Pre-conference activities
Find out more about activities taking place in the run-up to the conference.
Several activities will take place in the run-up to the conference on Tuesday 1 September, all of which are free to attend for fully registered conference delegates.
We will update this page with further details as they are announced.
Newcomers' welcome event
Tuesday 1 September, 3.30pm-5.00pm, Ondaatje Theatre
In-person at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)
Join us for an introduction to the conference and to the conference venue. All are welcome: those who are new to the conference are particularly encouraged to attend.
Animal Geography Working Group pre-conference writing retreat
Tuesday 1 September, 1.30pm–5.00pm, Lowther Room
In-person at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)
We are pleased to announce that the Animal Geography Working Group (AGWG) are hosting a pre-conference in-person writing retreat at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in London on Tuesday 1 September in the afternoon.
The writing retreat is free and open to all; you do not need to be registered to attend the conference to join the writing retreat.
The timings (TBC) will be 1.30pm–5.00pm (three writing sessions with breaks).
We will follow the event with a short social walk in Hyde Park (weather permitting) and then go on to the opening keynote of the conference by Professor Susan Smith at 6.00pm.
We are hoping to provide refreshments for attendees, so please only register for the writing retreat if you intend to come in person.
This will be an informal and friendly event, so please do come along!
Digital Geography Research Group Modelling Bodies/Modelling Cities
Tuesday 1 September, 2.00pm-5.00pm, Education Centre and Sunley Room
An interactive workshop with parallel sessions including the opportunity to explore the Royal Geographical Society and Kensington area by using a smartphone-enabled 3D modelling app, view an exhibition of a physical city model layered with real-time data, as well as contribute to a lively discussion on urban digital visualities (TBC).
Geography and Education Research Group (GeogEd) pre-conference event - Making geography matter in turbulent times
Tuesday 1 September 2.00pm–5.00pm
In-person at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), and online
In a period marked by significant uncertainty and rapid change – whether arising from shifting geopolitical relations, the escalating climate emergency, the cost‑of‑living crisis, or the increasingly precarious position of higher education – we find ourselves working and teaching within profoundly turbulent times.
Geography, as a discipline centrally concerned with spatial relationships, power, environment, and society, is uniquely positioned to engage with these challenges. While there is broad consensus that geography matters, an enduring question remains: how do we effectively demonstrate its relevance and value to young people, policymakers, communities, and our own institutions?
This seminar, hosted by GeogEd, provides a timely opportunity to reflect on and critically discuss the ongoing and future relevance of geography in addressing contemporary global and local challenges.
The event will also mark the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education (JGHE), celebrating its longstanding contribution to advancing scholarship, pedagogy, and debate in geography education, and its role in shaping this agenda over the past five decades.
Bringing together colleagues from across the diverse spectrum of geographical research, teaching, and practice, the seminar will create space to explore how we are collectively working to make geography matter – intellectually, socially, and institutionally – both now and in the future.
The programme will combine a series of short presentations with a participatory workshop, encouraging dialogue, exchange of ideas, and collaborative reflection.
Participants are invited to submit an abstract for a 10‑minute Lightning Talk to contribute to the afternoon seminar on the theme Making geography matter in turbulent times. These Lightning Talks will form the basis for subsequent discussion and will be followed by a workshop facilitated by Professor David Higgitt, Editor‑in‑Chief of JGHE.
Colleagues who wish to contribute to the seminar are warmly encouraged to complete the online form by 8 June 2026.
Please join us for the conversations, even if you are not wishing to present. For catering purposes, please complete our booking form to let us know you are planning to attend.
If you have any questions, please contact Sonja Rewhorn, sonja.rewhorn@open.ac.uk
Geographies of Leisure and Tourism Research Group - Geographies of slowing down, rehumanising and challenging inequalities in the leisure and tourism academy
Location: University of Westminster
Further details to be announced.
Political Geography Research Group – Politicising political geography: bridges, dialogues, solidarity
Tuesday 1 September 10.30am arrival for an 11.00am start, and finishing 4.00pm, with conversations continuing informally afterwards.
Drayson Room, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)
You are invited to join the Political Geography Research Group preconference for a day of collaborative discussion on the present and futures of political geography.
At a moment marked by geopolitical uncertainty, resurgent authoritarianisms, emboldened racisms, and growing precarity on the higher education sector, we want to make space for political geographers to think together about the responsibilities and possibilities of the subdiscipline. Building on ongoing conversations emerging from recent PolGRG webinar series, the preconference asks how political geography can respond to the current conjuncture not only analytically, but also pedagogically and politically.
Rather than following a traditional panel format, the event will centre on two participatory sessions organised around: Responding and Envisioning. Across the day, we will engage in collaborative conversations around solidarity, accountability, and hope for the kind of futures we want to build within and beyond the subdiscipline.
The event is free to attend. Places are limited at 35 participants and lunch will be provided.
We welcome a small number of short provocations (6 minutes) to open the afternoon discussions intended to spark wider conversation. Possible themes might include hope, academic responsibility, institutional pressures, or the political futures of the discipline. If you might be interested in contributing, please feel free to get in touch.
A number of travel bursaries are available to support participation by Early Career Academics (ECAs) and Postgraduate Researchers (PGRs), whose conference attendance is often constrained by limited institutional funding. Contributions of up to £75 are available.
If you have any questions, please contact:
- Merrill Hopper – merrill.hopper@newcastle.ac.uk
- Matt Varco – matthew.varco@manchester.ac.uk
- Oznur Yardimci – oznur.yardimci@york.ac.uk
- Ichamati Mousamputri – I.Mousamputri2@newcastle.ac.uk
- Biswanth Saha – biswanaths@presiuniv.ac.in
Arboreal-human intra-actions: A walkshop to explore living with trees in West London, sponsored by the Urban Geography Research Group
Tuesday 1 September, 10.00am-12.30pm
This walkshop* engages with questions of urban socio-environmental justice through an embodied exploration of living with London’s trees.
Whilst walking through the streets around the RGS-IBG conference venue in West London, participants will be invited to tune into their embodied and affective experiences of what it is like to live with trees.
By UN standards, London is a forest, with a canopy cover of 21% (Lösing, 2025). Recognising trees' role in mitigating the impacts of the climate emergency alongside their social and health benefits, the city has ambitions to increase that cover by 10% in the next decades (London Urban Forest Partnership, 2020). Yet trees are not evenly distributed, with global-majority communities and lower-income groups across the UK disproportionately more likely to live in neighbourhoods with a paucity of canopy cover (Friends of the Earth, 2023; The Woodland Trust, 2023).
In these contexts, this walkshop posits trees as lively entities, intra-acting with humans and other more-than-humans (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010), shaping their environment whilst also being shaped by it and by anthropogenic/anthropocenic actions. The walkshop asks participants to think about what tree equity feels like, using The Woodland Trust’s Tree Equity Score Map to compare this West London site to other places. It also prompts participants to consider the ways in which austerity measures in the UK have impacted on the planting and maintenance of trees (Iozzi, 2025; Rotherham and Flinders, 2019; Woudstra and Allen, 2022).
In addition, participants will have the opportunity to 'listen like a tree' using the more-than-human community toolkit, to further sensitise ourselves to the lives of trees.
Methodologically, the walkshop will invite participants to reflect on what mobile, embodied, affective and collective methods can offer our engagements with questions of socio-environmental (in)justice in urban spaces (Bates and Rhys-Taylor, 2017; Rondel and Henneke, 2024).
As an exploratory event, we invite participants to bring their own knowledges and expertises, to share and reflect.
*walking is understood as walking or wheeling or any kind of moving through space that can be done by any body at any speed (Rose, 2025).
Practicalities
The walkshop will take 2 ½ hours, including a 1-hour walk and a 30-minute outdoor activity. There will be a short briefing session ahead of the walk and time for reflections afterwards. We will invite you to document your experiences and reflections, and these can be uploaded (photos, sound-recordings, videos, or text) to a shared Padlet.
The route will be approximately 3km long with pauses to rest. We will be moving on pavements and paved paths, with a possible short section on paths in Hyde Park. We will be crossing roads at designated crossing points with dropped kerbs and/or pedestrian crossings. Some of the roads will be busy with motorised traffic and cyclists. The footways will be busy with pedestrians. Depending on the weather, pollution levels may be high.
Places are limited, please sign up in advance
When signing up, please let us know of any accessibility requirements and we can explore supporting your participation.
