On Tuesday, March 5, 2024, at 16:30, I presented my Valedictory Lecture entitled:
Reflections on Academic Placemaking
In this lecture, I reflected on the way we in our Geography Group, which I had the honour to chair for the last 25 years, have been working on creating an inspiring, fruitful and critically engaged academic atmosphere in contrast to many neo-liberal and managerial tendencies from which the university suffers. I show how this academic placemaking is well rooted in the basic principles of scientific formation universities are set up for.
It meant a lot to me that so many former and current students, colleagues and dear friends attended this event and that they expressed their thanks and appreciation.
The full text of the valedictory lecture is available here. The video footage can be viewed here. In this blog entry, I limit myself to just a few visual impressions of this academic ceremony, which, finally, is also a contribution to academic placemaking:
Farewell Symposium
Prior to this lecture, the Geography Group organised a small Farewell Symposium for me on the topic I am currently researching and on issues that have always been very dear to me. I feel very honoured and grateful to the Geography Group, for this fine gesture of ‘affection’. The title of the symposium was:
It is a Matter of Affect:
Social Theory and Geographical Thought
This symposium was designed to think with the affective turn in Geography critically, and it was centred around a couple of questions:
- What social theories (can) deal with affect and space (even if they are not associated with the affective turn?)
- Why does affect matter? In other words, what are the critical and political elements of affect?
- How can we work with affect and space, in terms of teaching and research methods?
Session 1: What is Affect, what does it add to critical thinking in Geography?
Prof. Anke Strüver (University of Graz): Affective Spaces and/in Domestic Work
Dr. Wolfgang Zierhofer (former Assoc. Prof. in Geography): Geography’s ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’
Prof. Gert-Jan Hospers (Radboud University): Being Alone Together: Third Places from an Affective Turn Perspective
Session 2: Affect, atmosphere and politics
Dr. Alana Osbourne & Dr. Harry Pettit (Radboud University): The Political Lives of Urban Affect
Dr. Bettina van Hoven (University of Groningen): Affects, Arts and Didactics
Prof. Benno Werlen (Friedrich Schiller University Jena): Geography of Action – Action as Geographical Reality
Finally, as a big surprise my daughter, Michèle Ernste (University of Basle), gave a presentation entitled: Many Things to Say, reflecting on the academic placemaking within the family and the role of affective atmospheres in her disciplinary field, Archaeology.
