Creative approaches to development geographies

This event, organised by the RGS-IBG Development Geographies Research Group, invites development geographers to engage with the Chair’s theme of the RGS Annual Conference 2025, held at the University of Birmingham. The conference Chair is Professor Patricia Noxolo and the theme is 'geographies of creativity/creative geographies'.

This event has been organised in response to Noxolo’s invitation and welcomes development geographers to join and creatively explore the following questions:

• What is geography as a discipline, and what role do creative approaches play within development geographies as a sub-discipline?
• Is development geography an inherently creative discipline? Is our role or expectation to do creative things and what are those?
• What is the creative vision for geography broadly conceived and development geographies narrowly defined?

This event will be a roundtable discussion. We are joined by three expert speakers to start of discussion: Amanda Rogers, Jaskiran Kaur Chohan, and Katy Jenkins. They will share their approaches to creativity in development geographies before we open up discussion.

The event will be accompanied by a graphic recorder, who will produce three illustrations based on our main questions, these can then serve as further provocation at a follow-up event at RGS AC2025, for example. These will be uploaded to our website, accompanied by a blogpost.

About the speakers

Amanda Rogers is an Associate Professor in Human Geography and the Geohumanities at Swansea University UK. She researches geographies of the performing arts, and for the last decade has been doing research in South East Asia, particularly Cambodia.

She is currently writing a book on the post-conflict geopolitics of dance and nationality in the Kingdom, provisionally entitled Choreographing Cambodia: geopolitics, nationality and dance in the post-conflict Kingdom of Wonder.

However, she has also been conducting research for the last five years with Cambodian Living Arts on how the arts can be used to promote civic participation, particularly among young people who may not have much experience of arts. This has resulted in three reports, the last of which (written with Say Tola) was entitled The Seven Colours Festival: Young people and civic participation in the arts.

Jaskiran Kaur Chohan is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Geographical Sciences. Her research explores agroecology, the construction of alternative socio-ecologies and peace through food, particularly in conflict zones in Latin America. She uses an interdisciplinary, co-produced approach and intersectional lens to unpack challenges around transforming food, building agrobiodiversity, and sustainable peace.

Prof Katy Jenkins is a feminist development geographer and Co-Director of Northumbria University’s Centre for Global Development. Her research employs a range of creative and participatory methods to understand women’s resistance in contexts of extractivism.

Katy has used visual methods including photovoice, mapping, and film to co-produce impactful research with grassroots women’s organisations.

Booking information

• Advance booking for this event is required. In order to book you will need an account on our website. If you already have an account you will be prompted to log in when you click 'book now'. Please create an account if you do not have one yet (you do not need to be a member of the Society to create an account).

Attending online

• This event will be held on Zoom and joining instructions will be included in your confirmation email.

Making a booking on behalf of someone else

1. Select group booking.
2. Additional attendees: insert number of people you want to book on behalf of.
3. Under group booking section:
   1. Are you personally attending this event? * NO.
   2. Are you the organiser of the group? * YES.
   3. Do you know the details of other attendee(s)? * YES.
4. Additional attendees – fill in details of the person/people you are booking on behalf of and click ‘Add’.
5. Click ‘Next’ once all additional attendee details have been added.
6. In your basket will be the tickets for the event. Proceed to checkout once you have added all the events you would like to book for.

If you have any questions or require assistance with your booking, please email events@rgs.org