Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-05: Kevin Fox on geographic inquiries initiated by the Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute

When Derek Gregory published Geographical Imaginations in 1994, the book puts emphasis on relational understanding of individual worlds as intertwined with global-universalisms. Gregory was not the first one to discuss permutations of imagination in relation to geography. Hugh Prince, David Harvey, Yi-Fu Tuan, Katherine McKittrick and Jen Jack Gieseking added different interpretations, case studies, and situated ecologies to expand the scope and reach of geographical imaginations. 

It is perhaps in this spiritual vein that Kevin Fox's version of geographical imagination as formalized by founding The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute (The GIEI), stems from pluralizing the concept (like Gregory) and providing multi-scalar and multi-cultural examples of meaning-making that situate individuals and collectives in space and place.

For the fifth Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026, the Department of Geography (DGeog) of the University of the Philippines-Diliman together with the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) proudly present a talk: Inner Geographies: Imagination, Experience, and Global Citizenship by Kevin Fox on Friday, 24 April 2026. To be delivered via Zoom, the talk starts at 5:30PM-Philippine Standard Time (11:30AM CET). 

The talk introduces the work of The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute (The GIEI), a non-profit initiative working across three interconnected geographical dimensions: the global, the local, and the inner. The GIEI translates key ideas from human geography into accessible and participatory forms, expanding popular understandings of geography to include the internal dimensions of perception, imagination, and meaning-making that shape how individuals locate themselves within an interconnected planet.

The name draws inspiration from the Detroit Geographical Expedition & Institute (1968–1971), an experiment in local, community-based geography that sought to democratize knowledge production and center marginalized perspectives.  Building on this legacy, The GIEI extends geographic inquiry inward, treating the inner world as a legitimate site of exploration. From this foundation, it develops participatory approaches to global citizenship education through interconnected practices including research, storytelling, simulation, advocacy, and lexicon-building.

Central to this work is The World as a Village of 100 People, a civic-assembly simulation that translates global inequalities into lived, dialogic experience. The process unfolds across three phases—orientation, imagination, and transformation—guiding participants from understanding global systems, to inhabiting diverse perspectives, to collectively envisioning alternative futures.

Moving from The GIEI’s earlier work in visual and audio storytelling toward a broader institutional vision (The GIEI 2.0), the talk reflects on the shift from project-based initiatives to the design of scalable frameworks for global citizenship learning.

Kevin S. Fox is a human geographer and the founder and director of The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute. With over 20 years of experience in global citizenship education, his work explores how individuals and communities understand their place within an interconnected world. He has developed programs that integrate storytelling, simulation, and field-based learning to make global systems more accessible and participatory. A National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow and Inner Development Goals Ambassador, he works at the intersection of human geography, critical pedagogy, and imagination to advance new models of global learning. Originally from Connecticut (USA), he currently lives on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.

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. This month’s Heo/Geo Lecture Series is facilitated by two research clusters at the UP Department of Geography: Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE) and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) of the United Nations.

To participate in the event, click this link to register. You can also click this link: https://tinyurl.com/4bmbjrz2

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Works cited:

Fox, Kevin S. The Geographical Imaginations Expedition & Institute

https://www.geographicalimaginations.org/about/ 

Gieseking, Jen Jack. 2017. Geographical Imagination. In International Encyclopedia of Geography (eds. D. Richardson, N.Castree, M. Goodchild, A. Jaffrey, W. Liu, A. Kobayashi, and R. Marston). New York: Wiley-Blackwell and the Association of American Geographers.

Gregory, Derek. 1994. Geographical imaginations, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Harvey, David. 1973. Social Justice and the City. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.

McKittrick, Katherine. 2006. Demonic Grounds Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Prince, Hugh C. 1962. The Geographical Imagination. Landscape 11: 22–25. 

Tua, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota Press.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2026-04: Kukasina Kubaha on the archive and queerness in a Thai borderland

How do we queer the archive?

In the late 1980s, Thailand’s first lesbian magazine was published. Although most of the readership were concentrated in Bangkok and other metropols, there were entries from ‘women loving women’ from Patani —the borderland of Thailand and Malaysia where the Muslim minority are a majority. This is an area where Queer stories have been silently erased from history. Much has been said about male homosexuality in Islamic history and culture, and while there is a rise in feminist scholarship in Patani, it only seems to focus on the experiences of cis-female and heterosexual women. Furthermore, there is a tendency to compare the feminist movements that are happening in Patani to the Middle Eastern Arab world, but few have compared the situation to neighbouring Islamic societies such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei Darussalam. 

For the fourth talk in the Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2026, it is with pride that the U.P. Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) announce a jointly-sponsored talk: Mapping Sapphic Patani, Tracing the Southeast Asian “Queer Regional Imagination" to be given by Kukasina Kubaha from the University of Hamburg via Zoom. The talk is on Friday, 27 March 2026 at 5:30PM [UTC +8 Philippine Standard Time (PHT) / 11:30AM UTC +1 Central European Time (CET)]. The talk is also in celebration of the National Women's Month in the Philippines. 

In this project presentation, Kukasina Kubaha intends to trace the queer movements in Islamic Southeast Asia, especially in works of art, to see the negotiations between the self and religion, the conversations, and the influences they had on each other. Thus, mapping and archiving the ‘queer regional imagination’ (Gopinath, 2018.) The project will touch upon two main notions: the archive and Queerness. By delving into entanglements of Southeast Asian queer art networks along with its connections to outside the region, the talk intends to ‘queer’ the archive both in terms of the thinking about the archive as not static, and to tell more stories or Queers who are often left out of main historiography, while also challenging the notion of archival violence and how the archive can be imagined otherwise.

Kukasina Kubaha is a translator, writer, curator and dreamer of better worlds. She is currently completing a Master’s degree at the Universität Hamburg, where she is pondering the question of the archive and how to build a counter-archive of queer women in Thailand's Deep South through literature, film, and contemporary art. Her recent historical fantasy, ‘Nidra Nirat: A Dream Depository’ is published with New Naratif (https://newnaratif.com/nidra-nirat-a-dream-depository/) and a collage of prints she made based on her archival research is exhibited in the upcoming edition of Southeast Asia Queer Cultural Festival which can be found here: https:// seaqcf.net/. Her curatorial projects also aim at using art as a form of activism and advocacy.

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. 

This Heo/Geo Lecture is presented by the Human Geography (HUG) and the Media, Literary Geographies and Geohumanities (MELANGE) research groups of the UP Department of Geography and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) and #15 (Life on Land) of the United Nations.

To participate in the lecture, click this link to register via Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/2phrrfdp

References: 

Gopinath, Gayatri. Unruly visions: The aesthetic practices of queer diaspora. Duke University Press, 2018.

Geographers Conduct Workshop on Peer Review at PSSC

The Philippine Social Science Council (PSSC) invited three resource speakers for a workshop called Peer Review in the Social Sciences for the whole day on Monday, 16 February 2026. 

The three geographers -- Drs Vanessa Joy Anacta, Yany Lopez and Joseph Palis -- are members of the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and full time faculty of the University of the Philippines-Diliman Department of Geography. 

Attended by 24 participants coming variously from the cities of Bacolod and Quezon City, the workshop divided the topics into four major areas pertaining to effective, mindful and reflective peer review: fundamentals, processes, writing and ethics. Two breakout sessions were facilitated to allow the participants to reflect as a group and individually, on the prepared manuscripts for review. 

The resource speakers represent a broad swath of experience in peer review for journal and book publications. They provided examples of standard practice from the regions where they spent considerable time when completing their doctorate degrees: Europe, the United States and Australia. While standards vary, the resource speakers emphasize the different review practices consistent with the goals of specific publishers (single/double/triple blind reviews as well as transparent, collaborative and post-publication practices). Also proceeding ethically in the peer review undertaking, and developing mentorship mentality especially for early career researchers are the essentials in reflective and constructive peer review.

Feedbacks from the audience range from the challenge in searching qualified peer reviewers, to realizing that peer review can be an opportunity to frame 'flaws' as remedial.

To know more about the peer review for geography, contact geography.upd@up.edu.ph or visit the Department's website  or PGS.