24 November 2024

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2024-11: Naomi Irapta self-reflexively situates the middlegrounds in geography

What does it entail to be multidisciplinary?

The geographer, whose training spans the breadth of physical and human geographies, may find themselves in the middle ground of the natural and social science disciplines. Those who stay in this middleground may feel like “outsiders” in both disciplines, yet holistic and collaborative work needs us to “come out of our boxes” and meet in these middlegrounds.

On Friday, the 29th of November 2024 at 5:30PM PHT / 10:30AM CET, Naomi Paula Irapta from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary will deliver a paper via Zoom entitled Unboxing: Multidisciplinary engagements of an earth scientist. For the 11th edition of the Heo/Geo Lecture Series, the lecture is jointly sponsored by the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) and the UP Department of Geography



Drawing from her experiences of being in this ‘middleground’, Naomi presents various avenues to experiment, explore, and expound earth science knowledge in different ways: as a teacher, as a collaborator in art projects, and through professional engagements as a geoscientist. We “unpack” these examples to show how the concepts of ‘geodiversity’ and ‘human-landscape interactions’ and ‘risk’ are presented in various contexts, integrated into different spaces to foster meaningful discussions and contribute to projects with distinct objectives. Naomi Irapta's role, as a multidisciplinary researcher, is that of a translator of concepts and ideas that make them “usable” in specific contexts and finding that it’s these translating and weaving “knowledges” that is integral in meaningful interdisciplinary work.

Naomi works at the interface between natural and social sciences to explore landscape and its associated risk, abiotic nature conservation, and public geoeducation. She is a licensed Geologist in the Philippines, she has a masters in “Magmas and Volcanoes” from Université Clermont Auvergne. She also gained her training in the social sciences by completing the core courses for the MS Geography program at UP Department of Geography. She is currently a PhD student of Physical Geography at Eötvös Loránd University, working on volcano geoheritage. Her professional work experience spans a wide range of fields from local volcanic DRR consultations to reviewing scientific significance of geoheritage sites for the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) Geoheritage Commission, as well as university-level teaching at the University of the Philippines (College of Science and the College of Social Sciences & Philosophy). She is also part of the UNESCO IGCP 692 “Geoheritage for Resilience” Project. On the side, she works in collaboration with community art initiatives to make geo-education accessible, focusing on the interconnection of abiotic nature conservation and social justice.

To participate in the lecture, register by clicking this Zoom link https://tinyurl.com/yk5fv69a

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a monthly lecture and resource talk where academic geographers, geography-adjacent scholars, practitioners working in geospatial industries, and in communities share their research findings, pedagogical practices, and field-based experiences. Jointly presented by PGS and the UP Geography, the speakers of Heo/Geo are faculty members, alumni and scholars based locally and abroad. This year's Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a continuation of the 40th anniversary celebration (1983-2023) of the Department and facilitated by three research groups at the UP Department of Geography: Geographies of Disasters and Hazards (G-DASH), Human Geography (HUG) and Media, Literary Geographies, and Geohumanities (MELANGE), and in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals #4 (Quality Education), #15 (Life on Land), and #17 (Global Partnership for Sustainable Development). 


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