Prof. Dr. Shafqat Hussain (Trinity College, Hartford)

“The Shangrila Diaries: Foreign Tourists in Hunza Valley”
Montag, 17.06.2024, 15:45 Uhr, Hörsaal III/C

This presentation is about my ongoing research on foreign tourists in Gojal valley, upper Hunza, Pakistan. In the summer of 2023, while doing fieldwork for my book on Pakistani national tourism in Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan, I found comments and guest entry registers kept at local hotel in Passu village in upper Hunza. There are two kinds of registers that we found. The first kind was where the guests entered their personal information such as their nationality, profession, Date of Birth, destination etc., etc., and the second, where the guests entered their comments and drew sketches. Entries in the first register were mandatory while comments in the second register were optional. In total, we managed to collect twelve registers from four inns in Passu dating between 1982 and 2019. Four are entry registers and eight are comments registers. The entry registers show that about twenty thousand foreign travelers stayed at these four inns between this period (1982 to 2019). We categorized these twenty thousand travelers by nationality and profession. There are more than twelve hundred comments inscribed in these registers ranging from two liners to three pages long. The average length of a comment is about one paragraph of an A4 size page. The twelve hundred odd comments inscribed in these registers are in twenty-six different languages. The most common language is English representing about 500 comments followed by Japanese representing about 300 comments. These early travelers took special interest in both reading and inscribing their thoughts in these registers. They passed their opinions about the hospitality or the cunning of local people, gave special and mundane advice to fellow trekkers, scolded the behavior of fellow trekkers. They also wrote extensive and detailed directions and guidelines for fellow trekkers, soulful and romantic monologues, political views, and mundane matters. The tone and tenor of these comments range from satirical, witty, racist, xenophobic, enlightened and alienated. I am currently translating, transcribing and coding these comments and hope to share initial analysis with you during the presentation.

Prof. Dr. Rui Li (University at Albany, New York)

“Wayfinding in Assisted and Autonomous Driving: Issues, Challenges, and Approaches of Facilitating Spatial Intelligence” 

Montag, 08.07.2024, 15:45 Uhr, Hörsaal III/C

SatNavi, or in-vehicle navigation systems, have provided much convenience to drivers with calculated routes and directions. In the near future, autonomous vehicles will eventually free drivers from active steering. Evidenced in research on drivers using in-vehicle navigation systems leading to degraded spatial knowledge, this degradation will intensify when drivers become travelers in autonomous vehicles. This talk addresses the issues and challenges that drivers face when they are primarily using SatNavi or autonomous driving and intends to suggest approaches to address the degraded spatial intelligence, by using cartographic theories and landmarks.

Dr. Johanna Weselek (PH Heidelberg)

„On the way to a socio-ecological transformation? Current implementation of education for sustainable development”

Montag, 15.07.2024, 15:45 Uhr, Hörsaal III/C

In 2015, the “2030 Agenda” (UN 2015) was adopted by the United Nations. The central goal is the socio-ecological transformation. The 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) formulated therein provide an important political orientation for dealing with global challenges. Education, and in particular “Education for Sustainable Development” (ESD), are considered to be of great importance to achieve the global sustainability goals. Its relevance is emphasized even more in the current UNESCO program “ESD for 2030” (UNESCO 2020). In my presentation I will provide detailed insight into the challenges of implementing ESD in schools. My analysis is based on a qualitative reconstructive study with the help of the documentary method. I conducted 20 group discussions with teachers in Germany in order to to interrogate how they understand “sustainability” and how they approach ESD in their daily school business. My analysis reveals a dominance of the environmental aspect in the school sustainability discourse and a focus on individual responsibility in the form of resource-conserving behaviour. Despite being anchored in the curriculum, whether and how ESD is addressed depends on the commitment of individuals. In addition, my results also show that sustainability is understood as a question of awareness, and that there is a strong tendency of reproducing existing social conditions due to a class-specific view of sustainability. In my presentation I will give a critical account of these findings and compare them with other national and international studies on the current implementation of ESD.
UN. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. General Assembly. A/RES/70/1. United Nations.
UNESCO. (2020). Education for sustainable development: A roadmap. #ESDfor2030 #BNE2030. UNESCO.

•  

  05.07.23, Prof. Dr. Sarah Halvorson (University of Montana)

  "A new narrative of resilience in the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya? Observations from Bhutan"

• 10.05.2023, Prof. Dr. Tuuli Toivonen (Helsinki University, Finland)

  "Supporting sustainability transformations with spatial analyses"

• 17.04.2023, Sarah Le Berre

  „Identifying Forest Refugia in Central European mountains under Climate Change”

• 02.11.2022, Prof. Dr. Jason W. Moore (Binghamton University, NY, USA)
  How Not to See Like an Empire: Unthinking the Anthropocene & the Capitalocene Alternative
• 07.12.2022, Dr. Kerilyn Schewel (Duke University, NC, USA)
  Rethinking the Links between Cimate Change and Migration
• 25.01.2023, Prof. Dr. Ullrich Strasser (Universität Innsbruck)
  Die Gebirgsschneedecke: Modellierung und inter- sowie transdisziplinäre Perspektiven

Montag, 10. Juni 2024 ab 15:45 Uhr in Raum 2125/D
Merle Müller-Hansen

"Urban food environments in transformation - entanglements of digitalization, corporeality, and power relations"

(Feststellung der promotionsfachspezifischen Eignung)

Donnerstag, 11. Juli 2024 ab 15.45 Uhr in Raum 1003/B

Thilo Kappelmeyer
"Pollenanalytische Untersuchungen zu Umweltveränderungen im Umfeld des prähistorischen Zinnseifenbergbaus im Ost-Erzgebirge"
(Feststellung der promotionsfachspezifischen Eignung)

im Jahr 2020 konnte die Denkwerkstatt nur virtuell in reduzierter Form stattfinden. Wie zu erwarten war lag ein Schwerpunkt auf dem Thema digitale/virtuelle Lehre mit Input von Michael Folgmann. Mit dabei war wieder das GeoFeedback vorgestellt von der Fachschaft Geographie. Die neue Prüfungsordnung im Bachelor Geographie (Entwurf) wurde vorgestellt von Uli Beyer. Tobias Roppelt erzählte etwas zur Kommunikation mit Studierenden. Moderiert wurde die erste virtuelle Denkwerkstatt von Selina Thanheiser - vielen Dank !