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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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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.