Global Development Research

Disturbing the dead: Climate change and the potential relocation of Swedish cemetries
2025-03-27 13:00 - 14:00 (Europe/London)
You are warmly invited to a Human Geography Research Cluster/ Global Development Research Division in person (Sorby Room 115, 1st Floor of Wager Building) / hybrid seminar (1-2pm on 27/3/25).
Disturbing the dead: Climate change and the potential relocation of Swedish cemeteries
Roger Marjavaara, Umeå University, Sweden.
Abstract
This presentation focuses on the contradiction of mobility and immobility in relation to interred human remains. While society generally embraces human mobility, once individuals pass away and are disposed of, mobility ceases to be the norm. Some counties, like Sweden, has a rigid burial legislation that prohibits the re-location of interred
human remains. However, both society- and climate-related events are increasingly affecting the eternal rest of the deceased. Utilizing quantitative data on all cemeteries in Sweden, this study aims to assess and analyse the potential magnitude of future large-scale moves of human remains due to expected impacts of climate change, and to put this into a relational context of norms and laws. Results show that climate change poses an apparent
risk to cemeteries in Sweden.
Biography
Roger Marjavaara is associate professor in human geography at the department of geography at Umeå University, Sweden. The main focus of his research is the driving forces and consequences of human mobility. Here, temporary mobility, or tourism, is of special interest, especially second home tourism and its impact on places and people.
Dr. Marjavaara also has an interest in production and reproduction of places, and retail geography and mobile consumers. Further, post-mortal mobility is another field that has attracted his research attention.
________________________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Teams Need help?
Microsoft Teams Need help?
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 357 220 295 754
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dial in by phone
+44 20 7660 8335,,915358739# United Kingdom, City of London
Find a local number
Phone conference ID: 915 358 739#
For organisers: Meeting options| Reset dial-in PIN
University of Reading
_____________________________________________________________________

What Next for Our Broken Aid System?’
2025-04-08 13:00 - 14:00
DSA Webinar
Recent upheavals in aid programmes have had devastating consequences for vulnerable populations worldwide. As well as attracting widespread denunciation, such disruptions have prompted critical reflections on the aid system as a whole. While some critics point towards inefficiencies within aid agencies, others question the geopolitical motivations that drive and shape foreign aid provision. So, at a time when scholars and practitioners are actively debating the effectiveness and equity of aid delivery, could these dramatic changes serve as a catalyst for reform? In the long term, how can we move beyond an international aid system controlled by global North states? This panel discussion will explore whether the current crisis presents an opportunity to build a more resilient, just, and sustainable aid system – one that is less susceptible to political shifts and funding volatility.
This event is in partnership with the Global Development Institute, at the University of Manchester.
Panellists: Nicola Banks, Global Development Institute; Divine Fuh, University of Cape Town; Nick Jepson, Global Development Institute; Sue Roberts, University of Kentucky; Bright Simons, ODI. Moderator: Peter Sutoris, University of Leeds.
Register: https://bit.ly/whatnextaid

HGRC Seminar: Laura Pottinger, University of Manchester
2025-05-15 13:00 - 14:00
You are warmly welcome to join our online Human Geography Research Cluster seminar, in which Laura Pottinger, University of Manchester will present:
Making (slowly) as method in socio-environmental research?
In this talk, I draw on emerging ideas about ‘patchwork ethnography’, an approach mobilising the often multi-sited, fragmented, non-linear character of ethnographic research in practice. I share early findings from an extended six-year study that uses a range of creative and material methods to explore environmental understandings and people-plant relationships in the practice of natural textile dyeing. I ask how the ‘soft’ metaphors of piecing, steeping and stitching might be useful for cultivating gentle, creative and slowly-paced methodological praxis.
Biography:
Laura Pottinger is a research fellow in cultural geography at the University of Manchester. Her research is interested in everyday forms of social and environmental activism, people and plant relationships, craft and cultivation. She draws on creative, participatory and ethnographic methodologies to explore these themes. Her current fellowship research works closely with textile artists and makers to consider the potentials and challenges of slow making.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Microsoft Teams Need help?

Join the meeting now

Meeting ID: 376 315 403 228

Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dial in by phone

+44 20 7660 8335,,989865079# United Kingdom, City of London

Find a local number

Phone conference ID: 989 865 079#

For organizers: Meeting options | Reset dial-in PIN

University of Reading

____________________________________________________________________________

Department of International Development Postgraduate Research Conference
2025-06-04 09:00 - 16:00 | Agriculture Buiilding 1L08
On behalf of the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at the University of Reading, we are pleased to invite you to our upcoming Postgraduate Research Conference organised by the Department of International Development, taking place on Wednesday, 4th June 2024, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM BST. You are welcome to attend either in person or online via the Microsoft Teams link provided below.
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 369 998 075 918 3
Passcode: [REDACTED]
This conference will showcase innovative research from PhD researchers at the Department of International Development, highlighting work that contributes meaningfully to the field of International Development globally. In addition to a keynote speech by Prof. Uma Kambhampati, president of the Development Studies Association (DSA) and Head of the School of Politics Economics and International Relations, a panel of experts will delve deeper into various research topics with a question-and-answer session to close out the conference.
Please see poster below for details:

We look forward to welcoming you to the conference.

HGRC Online seminar Thursday 5 June : Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin, Queens University
2025-06-05 13:00 - 14:00
You are warmly welcome to join the online Human Geography Research Cluster seminar on Thursday 5 June 13.00-14.00 (Teams link below). Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin, Queens University will present:
“We gats to double our hustle”
Taking seriously Thieme’s (2025) call for “hustle studies”, I present vignettes from Lagos and Ibadan, Nigeria that clearly illuminate the diversity of hustle practices among urban dwellers, particularly youth. My presentation thinks with Guma et al (2023) and uses an “urban way of life as survival” approach which considers survival as a universal and multifaceted phenomenon that constitutes a way of life, a way of living, and a way of being in the city (p. 276). This approach provides a more comprehensive and holistic view of urban life, focusing not just on the urban poor but also the working class, middle income, and affluent residents (p. 280). I thus argue that considering hustling as a form of survival invites us to move beyond spatializing hustle to the margins.

Grace Adeniyi-Ogunyankin is the Queen’s National Scholar in Black Geographies and the Canada Research Chair in Youth and African Urban Futures at Queen’s University. She is jointly appointed, as an Associate Professor, to the Department of Geography and Planning and the Department of Gender Studies. The bulk of her research is concerned with how the African urban future is portrayed in popular culture and imagined by urban dwellers, and politicians/policy makers. To this end, she is interested in the politics of identity, place-making, spatial inequality, and everyday resistance. Her current ethnographic research explores the relationship between youth, labour and urban transformation in Ibadan and Lagos, Nigeria. She is intrigued by the role that intersections of neoliberal urban change, technology, global consumer culture and labour play in (re)configuring youth identity and providing opportunities for youth to orient themselves towards the future. Her research focus on popular culture explores the issues of race and representation and the use of Afrofuturism in geographic projects that address the colonial politics of difference.

________________________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Teams Need help?
Join the meeting now
Meeting ID: 390 147 675 282
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dial in by phone
+44 20 7660 8335,,693260690# United Kingdom, City of London
Find a local number
Phone conference ID: 693 260 690#
For organisers: Meeting options| Reset dial-in PIN
University of Reading
