaces where new food governance systems are being fashioned, creating “spaces of deliberation” that bring together civil society, private actors, and local governments. To date, food governance

In this commentary we trace an important change in the use of social licence for resource‐intensive development projects. Social licence is shifting from an approach used by companies to improve relations with affected communities to a concept now used by environmental justice groups, non‐governmental organisations and local communities to contest unpopular resource‐intensive development projects.

The Nagoya Protocol encourages academics, government bureaucrats, and traditional owners to look at how customary law might be utilised within state law frameworks to improve and resolve “access and benefit‐sharing” processes. This paper examines and reviews legal, anthropological, and historical texts relating to biodiversity and associated knowledge to explore Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island

In her first Address as President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), The Rt. Hon. the Baroness Chalker of Wallasey reflected on the importance of supporting rural communities in the developing world, through education and sustainable employment opportunities, alongside animal and habitat conservation efforts.

The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) annual Medals and Awards recognise achievements in researching, communicating, and teaching a wide range of geographical knowledge. The speeches and citations are a record of the 2019 celebration, with contributions from Professor Trevor J. Barnes, Professor Mark Birkin, Dr Ayona Datta, Dame Fiona Reynolds, and Professor David S. G. Thomas. The speeches include

Assessments of the development of geography as a discipline, and studies of sub‐disciplinary development within geography, have generally focused on the subject matter under study. Consideration has concentrated on topics, theories, methods, and paradigm shifts identified by analyses of published literature. There has been rather less interest in the spatialisation of the practice and performance of

This paper explores the rise of voluntourism in Fiji, a country reliant on tourism but which is a relatively new market for voluntourism. It draws from research examining the role of voluntourism in development through a case study of the experiences and discourse of voluntourists, a host community, and the staff of a commercial voluntourism organisation in Fiji. While voluntourism is the focus of

Relocation of communities is widely expected to be an adaptive response to sea‐level rise, albeit a last resort after exhausting other adaptation options. It is a phenomenon, however, from which there are few examples to learn. This paper examines relocation processes underway in three low‐lying coastal villages in Fiji, each affected by coastal erosion and flooding. Drawing on the concept of “everyday

The literature on socio‐technical transitions analyses multi‐scale, nonlinear changes in societal systems, but has tended to ignore the geography of these changes. This paper addresses this gap by focusing on a geographical periphery, rather than on the urban core, and considers a transition–periphery framework to provide a way to conceptualise and examine the dynamics of resource peripheries within

In this editorial introduction, we outline recent debates on geographies of education, specifically on themes of nature, place, and outdoor landscapes. We argue for the need to extend these discussions due to the rising popularity and politicisation of educational encounters in outdoor landscapes, as well as their long‐standing relationship to a series of moral geographies. We introduce the main focus

A nation's education system plays a key role in future economic competitiveness. Political attention to education has fuelled geographical interest in the role of formal education and informal learning environments in the cultivation of future citizen‐workers. To date, formal and informal learning have largely been considered separately, but this paper responds by critically evaluating the intersections

At a time of acute housing crisis, hotels are increasingly being deployed to give temporary shelter to homeless families in wealthy cities. This paper explores the socio‐political implications of the use of hotels for temporary accommodation, drawing on research conducted in Dublin. Specifically, we argue that the housing of homeless families in hotels exposes how they are made out of place in the

Spatial urban housing submarkets are now widely used constructs. Recent housing market modelling strategies have emphasised the need for flexibility in modelling approaches in order to best accommodate submarkets which account for spatial variations in hedonic prices. But this raises important unanswered questions concerning the stability of submarket structures over time, and the role of housing market

Notions of what a successful academic should be doing – researching, publishing, teaching, serving the academic community – are often dependent upon particular practices of corporeal mobilities. These practices discursively and materially connect historically situated academic mobilities with the “modern,” globalised university system. At the same time, there is increasing attention being paid to the

This paper explores how small group sharing practices contribute to wider community hierarchies. Using a combination of qualitative, quantitative and network data, the paper shows how small group reciprocal practices overlap to generate key nodes within community scale networks, creating hierarchies and information inequalities in each site. Thus, the paper aims to draw closer conceptual linkages between