IGU-CSRS: Call for Abstracts, Pt 1

32nd International Geographical Union-Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems (IGU-CSRS Colloquium) 

New Ruralities: Contestations and Iterations on Rural Spatialities

University of the Philippines Diliman & University of the Philippines Baguio

1-6 December 2025

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 

In the Handbook of Rural Studies (2006), Paul Cloke argued that the shift from the functional and political-economic lenses in studying rural studies, to a more socially-constructed framing where the “importance of the ‘rural’ lies in the fascinating world of social, cultural and moral values that have become associated with rurality, rural spaces and rural life” (2006, 21) opened the rural geographies to conceptual and methodological richness.

In recent decades, rural areas have undergone profound transformations influenced by factors such as globalization, technological advancements, climate change, migration, and shifting economic paradigms. These forces challenge traditional notions of rurality and spatial organization, compelling scholars, policymakers, and local communities to re-examine and redefine rural spaces. Additionally, rethinking established concepts and approaches in the study of the rural along with the recognition that, following Michael Woods (2009, 855), there is an “uneven capacity of rural geography in different national contexts to engage appropriate conceptual tools”. Rural spatialities, therefore, can benefit from the blurring of boundaries, the recognition of multiple rural relationalities, and the connections that are forged from these complex entanglements.

The idea of 'new ruralities' centers on the multiple meanings and dynamic character of rural systems, as tied to wider local, regional and international linkages and processes. New ruralities are about development trajectories that are created by new connections, opportunities, and innovations. They are about adaptation and resistance that facilitate the reproduction of rural identities and experiences. Lastly, new ruralities include new perspectives that illuminate unique spatialities of the rural across locations and contexts. 

The 32nd IGU-CSRS Colloquium provides a valuable platform for scholars, practitioners and policy makers to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and develop a deeper understanding of rural spaces to contribute to more informed and effective rural development strategies geared toward sustainability. 

The four (4) sub-themes cover a broad range of topics that reflect the complexities of rural spaces and their evolving nature in the context of local and global challenges:

1. ITERATIONS: recurring patterns, practices, and historical continuities

2. TRANSITIONS: structural, socio-cultural, economic, and environmental shifts

3. NEGOTIATIONS: navigation of policies, markets, and socio-environmental changes

4. CONTESTATIONS: conflicts over land, resources, identities, and power

We invite scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit their panel, paper, or poster abstracts of not more than 300 words through this link: http://bit.ly/3CzPvzN. The deadline for submission is 21 April 2025. 

32nd IGU-CSRS Organizing Committee

E-mail:       igu.csrs.ph@gmail.com

Microsite:   https://sites.google.com/up.edu.ph/igu-csrs2025

__________________________

 

Texts Consulted

Cloke, P. 2006: Conceptualizing rurality. In Cloke, P., Marsden, T. and Mooney, P.H., (eds.), Handbook of rural studies, London: Sage, 18–28.

Woods, M. 2009. Rural geography: Blurring boundaries and making connections, Progress in human geography, 36(1), 125–134.

Woods, M. 2011. Rural geography III: Rural futures and the future of rural geography, Progress in human geography, 33(6), 849–858.

  

ICGS 2023 - Performative Geographies: Spatialities of Embodiment, Performance, Ideology and Practice

Human encounters with physical, emotional and imaginative spaces entail that individuals and collectives perform themselves in negotiation not only with people, landscapes and territories but also with power, ideology, and discourse. Perform. If performance is to ‘act out’ in the articulation of, among many others, spaces and places, performativity is a set of ‘citational practices that reproduce and subvert discourse’. Geographers Nicky Gregson and Gillian Rose argue that both performance and performativity are ‘important conceptual tools for a critical geography concerned to denaturalise taken-for-granted social practices, and concur with their emphasis on the creativity of everyday life.’ But we are still confronted with the question: whose stories get told, to whom, and how?

For the 2023 iteration of the International Conference on Geographical Studies (ICGS), the focus on the performative aspect in and of geography necessitates the creation of productive (and performed) spaces to hear stories of geography-informed practices in research, pedagogy, community-based work and various advocacies. This year’s Performative Geographies theme spotlights multiple performative acts and practices. Whether this is about care-ful and caring geographies of older persons and differently-abled individuals, or cartographic interventions in a marginalised community, we would like to hear stories how these spaces are produced, destroyed, re-created and subjected to multiple transformations. 

Stories can also be about the performative ‘doing’ of identities, storying violence in agroecological landscapes and bungkalan, re-spatialising performative activism for climate justice, participating in creative strategies of communities in relation to disaster preparedness, displacement of the heteronormative alignment of sex and gender (following Judith Butler), or documenting the affective practice of digitising and bringing to life the old and forgotten maps. 

Send us your narratives that describe, question, analyse, and un-think  performances and performativities in research, practice, and in everyday life advocacies, in the form of a 250-word abstract on or before 6 November 2023.

Topics include but are not limited to:

Affect and emotion 

Performing labor and work

Geographies of care

Construction of non-heteronormative spaces

Emotional geographies of mapping and mapmaking

Participatory and community mapping

Artistic and creative performativities

Landscape of violence

Post-human and more-than-human entanglements

Disaster and disaster preparedness

Geohumanities and ecocriticism

Literary geographies

Geographies of media

GIS and geovisualizations

Climate studies and climate justice

Islands, blue humanities  and tidalectics

Right to the city and the urban

Peforming aging and aging gracefully

Geopolitics and territorial disputes

Emotive cartographies

Historical geographies and heritage studies

Geonarratives, storying and storiation

Environmental sustainability

Playful and ludic geographies 

To participate in ICGS 2023, here are following guidelines:

For paper presentation, please submit the following:

- 250-word abstract

- 3-5 keywords

- Presenters and co-presenters’ names, affiliations, email addresses, bionotes

For panel sessions that feature, address, and engage with social, critical and theoretical issues relevant to geography, submit panel session proposals with the following information:

- 300-word abstract

- 4-5 keywords

- Names of at least 3 panelists, with email addresses, affiliations, and bionotes

Submit individual abstracts and panel session proposals on or before 6 November 2023. Notification of abstract acceptance is on 10 November 2023. 

ICGS 2023 runs from 24-25 November 2023 and will be held remotely. All presentations are to be recorded. These 15-minute video recordings of presentation are due on 15 November 2023. Those that exceed 15 minutes will be returned to paper presenters and will only be accepted when the 15-minute videos are re-submitted.

All submissions should be sent via this link or you can just paste the following link in your browser: https://bit.ly/ICGS2023Abstracts

For inquiries, contact the ICGS 2023 Secretariat at icgs.ph@gmail.com. For updates, please visit our social media accounts:

X [formerly Twitter] (pgs_ph)

Facebook (International Conference on Geographical Studies)

Instagram (updgeography)

De Guzman Presents Cyberfoodscapes Study in 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers

Asst. Prof. Mylene T. De Guzman presented her study entitled “Cyberfoodscapes: Instagramming the Ybanag Delicacy, Batil Patung” as part of the session, “Bagels and bytes 2: Geographies of Food in our Precarious Present” in the recently concluded 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers in Washington D.C., USA. The panel presented a discussion on the variegated ideas and debates surrounding food and the ways by which digital platforms are shaping food perceptions, practices, and performativities.

Asst. Prof. De Guzman (seated rightmost) as part of the geographies of food panel.

The exploratory study Asst. Prof. De Guzman presented focuses on the use of data scraping as a method in human geographic research in general, and food studies in particular. The paper delved into the extension of the foodscapes of a place-based dish, batil patung, into the realm of cyberspace.

Asst. Prof. Mylene De Guzman delivering the  presentation.

See the abstract of the presentation here.

See the session here.

Register to the 13th NCGS!

13th NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GEOGRAPHICAL STUDIES

Theme: Mapping Spaces of Encounter

Dates: November 12 – 13, 2018
Email: ncgs.ph@gmail.com 

Venue: University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City

Register here:
http://bit.ly/2zBsZ6m

CONFERENCE FEES

Philippine-based

• Early bird rate and PGS members (until October 15, 2018): P2,000
• Graduate Students: Php1,500
• Regular rate (October 16 – November 13, 2018): Php2,500

Overseas

• Early bird rate (until October 15, 2018): US$ 40
• Regular rate: US$50

Payment Mechanics:

• Payee Name: PHILIPPINE GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
• Account Number: 39-329-370001-0
• Bank Name: Philippine National Bank
• Bank Address: No. 3 Apacible St., UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City 
• Bank Telephone Numbers: +63-2-927-0452 / 927-4713
• Swift Code (for overseas transfers/transactions): PNB MPH MM

CONTACT

For inquiries, email the NCGS conference secretariat at ncgs.ph@gmail.com.
For updates, like the Facebook page: National Conference on Geographical Studies

NCGS 2018: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS AND PANEL SESSIONS

13th National Conference on Geographical Studies
Date: November 12 - 13, 2018
Venue: University of the Philippines-Diliman

Abstracts and panel proposals may be submitted to the NCGS secretariat at ncgs.ph@gmail.com on or before September 15, 2018. 

IMPORTANT DATES

• Deadline of confirmation to participate in the conference - September 15, 2018

• Deadline of Early bird registration and payment - September 15, 2018

• Final program - October 2, 2018

CONFERENCE FEES

• Philippine-based
• Early bird rate (until September 15, 2018): Php3,000
• Graduate Students & PGS members rate: Php3,000
• Regular rate (September 16 – October 26, 2018): Php3,500
• Late/On-site registration (After October 26, 2018): Php4,000
• Overseas
• Early bird rate (until September 15, 2018): US$60
• Regular rate (September 16 to October 26, 2018): US$70
• Late/On-site registration (After October 26, 2018): US$80

CONTACT

For inquiries, you may email the NCGS conference secretariat at ncgs.ph@gmail.com.

For updates, like the Facebook page:

The Image Looks at Itself by Aaron Vicencio

Reflection on PGS/UGAT Conference Participation

The world of the Geography Department of the University of the Philippines is expanding. Last 22-24 October 2015, the Philippine Geographical Society came together with Ugnayang Agham-Tao for a joint conference hosted at Silliman University, Dumaguete City.

The theme was "Dagat ug Kinabuhi / Maritime Cultures, Spaces and Networks” - it looks at the bodies on, under, near and far from the sea. The conference aims to reveal spaces and cultures linked to making lives near the water. A panel with Jake Cadag, PhD talked about mapping for disasters, while Andre Ortega, PhD discussed his paper on counter-mapping for people without a voice in development. A welcome surprise was the UST Sociology undergraduate students, who presented their respective individual undergraduate theses with professionalism and mastery of their topics. The conflict on South China Sea, West Philippine Sea and the contested islands gathered the most interest from the audience. However, people were generally eager to learn and share their research, revealing the wealth of information from the sea.

I was part of the panel entitled "Maritime Knowledge Conservation and Research: Visual and Performance Approaches” and it was moderated by my teacher and UGAT president, Maria Mangahas. I was presenting after Andrew Limond of Visual Folklore, Inc. and his film “Song of the Arayo” - which was a firsthand peek of how visual anthropology is used in recording cultural practices on camera and allowing a shared performance of culture and media. Liby Norman Limoso, Ma Rosalie Zerrudo (University of San Agustin) and Dennis D. Gupa (University of the Philippines Los Banos) presented their dance and paper Barangay ni Humadapnun:Panakayon sa Sakayan nga Bulawon: The Mythical Roots and Routes of Humadapnun, (the man of gold) who journeyed on a golden a boat “barangay.”Their paper was an interesting interpretation of performance and myths, of how the sea shapes our experience of the world.

After my presentation, I was approached by academics interested in using photography for their research, not much about visual culture. Their questions were about the technical conundrums and storage practices. It was interesting to listen to Yamauchi Terue give her artist’s talk about her project, Human Seascapes. Andrew Limond, Yamauchi Terue and I talked after the conference about our shared difficulties in doing our own methods, of how many cameras we have destroyed over the years, and how GoPro cameras have changed the game.

It was my first time to present in a conference outside of UP. It was my first time to present tangents of my research and photographs outside of workshops. It was the first time I was presenting as a photographer influenced with a academic geographical lens. I shared my experiences as a tourism photographer and its difficulties. I remembered that anything can get wet except for my camera. And as a reflexive photographer, one should be cognizant of how waves of images can flood our perceptions of spaces and places. Studying geography has provided me with a unique lens of looking at the world. However, I have come to realize that the visual and aesthetics are not utilized much in research here in the Philippines. Maybe by being more visible in conferences and active in research, the visual will be a vision shared by disciplines.

Aaron is a photojournalist and is currently taking up Master of Science in Geography at UP Diliman. 

Department Members Participated in UGAT and PGS Joint Conference

Faculty members and graduate students of the UP Department of Geography participated in the recently concluded Ugnayang Pang-aghamtao (UGAT) and Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) joint conference on “Dagat ug Kinabuhi/Maritime Cultures, Spaces and Networks” held in Silliman University, Dumaguete City last October 22-24, 2015.

The following papers were presented on different panels showing the breadth of spatial issues on, under and near the sea:

“From Ridge to Reef: The Contributions of Participatory Mapping in Resource Management and Disaster Risk Reduction” by Jake Rom Cadag

“Child (non)participation: Traversing the varied notions of children’s engagement in a coastal community" by Yany Lopez

“Measuring the Connectivity of Large and Medium-Scaled Sea Ports in the Philippines” by Daniel Mabazza

“GIS-based Analysis of Geographic Connections of Manila and Adjacent Towns of Bulacan in the Late 19th Century” by Ma. Simeona M. Martinez, Marco Stefan B. Lagman, Jonathan M. Villasper and Dominique Sasha N. Amorsolo (Paper presented by Ms. Martinez)

“The Island and Archipelagic Turn, Tidalectics and the Fluidity of Space” by Joseph Palis

“Cultural Bioeconomies of Invasive Fish Networks” by Kristian Saguin

“Counter-mapping masterplans: reflections on spatial translation, engagement and resistance in mapping indigenous spaces in San Ildefonso Peninsula, Casiguran, Aurora” by Arnisson Andre Ortega and Kristian Saguin

“Mediating the sea? Placing Waves of Photography” by Aaron R. Vicencio