Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-15: Jely Galang on the 19th century deportation of Chinese criminals in the colony's frontier

The state-sanctioned criminals had a checkered past in the history of the world in their banishment to sparsely inhabited terrains. Serving various state-ordered directives such as these castaways' rehabilitation, sending them to the far fringes also tests the limits of control of the state to newly acquired territories. The Spanish colonial government in the Philippines did the same during the nineteenth century: it invariably banished hundreds of Chinese criminals—vagrants, drunkards, beggars, idlers, pickpockets and unemployed—to far-flung places, especially in the southern part of the archipelago. 

In observance of the 40th anniversary of the Department of Geography as an academic unit at the University of the Philippines, the Department in tandem with the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) presents the 15th lecture for 2023 through the Heo/Geo Lecture Series. Dr Jely Galang will speak on Friday, 10 November 2023 at 5:30PM via Zoom. His presentation entitled Chinese Criminals and the Frontier in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines, traces the historico-geographical morphology of these territories in the Philippines during the Spanish era.

Apart from being a form of punishment and a means to rehabilitate these social outcasts, deportation also served as a tool of the state in occupying and pacifying the colony’s “frontier” or sparsely populated areas which were usually newly-acquired territories that existed beyond the authorities’ direct control. This presentation will revolve around the following questions: Who were these criminals? What mechanisms were involved in their forced transportation? How did such measures contribute to the economic and socio-spatial transformations of the receiving locales?

Dr Jely Galang is an associate professor of History at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of the UP Third World Studies Center and Editor-in-Chief of the Chinese Studies Journal. His research interests include the nineteenth century Philippines, Chinese in Southeast Asia, modern history of China and history of crime and punishment.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a rebranded forum for the intellectual sharing of ideas and practices of  geographers (academic, industry, alumni community) and geography-adjacent scholars for our students, staff and faculty. Jointly managed by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society, the forum has invited speakers who variously shared state-of-the art geotechnologies as well as provide intellectual provocations regarding new conceptions of space and place from disaster studies and participatory mapping, to geohumanities and island and archipelagic geographies. 

To participate in the lecture, please register using this link. Or you can copy this URL to your browser: https://tinyurl.com/4ubxmcxs

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Human Geography (HuG) research cluster of the UP Department of Geography.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-14: Mars Briones on stories of tidalectics of Sto Niño de Tacloban

Explorations of the links among place, society, and culture in some recent Anthropocene scholarship have considered islands as important sites and models of investigation. There is a growing interest in the unique relationalities materializing in and between islands—as both geographic category and symbolic concept. 

For the 14th talk of the Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2023 and sponsored by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society, Mars Briones examines these unique relationalities through narratives of the origin of the Santo Niño de Tacloban image, namely, those concerning a balyuan or exchange of Santo Niño images between Basey and Tacloban and those attributing the image’s beginnings to a piece of wood adrift at sea. Entitled Between Islands, through Storied Sea: Tidalectics in Narratives of the Santo Niño de Tacloban’s Origin, the talk happens on Tuesday, 24th of October 2023 at 5:30PM PST +8:00 | 11:30AM CET +2:00.

Mobilizing the Visayan concept of kaagi (history) vis-à-vis the concept of tidalectics in rendering and analyzing the stories, Briones seeks to dilute ideas that imagine islandness as a state of isolation, thereby foregrounding island-island relationalities and speculating on the nuanced terms of these relations. At the same time, it brings oceanic imagination to the fore by pointing out how the stories relate the Santo Niño’s origin and potency to the sea, thereby recognizing marine space as an active, storied sphere in the archipelagic assemblage. What this instantiates is a move from a terracentric discourse to one that speaks to maritime histories and cultures. Attempting to loosen the land-sea binary, Briones intimates that the stories may offer ways to think in terms of littoral liminality instead of boundary, and interisland/transmarine relationality instead of insular integrity. From these themes, he then suggests possible trajectories towards an island studies in and of Eastern Visayas.

Mars Edwenson Briones is a doctoral researcher at the Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) research hub of the University of Cologne, Germany. His current research draws upon the environmental humanities, disaster anthropology, and island studies to examine how creative and discursive expressions of place and its hazards articulate broader ideas about nature-society entanglements and how these can contribute to decolonizing disaster studies. In 2013, he earned his bachelor’s degree in communication arts from the University of the Philippines (UP) Tacloban College, where he then served as a faculty member of the Division of Humanities until 2022. In 2020, he obtained his master’s degree in art history from UP Diliman, where he wrote his thesis on the geopoetics of the Santo Niño de Tacloban image and devotion.

To participate in the lecture, click this link to register. Or copy and paste this link to your browser: https://bitly.ws/XEcM

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Geography 245 (Island and Archipelagic Geographies) class, the Geographies of Media (GEM) and Human Geography (HuG) research clusters of the UP Department of Geography. 

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-13: Andres Ignacio on resource planning and management in Bukidnon

For the 13th lecture in the Heo/Geo Lecture Series co-organised by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society (PGS) the focus is on updated and reliable data that offer a range of options for people, communities and stakeholders in a given place-based locality.

On Friday, 6 October at 5:30PM, Dr J Andres Ignacio gives a talk entitled Tracking Land Use Change Impacts on the Land and its People: The case of Bukidnon Province in the Southern Philippines. The talk spotlights the importance of updated land cover data in multistakeholder resource planning and management. Using satellite imagery to track land cover change over time in Bukidnon Province in Mindanao, a factual basis for action has been established to guide management efforts at the local government level. Data dissemination and use innovations have since empowered local governments and their partners to address the pressing needs of land and water management.

J Andres Ignacio is an experienced geospatial and environmental scientist with over three decades of experience applying GIS, remote sensing, and geospatial analysis to sustainable development and resource management projects. He holds a PhD in Geography from the Université de Namur in Belgium, an Advanced Masters Degree in Bioengineering specializing in Geomatics Technology from the Université Catholique de Louvain also in Belgium, and an MSc in Water Resources Management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr Ignacio was the Planning and Geomatics Director at the Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC), leading land cover mapping and community resource management initiatives in various provinces throughout Mindanao. He recently joined the faculty of the UP Population Institute as an Associate Professor and is also currently teaching a course on environmental geography at the UP Department of Geography.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a series of lectures on and about geography as an academic discipline and the multiple modalities where knowledge, skill and discourse can be applied to better and enhance the lives of people and community. Academic geographers, practitioners and individuals representing various collectives speak variously of their research, their projects, and advocacies that simultaneously put geography in the consciousness of Filipinos, and find ways to make access equitable for everyone.

To participate in the lecture, click this link to register. Alternatively, you can also copy and paste the following link to your browser: https://bitly.ws/VZw9

This lecture is sponsored by the following research clusters of the Department of Geography: Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) and Geographic Information Systems and Techniques (GIST)

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-12: Janina Dannenberg on the crisis of the (re)productive

Can a non-capitalist economy provide insights to society-nature relationships? 

According to Janina Dannenberg, there is a need for general transformation of society-nature relationships especially In times of socio-ecological crisis -- one where a new kind of economy (degrowth, non-capitalist) is needed. 

The approach of (re)productivity (taken from Biesecker & Hofmeister, 2010) integrates socio-ecological research perspectives with feminist criticisms of economics and offers a framework for analyzing the current socio-ecological crisis as well as for developing visions of sustainability. The ‘crisis of the (re)productive’ occurs when unpaid forms of labor or natural processes are identified as excluded from monetary valuation by the economic system but not so from exploitation through that system. The crisis is connected to material-physical, social-cultural and discursive-symbolic phenomena.

For the 12th iteration of the Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2023 (and the first one for the academic year 2023-2024), Janina Dannenberg from the University of Freiburg will share her insights on the 'crisis of the (re)productive' on Friday, 22 September 2023 at 5:00PM (PHT) / 11:00AM (CEST). Her talk, entitled Collective Landownership and the Crisis of the (Re)Productive will spotlight indigenous peoples in the Philippines. 

Based on Dr Dannenberg's fieldwork among the Matigsalug Manobo in Mindanao, the talk discusses the way collective ownership of land shapes a (re)productive economy and the crisis of the (re)productive. Land ownership is embedded in everyday practices of collective or individual land uses and organization in the domestic sphere and in the public. Therefore the study covers individual challenges regarding the crisis of the (re)productive as well as the crisis on the level of the Indigenous Peoples Organization which is responsible for managing the Ancestral Domain. It sets a focus on two fields of application of land ownership: Shifting cultivation, as a practice in crisis and ecotourism as a local vision of sustainable economy. The approach of (re)productivity is critically reflected and further developed.

Janina Dannenberg is a post-doc researcher at the Department of Environmental Social Science and Geography at the University Freiburg, Germany. She studied environmental science at University of Lüneburg with two visiting semesters at University of Philippines Diliman (2004-2005). She has written her master's thesis about conflicts on intellectual property rights on plants in the Philippines and her dissertation on collective landownership and socio-ecological crisis. She is connected to Philippine civil society through her involvement in projects on civic spaces and human rights.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society. The lecture series serves as a space to further enrich geographical knowledge of those in the academe, the industry, and various community collectives. This talk is part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the UP Department of Geography as an academic discipline in the Philippines.

To participate in the lecture, register at this link or through this link: https://tinyurl.com/me92jpf9

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-11: Miguel del Rosario on the multifacetedness of geography in the corporate world

Newly minted geographers often face a conundrum when starting their professional careers due to a perceived dearth of opportunities and applications explicitly requiring geographic inquiry and expertise. Graduating geographers navigate the job market with trepidation, competing with other applicants that have professional licenses, titles, and undergraduate degrees that are conventionally more well-known. 

However, geographers can draw from their multi-disciplinary backgrounds armed with skills and experiences that are useful in a wide career domain.

This talk from Geography alumnus Miguel “Migs” del Rosario, entitled Geographers in a corporate world: Making an impact recounts and traces his experiences during his time at the UP Department of Geography and his professional progress up to the present day. Each step of his career was and is shaped by the unique approach that geographers often utilize in their day-to-day work to make a difference in their respective fields. 

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is proud to present Migs' talk on Friday, 4th of August 2023 at 5:00PM. Sponsored jointly by the UP Department of Geography and Philippine Geographical Society in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Department of Geography as an academic unit, the Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a forum for geographers, spatial scientists and geography-adjacent individuals, researchers, and members of local communities to share, discuss and converse on a range of geographically-informed topics. Research findings whether final and completed or preliminary and in-progress are welcome. Career-related presentations such as Migs' talk aim to broaden the appeal of geography as a field of inquiry whether to pursue academic jobs, work with communities, or as a lifelong practice.

Migs completed his bachelor’s degree in Geography in UP Diliman in 2014. Presently, he heads Business Development and Marketing at Geospectrum Marketing Services, a Filipino distributor of geospatial data and satellite imagery. Concurrently acting as Vice President of Geospectrum Analytics Services Inc., he spearheads the company’s retinue of subject matter experts to transform geospatial data into actionable information for applications in Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Environment, Governance and other sectors. Previous to this, Migs has also been a Science Researcher for UP and DOST’s projects revolving around the use of LIDAR remote sensing for flood modeling.

To participate in this Heo/Geo lecture series, click the link below to register: https://tinyurl.com/5yrepwyt

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-10: Dayanara Bermudez on the use of GIS in LGU decision making

Several years ago, the largely untapped potential of GIS has seldom been used in most of the decision making processes. Now, GIS is employed for good governance: service delivery, citizens' satisfaction and efficient delivery of infrastructure services to the community.

But how is GIS interfaced in Local Government Units (LGUs) in the Philippine setting?

Turns out, LGUs are mandated by various laws to develop multiple development plans. GIS plays a crucial role in these planning and decision-making processes by integrating and analyzing spatial data, facilitating evidence-based decision-making, and enhancing overall development strategies.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series, conceptualised jointly by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society, presents a lecture from Dayanara Bianca Bermudez on 7 July 2023 (Friday) at 5:30PM via Zoom. The talk, entitled Significance of GIS in shaping Local Government Units’ Development Plans draws from the experience of Ms Bermudez as an expert in GIS focusing on digital cartography and spatial analysis.

A licensed Environmental Planner, specializing in the formulation of risk-sensitive development plans and focuses on transport planning, leveraging her deep understanding of spatial planning principles, Yannie (as Ms Bermudez is known to her colleagues), has collaborated with various LGUs, by assisting in the formulation of their development plans while also conducting GIS seminars and workshops. Yannie completed her bachelor's degree in Geography at the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2015 and immediately pursued a post-graduate diploma in urban and regional planning. Presently, she serves as a Project Development Officer IV at the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board, where she oversees the submission, monitoring, evaluation, and approval of the Local Public Transportation Route Plan on a national scale.

By incorporating demographic information, infrastructure networks, environmental conditions, and land use patterns, GIS allows LGUs to gain a comprehensive understanding of their territory, including the relationships and dynamics within their jurisdiction. In addition to visualizing the data, GIS provides analytical tools and spatial modeling capabilities that will help the LGU in identifying priority areas for development, possible impacts, and alternative scenarios. This enables LGUs to optimize resource allocation and prepare for future challenges.

To find out more what geographers do, register in this link to participate in the talk or click this link: https://tinyurl.com/ytxsy6hf

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is designed as a space for geography practitioners in the academe, industry, civil society and wider community to share ideas and state-of-the-art undertakings to promote geography as as an academic discipline, method, and discourse in its mission to serve multiple publics. The lecture series is also part of the celebration of this year's 40th anniversary of UP Department of Geography as a stand-alone academic unit. Likewise, the lecture pays homage when geography was first taught at the University of the Philippines 100 years ago.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-09: Keith Landicho on averting and outsmarting disasters

Can disasters be averted and mitigated with the judicious help of a network of tools and workflows? Find out for this month's Heo/Geo Lecture Series.

It is said that the physical conditions and existing socioeconomic vulnerability of a geographical environment combined with the threat of a hazard, determines the way that disasters are formed—the spatial extent of impact and the scale of losses. This relationship between the geographical environment and disasters may be perceived as cyclically causal in nature but there is more to it than meets the eye. This is due to the development of disaster risk reduction and management practices in the discipline of geography where it has been widely used. Additionally, there is an indication that the geographical environment, both its physical and social elements, has adapted through natural as well as anthropogenic processes. These practices are manifested through tools, workflows, and linkages that collectively aim to mitigate the impacts of disasters and anchored in the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.

For the ninth Heo/Geo Lecture Series, the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society proudly present a talk from geography alumnus Keith Landicho. Taking place via Zoom on Friday, the 2nd of June 2023 at 5:00PM, the lecture is entitled Outsmarting Disasters: Geographically-rooted Tools, Workflows, and Linkages. Keith's presentation features examples and applications of tools, workflows, and linkages utilized in the ASEAN humanitarian sphere to reduce disaster, hence a step towards outsmarting disasters.

A BS Geography graduate of UP Diliman, Keith Paolo C. Landicho is a Disaster Monitoring and Analysis Officer at the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre) and is a certified Security Risk Management Professional - Country Level contributing to the reduction of disaster losses in the ASEAN region. Keith’s seven (7) years of professional experience comprises work in the fields of disaster risk reduction and management, environmental conservation, urban heat island studies, and humanitarian response. Specializing in geospatial data analytics, Keith uses that experience to ensure that crucial knowledge and information from disasters, research, as well as policies, connects to the community, its people, and its support systems.

This Heo/Geo Lecture Series not only features speakers from the academe but also field-based practitioners working for civil society, industry, popular education, and for multiple community advocacies. This presentation is part of the many activities the UP Department of Geography and Philippine Geographical Society lined up in observance of the 40th anniversary of the discipline of geography's institution as a separate and standalone degree-granting department -- the only one of its kind in the whole archipelago.

To participate for this talk, please register through this link. Or you can click this link as well - https://up-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwtfuGqrDoqEtPKvJPNp3XE6G_QltF54kG5#/registration

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-08: Trisha Remetir on pipeline as metaphor

The pipeline—as a carrier of oil, water, or fiberoptic cables—is a military infrastructure that brings dispersed geographical sites in political and economic relation. 

Lowered onto seabeds or buried underground, pipelines change ecologies and shape relations in invisible yet irrevocable ways. But as a literary metaphor, the pipeline can be a tool for noticing submerged connections between literary cultures and even reveal weak nodes in organizing structures. 

For the 8th Heo/Geo Lecture Series, the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society present a talk by Dr Trisha Remetir from the University of California-Riverside. Titled, Pipeline Poetics, the lecture is on Friday, 26 May 2023 at 4:00 PM Philippine Standard Time | 12:00 AM Pacific Standard Time. 

This talk asks: what can a close consideration of pipelines reveal about contemporary Filipino literary geographies? By reading poets like Eunice Andrada alongside critical ocean studies and logistics theorists such as Liz Deloughrey, Nicole Starioselski, Charmaine Chua and Craig Santos Perez, Dr Remetir will discuss how an attention to pipelines (as physical structure and as literary metaphor) might reroute literary analysis away from focusing on experience to focusing on structure. For example, in Eunice Andrada’s 2021 poetry collection 'Take Care', an engagement with pipelines in stanza and image reveals the larger industries of capitalist extraction that require Filipino transnational labor. 

Following Filipinos along the pipeline, the talk hopes to reveal the limits of a literary analysis that is oriented towards a diasporic longing for home, and instead gestures toward spaces (such as the Gulf, the Pacific) that demand our attention and imagination.

Trisha Federis Remetir is a writer who specializes in narratives of race, extraction, and migration in and across the Pacific. She received her PhD in English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2022 and is currently a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her book project, Unfamiliar Waters, traces how extractive industries over waterscapes have influenced contemporary films, poetry, and experimental media. In her research and creative life, she is interested in witnessing the racial and environmental histories of the Philippines and connecting to other sites of environmental survival and struggle through the comparative potential of water.

This Heo/Geo lecture is part of the department's ongoing observance and celebration of the 40th anniversary of geography in Philippine academy. 

To participate for this talk, register here through this link or through this: https://up-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvdOCqqTMuEtJQzyykGtlO0VthM35BH_WC#/registration

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-07: Paul Schweizer on collective mapping and engaged cartography

"Collective mapping ... is a common process of territorial reflection, awareness-building and self-organization" (kollektiv orangotango).

The kollektiv orangotango is an assemblage of critical geographers, popular educators and allies in promoting horizontal knowledge co-production. Based mostly in Europe but whose alliance with activist cartographers and their communities extends throughout the world, the kollektiv promotes joint learning processes, produces DIY mapping materials (manuals, tutorials, collections of countercartographic outputs, others), and engages with "sentipensar" (sensing/thinking) to promote engaged cartography.

For the seventh Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2023, Paul Schweizer from kollektiv orangotango will talk about engaged cartography on 16 May 2023. The talk, entitled "Engaged cartography: methods and materialities of collective critical mapping" happens on Tuesday, 16 May 2023; 5:30PM PHT (GMT+8:00) | 11:30AM CET (GMT+2:00).

Paul Schweizer is a geographer and popular educator. As part of kollektiv orangotango he co-conducts collective art processes in public space, co-edited ‘This Is Not an Atlas’ and curates the notanatlas.org platform. He is also connected with the Digital Geography team of the Institut für Geowissenschaften und Geographie at Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

This Heo/Geo Lecture Series is presented by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society as part of the 40th year anniversary of the Department. This lecture is also co-organised and co-sponsored by the Junior Philippine Geographical Society - UP Diliman, Geographic Society of the University of the Philippines ❨UP GeogSoc❩ and the "Cultures of Mapping and Countercartographies" graduate class (Geog 293).

To register for the lecture, please click this link. 

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-06: Raisa Salvador and JB Valderrama on less carbon transport

The Republic of the Philippines, through the Department of Transportation (DOTr), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are working together on the Promotion of Low Carbon Urban Transport Systems in the Philippines (LCT) with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to improve the transport system in the country.

For the sixth Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2023, Raisa Neith Salvador and JB Valderrama will talk about LCT systems in the Philippines. Salvador is Project Manager and Valderrama is Research Associate of the LCT Project.

The Heo/Geo lecture, entitled "Places and Mobility: Promotion of Low Carbon Urban Transport Systems Project in the Philippines ", on Thursday, the 4th of May 2023 at 5:30 PM, is a joint project of the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society. The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a forum for academic geographers and geography-adjacent scholars, as well as geospatial industry practitioners to share their research and projects that survey multi-scalar publics.

The LCT Project aims to create an enabling environment for the commercialization of low carbon urban transport systems, through the promotion of electric and hybrid vehicles, as well as advocating alternative and active modes of transportation, such as cycling and walking. This will be achieved through 1) effective enforcement of policies and support provided for the promotion of low-carbon modes of transport; 2) adopting and implementing low carbon transport plans and/or programs in major cities; and 3) increasing private sector participation in the widespread deployment and commercialization of low carbon transport systems.

The Project will contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – more specifically SDG 11 – in providing access to safe, affordable, accessible, and sustainable transport systems for all expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons; as well as reduction of per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality. It also contributes to SDG 13 – taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts; and SDG 17, especially on promoting the development, transfer, dissemination, and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies.

The Project has implemented several activities and interventions in strengthening its efforts in promoting sustainable mobility to contribute towards the reduction of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. One of these interventions is the conduct of workshops on people’s streets or open streets with several communities to enhance their awareness and knowledge in creating and sustaining low carbon, car-free streets. The workshop introduced the concept of reimagining streets as public spaces centered around people and served as an avenue for the local government units to share their existing practices and experiences.

To register for the lecture, please register through this link: https://tinyurl.com/6thheogeo20230504

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Geography 183 (Transport Geography) THX and THX-1 undergraduate classes, 2nd Semester A.Y. 2022-23. This webinar is also a part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the UP Department of Geography. 

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-04: Aireen Andal on urban world-building among children

What ideas might geographers learn if children were to plan a fictional city?

For the fourth Heo/Geo Lecture Series, sponsored jointly by the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society, the focus is on urban imaginaries among slum-dwelling children in San Jose del Monte City. Aireen Andal from Macquarie University presents children’s urban imaginaries through a worldbuilding workshop with slum-dwelling children in the Philippines. Building on Donna Harraway’s notion of “standpoints of the subjugated”, making fictional cities prioritises the engagement of children as active participants in urban discourses, rejecting a technocratic and adultist approach in knowledge production. 

The lecture, entitled What if children created a fictional city? Urban imaginaries of slum-dwelling children in San Jose del Monte City, Philippines happens on 31 March at 4:00PM (Philippine Standard Time) | 7:00PM AEDT.

Fifteen children, 9-12 years old, created four fictional cities in groups of four. This method used a low-tech cartographic technique, including a big paper and art materials for children to design their fictional cities. Findings reveal that the fictional cities embody children’s lived realities and their aspirational visions. On the one hand, the fictional cities are tethered to slum life. On the other hand, these fictional cities also reflect children’s ideal cities. Analysis shows that children’s insights shed light on how city-building is an ongoing and evolving process, subject to the complexities and limitations of human experience. It is also argued that children are not separated from the politics of everyday spaces but are rather uniquely positioned in the power structures in their cities. Ultimately, the creation of fictional cities illustrates the role of creative methodologies to thicken geographical data and to acknowledge that children can be strong allies of critical scholarship in geographical research when their voices are taken seriously.

Aireen Andal (she/her) is a PhD candidate under a Double-PhD track in Social Sciences (Macquarie University, Australia) and Social Philosophy (Ural Federal University, Russian Federation). She is also a research fellow at the Space for Engagement and Epistemic Diversity (SEED) (University of Melbourne) and Centre of Global Urbanism (Ural Federal University). Her research pays particular attention to children and children’s spaces and the importance of children as co-creators of spatial knowledge. Majority of her academic engagements involve children’s voices on the urban spaces they occupy, with emphasis on slum-dwelling communities in the global South. Some of her recent publications include topics in the fields of children’s geographies, childhood studies, and urban and regional studies, on top of serving as a reviewer of manuscripts related to childhood research. Aireen is a scholar for and with children and their spaces. Her academic life is devoted to making children’s voices heard, their insights acknowledged, and their lives seen—matters that are hitherto often dismissed. This project is funded by the Institute of Human Geography.

The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a space that encourages geographers and geography-oriented researchers, activists, writers, artists and civil society to engage interventions and provocations with various publics. This lecture series is part of the UP Department of Geography's 40th-year celebration and an acknowledgment that 2023 is the 100th-year when geography was first taught in UP.

To participate in the lecture, please check this link to register.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-03: Philippe Rekacewicz on the radical potentials of cartography

Maps are a powerful way to reflect the world as we see it, rather than what it really is. In this context, they act as a “dreaming machine” with which we can mix reality with our fantasy. 

For the third Heo/Geo Lecture Series for 2023, geographer, cartographer, and information designer Dr Philippe Rekacewicz will provide a critical overview of the map as an invention, multidimensional, complex, and systemic object, and as a powerful tool for representing diverse sources of information (quantitative and qualitative data), as well as emotions.

Philippe's Heo/Geo lecture, entitled Radical and Experimental Practices in Cartography, on Tuesday, the 7th of March 2023 at 5:30PM Philippine Standard Time (10:30AM CET), is a joint project of the UP Department of Geography and the Philippine Geographical Society. The Heo/Geo Lecture Series is a forum for academic geographers and geography-adjacent scholars as well as geospatial industry practitioners to share their research and projects that survey multi-scalar publics. This lecture is also in line with the year-long activities of the UP Department of Geography for its 40th year anniversary (1983-2023).

Philippe Rekacewicz is a French geographer who co-published a book entitled Cartographie radicale: Explorations with Nepthys Zwer in 2022. After the completion of his study in geography at the University of Paris la Sorbonne, he became a permanent collaborator of the international newspaper Le Monde diplomatique in Paris until 2014. From 1996 to 2007, he was also heading the cartographic unit of a relocated office of the United Nations Environment Programme in Norway and was associated with various international initiatives with the UNDP and OSCE. Since 2014, he has been involved in projects linking art and cartography with art museums, research institutes, and international organizations. He is co-coordinator, with Philippe Rivière, of the website visionscarto.net, a research website dedicated to “radical and experimental cartography and geography”. Since January 2017, he acts as an associate researcher at the Department of Anthropology for the University of Helsinki for the program “Crosslocations” - 2017-2022. Currently, he is affiliated with the Social Science Group at the Wageningen University & Research for the Programme Embodied Ecologies.

To register for the lecture, please register through this link or through this link: https://tinyurl.com/pvsd3jtn

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Geography 293 (Cultures of Mapping and Countercartographies) graduate class, 2nd semester 2022-23.

Heo/Geo Lecture Series 2023-01: Kaloy Cunanan discusses spatial patterns of underdevelopment in urban Metro Manila

Sa kauna-unahang talakayan ng Heo/Geo Lecture Series ngayong taon, ang UP Department of Geography ay nagagalak na ipakilala si Kaloy M. Cunanan at ang kanyang presentasyon na pinamagatang Ilang Tala sa Medyasyon at Konsepsyon sa Paglalapat ng Siyudad Kumprador. Gaganapin ito ngayong Biyernes, ika- 20 ng Enero, taong 2023 (alas-5 ng hapon) sa Zoom.

     Photo: Amanda Echanis | Poster: Dominique Amorsolo | Heo/Geo logo: Azariah Cortez

Nagsisikap na manggagawa sa panlipunang pananaliksik si Kaloy Cunanan. Siya ay isang independyenteng mananaliksik na kasapi ng UP Center for International Studies. Sa kanyang lektyur, napagpapatuloy niya ang kanyang personal na mga adhikaing pumapaksa sa maka-Pilipinong espasyo at pag-unlad.

Kung nais mong makilahok sa panayam na ito, pindutin ang link na ito para mag register o itong link: https://tinyurl.com/dswyb7ad

Ang Heo/Geo ay ang proyektong pag-ugnayan ng UP Department of Geography at Philippine Geographical Society.