Conferencing and care

Abstract

Conferences provide an important opportunity to demonstrate care, both for colleagues and for the discipline of geography. As a PhD student attending my first geography conference at the RGS-IBG in London, I gratefully received advice from more senior colleagues. This covered tips for effective presentations, guidance about how to break up my PhD research into manageable sections for the audience, and wise words about how to make the most of my overall conference experience.

One of these phrases has stuck in my head more than others: when a senior professor declared that postgraduate presentations are often “where it’s at” in terms of cutting-edge research that pushes the boundaries of the discipline. I found this assertion hard to believe, as, like my fellow students at the time, I was grappling with theoretical frameworks and unwieldy empirical data. However, as my career has progressed and I have had the privilege of occupying more senior roles in the discipline, the truth of this statement has stayed with me.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the 2025 IAG conference in Newcastle, a wonderful annual gathering of geographical colleagues which included presentations from across the full spectrum of geography. I was struck not only by the innovative work that postgraduate students and early career researchers are engaged with—much of which is truly novel in the discipline—but also the care by which colleagues gave thoughtful and considerate feedback. I hope that Geographical Research echoes this careful approach, by supporting authors at all career stages to engage with constructive critique from reviewers and ultimately publish manuscripts of international significance within the discipline.

We would also like to encourage proposals for special sections in the journal. We have a number of topical special sections in the pipeline, and our publication model will increasingly allow contemporary original research to be brought into dialogue with more established papers. We look forward to hearing your proposals, either arising from IAG conference sessions or from further afield.

More information about our prize-winning papers can be found on our LinkedIn page, which continues to grow. We can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/company/geographical-research, and we encourage you to follow us there for news and regular updates.

This issue of Geographical Research reflects the full breath and diversity of geography, with a variety of stimulating papers from across the discipline. The issue comprises a commentary, the 2024 Wiley Lecture, six further original papers, two book reviews, and an obituary.

Elaine Stratford (2025), our Senior Associate Editor, reflects on current higher education reforms and their implications for the discipline of geography. The commentary considers how the discipline’s visibility and geographers’ security and sense of purpose are being reshaped by wide ranging disruptions. In this context, Stratford argues that geographers must actively position the discipline beyond academia by boldly asserting its relevance across public, private, and non-government sectors, to address complex social, environmental, and political challenges. The commentary calls for geographers to engage in purposeful reinvention in solidarity; with care for self, other, and Earth; and using powerfully effective forms of public engagement.

Taking up this theme further, the issue proceeds with the Wiley lecture delivered by Iain Hay in Adelaide at the 2024 IAG conference. Hay (2025) writes about Australian geography’s challenges and sets up a compelling scenario for voluntary community-based learned societies in its future. The paper argues that societies such as Geography Victoria, the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia, and the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland are critical for bringing people, passion, networks, and energy to the discipline. As such, they are not only vital to the revival of the discipline of geography in Australia but are supportive of broader local, state, and national communities. The paper concludes by urging practising geographers, and the professional associations that represent them, to engage with voluntary community-based learned societies for the future well-being and sustainability of Australian geography.

The issue proceeds with six original articles. First, de Azevedo Cavalcanti Tavares et al. (2025) consider the role of structural controls in promoting sediment retention in semi-arid tropical rivers on crystalline basements, a topic which is often overlooked in the geomorphological literature. Using a case study of the Carnaúba River watershed in the northeast of Brazil, the paper identifies how the action of crustal deformations, conditioned by the reactivation of shear-zones, and drainage superimposition to lithological units discordantly disposed to the main channel, contributes to the creation of morphological compartments dominated by aggradation. The paper emphasises the importance of these controls in long-term landscape dysconnectivity.

Next, Oberhauser and Langill (2025) explore feminist approaches to livelihoods in the context of development studies. They identify three pillars to progress debates in this field: postcolonialism and decoloniality; social-relational and intersectional analyses; and research that captures the social-ecological dimensions of livelihoods. In so doing, they draw out the wider methodological implications of applying feminist approaches. They argue that being attentive to these pillars through a critical feminist lens provides a transformative agenda for livelihood studies and supports new directions for development studies.

The issue continues with a contribution from Rutherford et al. (2025) who apply a relational multiscalar model of the sustainability of social organisation to the management of COVID-19 in Australia to analyse systems resilience and outcome fairness. The paper analyses four data sets linked to COVID-19 that are used as proxies for democratic systems resilience, economic systems resilience, socio-economic systems fairness, and public health systems efficacy. The model provides an important framework for assessing system dynamics and outcome fairness. At the same time, the paper highlights that the complexity and ‘messiness’ of social policy means that management outcomes are not easily predictable nor will necessarily match expectations.

Following this, Walton et al. (2025) explore how narratives of corruption have framed debates about policy reform in the Philippine rice industry. Drawing on empirical research with key stakeholders, the paper highlights the distinction between economic and critical perspectives informing the introduction of the Rice Tariffication Law, which was designed to deregulate the rice market. The analysis highlights how competing perspectives on corruption and associated narratives are ideologically deployed to shape policy reforms that expand economic globalisation and benefit some groups at the expense of others.

Palmer and Carter (2025) then provide a critical analysis of proposed revisions to the Australian Government’s environmental legislation. They argue that changes to the legislation entrench anthropocentrism, focus on threatened species at the expense of others, fail to account for future changes in the survivability of species, and assume that habitats, animals, and plants are fungible. The paper concludes that truly “nature positive” approaches to the environment would require a shift in emphasis from enabling sustainable exploitation of resources by humans, towards a focus on sustaining the multitude of context-specific, intensely relational networks of humans-other-than-humans.

The final original paper in this issue explores how geography and colonial history influence imaginaries of escape. Burton (2025) undertakes a critical discourse analysis of archival material to consider how the state of Tasmania is imagined as an escape and a refuge from threats elsewhere in the world. The paper reveals the place identities that are deemed desirable in Tasmania, why and by whom, and illustrates how they are unequally distributed. Overall, it raises important questions about the relationships between apocalypticism, tourism, and migration and asks how these may be decolonised.

The issue proceeds with two insightful book reviews: a review of Gothic in the Oceanic South by Kane Alexander Sardi (2025) and Laura Butler’s (2025) review of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade. It concludes with an obituary of Stewart Fraser by Alaric Maude (2025).