In today’s episode, Courtney and Stefan are speaking with Kimberley Peters.
Kim is a Professor Marine Governance at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), a research organisation in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and University of Oldenburg (UOL), in Germany.
As a human geographer, she is interested in the social, cultural and political workings of the world around us. Her research group seeks to explore how governance does not just happen anywhere, but somewhere, and is shaped by spatial processes. Her work investigates how the geography of what we seek to govern, or do govern, is shaped by location, the character and qualities of place and relations with surrounding spaces.
In the episode, she reflects on how geography has dealt with and is influenced by its historical legacy, and how much of the current perspectives in human geography are critical because of that history. We also discuss her relationship to teaching and her students, working in an interdisciplinary institute, leaving your disciplinary comfort zone, and the research topics she is currently pursuing.
Kim has provided a list of references below regarding the history of geography for further information, as she notes that her perspectives are only one of many and not fully comprehensive. She encourages listeners to read the pieces below:
For a good overview of the history and ‘turns’ of geography see: Cresswell T (2013) Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. Wiley Blackwell: Oxford
On geography’s relation with colonial and imperial practice: Driver F (1993) Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Wiley Blackwell: Oxford.
On geography’s relation with 20th Century German geopolitics: Klinke, I., & Bassin, M. (2018). Introduction: Lebensraum and its discontents. Journal of Historical Geography, 61, 53-58.
On closing Geography departments: Sacks B (2015) What happened to the American geography department? Geography Directions (online): https://blog.geographydirections.com/2015/04/08/what-happened-to-the-american-geography-department/
On decolonialism and geography: Esson, J., Noxolo, P., Baxter, R., Daley, P., & Byron, M. (2017). The 2017 RGS‐IBG chair’s theme: Decolonising geographical knowledges, or reproducing coloniality?. Area, 49(3), 384-388
Kim’s website: https://kimberleypeters.com/
Kim’s twitter: https://twitter.com/drkimpeters?lang=en
Your Human Geography Dissertation: https://study.sagepub.com/yourhumangeography
