May NUI Galway to Host 500 Delegates at the 7th EUGEO Congress

NUI Galway will host the 7th EUGEO (Association of Geographical Societies in Europe) Congress in conjunction with the 51st Conference of Irish Geographers from 15-18 May. The theme for this year’s event is ‘Re-imagining Europe’s Future Society and Landscapes’.

The theme focuses on the centrality of the concepts of society, environment and landscape within the Discipline of Geography and the importance of the relationship that exists between the physical and cultural landscape. The theme was selected to reflect a number of key urgent concerns and research questions that geographers are currently engaged with and this Congress will offer participants the opportunity to reflect on and re-imagine environmental and sustainable futures within the geographical boundary of Europe.

500 delegates from 37 countries will be attending the four-day event which includes interactive panels, fieldtrips to the Burren, paper and poster sessions as well as early career networking events and international keynote contributions. NUI Galway is delighted to welcome two of Europe’s leading physical and social scientists, Dr Larissa Naylor (Reader for Physical Geography at the University of Glasgow) and Dr Michele Lancione(Senior Research Fellow and Director of ECR Development in Sheffield University). Michele is an urban ethnographer and activist and his opening a keynote lecture on Wednesday, 15 May in the Bailey Allen Hall and will focus on the theme of Homelessness and Governmentality. Larissa is an international expert in climate change adaptation and she helped establish the UK’s Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, and has reviewed the coastal chapter for the IPPC.

Geography at NUI Galway is one of the largest and most vibrant disciplines in the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies, and has built a strong reputation for research and teaching excellence through the work of dedicated staff who have extensive experience nationally and internationally. In hosting this congress, Galway joins the ranks of cities such as Amsterdam (previously hosted in 2007), Bratislava (2009), London (2011), Rome (2013), Budapest (2015) and Brussels (2017).

Conference Chairs, Dr Kathy Reilly and Dr Frances Fahy, College of Geography and Archaeology, NUI Galway, explain that: “It is an honour to host the EUGEO Congress which is only held every second year and we are delighted to welcome 500 national and international colleagues from all around the globe to this significant event.Over the next three days we are looking forward to a vibrant and rich conference programme which will include cutting edge research exploring some of society’s pressing issues.”

The four-day Congress programme will feature multiple sessions with academic experts from throughout Europe that will cover topics on:

• Agriculture and Climate Change: exploring the adverse effects of climate change, especially on agricultural lands.
• Homelessness and Rooflessness: examining the trends and trajectories and challenges of service provision – Beyond the Capital: Examining homelessness in the West of Ireland.
• Marine Spatial Planning in a Time of Uncertainty.
• Migration, Mobility and Belonging – Realities and ideals in rural-out migration and return; Finding home through motion – transnational, translocal and transitional spaces of belonging.
• Geographies of Sustainable Consumption – Everyday clothing geographies: insights for sustainable fashion consumption.
• Earth Observation Applications in environmental mapping and monitoring – A Earth Observation Applications in environmental mapping and monitoring; Earth Observation for Inland and Coastal Water Quality Monitoring in Ireland; Hyperspectral mapping of Ascophyllum nodosum in Galway Bay; A comprehensive roadmap to 50 years of (satellite) earth observation resources for the island of Ireland (1972 – 2023).
• (em)Powering Communities: the path to forging a new energy landscape -Learning from Living Labs: Experiences from the Field.
• Enlightening Generational Renewal in Agriculture Policy: A Roadmap for CAP Post2020 – Female Successors in Irish Family Farming – Four Pathways to Farm Transfer; Risky Business: Farmer Perceptions of Economic Risk in Land Transfer Processes.
• Historical Climatology – Quality control of long-term daily maximum and minimum air temperature series in Ireland; Wetter winters: drier summers: Real or data artefact; Reconstructions of historical river flows for the island of Ireland.
• Palaeoenvironmental Change – Chironomid response to prehistoric farming in northwest Ireland; Abrupt global climate change recorded in the eastern North Atlantic during past warm climates.
• Wind energy – bringing the uncertainties into focus – An automated wind-speed forecasting system for a wind farm in southwest Ireland.
• Approaches to European Rural Development: Looking Towards 2021 – LEADER and vernacular expertise in rural development.
• Building coastal resilience for current and future climates – Enablers and barriers to building coastal community resilience.
• The Future for Peatland – The emerging role of cultural ecosystem services in conserving Irish peatlands.

The conference is supported by EUGEO, Geographical Society of Ireland, NUI Galway, Springer, Failte Ireland, EPA Research, Moore Institute, National Rural Network and RealSim.

For full programme details and venue and session timetables at NUI Galway over the four-days, visit: https://www.eugeo2019.eu/conference-schedule

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