The Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference brings together around 2,000 geographers to meet and exchange ideas. This year it took place in London around the theme of mapping:
“We live in a world that is saturated with maps. They trace invasions, financial crises, pandemics and environmental disasters, and our responses to them. Maps plot and coordinate surveillance, and counter-plot evasion and resistance. They can be ephemeral sketches or visualisations for the ages. They chart jet streams, oceanic oscillations and ozone holes, heatwaves, droughts, and drizzles”
Stephen Legg, University of Nottingham (UK), Conference Chair, 2024
This year at the RGS conference I organised and chaired a session titled ‘Connecting Decolonial Quantitative Geographies’, with a colleague and lecturer in the Geographic Data Science Lab from the University of Liverpool, Dr Elisabetta Pietrostefani. We decided to organise the session because of a sense of frustration at the tendency for the quantitative sector of human geography to ignore and overlook data poor contexts and the politics surrounding quantitative data. Data is inherently political, in terms of who it is collected for and by, and who is not included. Places and perspectives of communities in the Global South and those communities residing in the Global North are underrepresented in the discipline. Me and Elisabetta wanted to have a conversation about how we put data-scarce regions on the map using new forms of data, and the challenges of doing this in a critical, ethical and reflexive way.
Organising the session began by putting together a brief proposal for sponsorship from the Quantitative Methods Research Group, who shared a call for paper sessions, poster presentations or panels in January 2024. They particularly encouraged proposals for special sessions led by post-graduate students. Attending and participating in conferences requires advanced planning! Organising the session alongside Elisabetta was invaluable and she guided me through the process. Once our request for sponsorship was accepted, we shared a public call for speakers on X (twitter) and through our networks. We accepted four presentations:
- Repositioning Stakeholders in Informal Commodity Markets: Blockchain for Fair and Transparent Resource Provision in Slum Communities (Ron Mahabir, Desiree Daniel-Ortmann, Olga Gkountouna
- Doing quantitative geographies responsibly (Gunjan Sondhi)
- Decolonising Spatial Data Science for People, Place and Planet (Trivik Verma, Laura van Geene, Caitlin Robinson, Juliana Goncalves)
- Decolonizing Practices in Quantitative Spatial Science (Elisabetta Pietrostefani)
On the day, chairing the session involved logistics like setting up the online meeting and introducing the speakers. After the presentations, I helped to facilitate a discussion with the audience and speakers to discuss the ideas raised and challenges of decolonial practices. Since there was a small-ish audience a colleague advised me to ask people to introduce themselves at the start of the session, which worked well, and I would recommend this to foster a welcoming and inclusive space for open discussion! I want to thank all the speakers and audience for their contributions.
Following the RGS, Elisabetta and I are writing a position paper summarising our ideas on how we can work towards a less colonial and inclusive quantitative geography field. Chairing and organising the session was an inspiring and rewarding experience and an opportunity to do something I’m passionate about that is a bit different to my PhD research. I learnt a lot from the presentations and connected with researchers that I share interests with, as well as developing discussion and networking skills. I am very grateful for the support of Elisabetta and the QMRS for helping me to have this great experience! I would encourage other post-graduate students to get involved in the organisation of conferences and sessions, I think it’s important for our ideas to be heard.