Area

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Tommy H. Y. Chan, Artur Sadowski & Jan K. Kazak (2026) entitled: '‘I'm Tight on Time, So Let's Make It a Fast Interview on the Go’: Rapid Serial Interview for Quick Ethnographies With Busy People' with a black banner at the top.

New in Area:

'"I'm tight on time, so let's make it a fast interview on the go": Rapid serial interview for quick ethnographies with busy people' by @tommyhychan.bsky.social et al.

doi.org/10.1111/area...

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper explores drawn ethnography as a methodological tool in the social sciences, highlighting its capacity to complement interviews, photography and cartography. By combining in situ observatio....

New in Area:

'Drawing points, tracing lines: Writing social sciences through ethnographic drawing' by Dolorès Bertrais

This paper explores drawn ethnography as a methodological tool, combining in-situ observation with visual storytelling.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70094 Feeding Hungry Students: Geographies of On-Campus Free Food Provision Across England Emma Wainwright, Ellen McHugh, Mamoon Bhuyan in Area (Royal Geographical) open access

On my campus, I know (a) increase in need/demand & (b) lack of resources provided. We never had student food banks when I was in uni. What does it say about us now?

"Feeding Hungry Students: Geographies of On-Campus Free Food Provision Across England" (open access) doi.org/10.1111/area...

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library Conservation often continues to be undertaken in ways that exclude nearby communities, despite extensive critique of such practices. This paper examines the reactions to the creation of a marine prot...

New in Area:

'We woke up with a sign: Exclusion, conflict and the politics of marine conservation in South Africa' by Msimelelo Gqaleni & Mary Lawhon

This paper examines community reactions to the creation of a marine protected area in KwaZulu-Natal.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Thomas K. Rudel (2026) entitled: 'The social contexts for forest expansions: A review' with a black banner at the top. Regional contexts appear to have shaped reforestation processes in six distinctive ways around the world. Two have predominated in wealthy regions and have entailed the spontaneous regeneration of relatively biodiverse secondary forests on former agricultural lands. Another one, featuring planted forests, has occurred close to cities in both the Global North and the Global South. Three additional reforestation dynamics involving smallholders and planted trees in the Global South have had their origins in episodes of imperialism and efforts at agricultural development. Attention to these contextual dynamics in reforestation processes would strengthen reforestation programs and, in so doing, increase their capacity to curb climate change through carbon sequestration.

New in Area:

'The social contexts for forest expansions: A review' by Thomas K. Rudel

doi.org/10.1111/area...

Nicely done @areajournal.bsky.social !

A graphic publicising a new Special Section in Area called 'Map Room Conversations'. There are six tiles with the names of papers and authors as follows: 1) Map Room Conversations Stephen Legg, Katherine Parker 2) Mapping Indigeneity in the RGS-IBG map collections Peter R. Martin, Katherine Parker 3) Mapping Language: Names, Speakers and Voices Beth Williamson, Philip Jagessar 4) Map Room Conversations: Mapping Objects George Tobin, Jane Wess 5) Mapping Disjuncture: Internationalism and Palestine Zena Agha, Jake Hodder 6) Maps and Diaspora: Affect, Agency and Epistolary Praxis Rohini Rai, Iqbal Singh

A black tile publicising the new 'Map Room Conversations' Special Section in Area. There is a quote from Stephen Legg & Katie Parker's introduction. It reads: "This Special Section breaks down a false equation of active/passive to outdoor/indoor, or digital/paper, maps. Instead, the papers included show how the map collection is also a space of becoming and creation".

New Special Section in Area!

'Map Room Conversations' guest edited by @stephenlegg11.bsky.social, @kparkerhistorian.bsky.social & Jason Liu

Read the fully #OpenAccess collection here ⬇️

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

It was such an honour working with Katie, the map presenters, and the engaged audiences in these Map Room Conversations. Follow the thread for a CFP for a similar venture at this year's RGS-IBG conference!

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Kauê Lopes dos Santos & Livia Cangiano Antipon (2026) entitled: 'Mobile Work: Handcart and Bicycle Workers Across the Urban Economy of Greater Accra Region' with a black banner at the top. This article examines the everyday labour of handcart and bicycle workers in Accra and Tema, showing how their activities constitute a form of relational infrastructure in the urban economy of Ghana's Greater Accra Region. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork based on interviews, direct observation and photographic documentation, the study highlights how workers improvise repairs, adjust routes to shifting rhythms of demand and rely on dense networks of trust and reciprocity. Their practices link household production, street-level consumption and small-scale recycling chains, sustaining circulation in contexts marked by uneven infrastructure and low capitalisation. Through the combined lens of AbdouMaliq Simone's people as infrastructure and Milton Santos's theory of urban economic circuits, the analysis shows that these workers operate not at the margins but as key connectors of goods, materials and information. Their mobility, bodily endurance and inventive responses to uncertainty reveal how ordinary actors make Ghanaian cities function on a daily basis.

New in Area:

'Mobile work: Handcart and bicycle workers across the urban economy of Greater Accra Region' by Kauê Lopes dos Santos & Livia Cangiano Antipon

This paper explores mobile work as a form of relational infrastructure, sustaining urban life through improvisation.

doi.org/10.1111/area...

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Ayushman Bhagat (2026) entitled: 'Internal Deportation'. This article introduces the concept of internal deportation as a form of intra-state expulsion of citizens to their ‘spaces of origin’. Drawing on nine years of multi-sited, participatory, ethnographic, and feminist research in Nepal, I examine how multiple state and non-state organisations forcibly return women migrating for sex and domestic work to their spaces of origin, which are often structured by the hierarchies of gender, class, caste, and indigeneity. I demonstrate how internal deportation seeks to immobilise Nepali citizens within the existing hierarchies that they have sought to escape through their migration projects. The article contributes to deportation studies by demonstrating that deportability is a condition which operates within the spaces of origin for some citizens, continues in the host countries where they become 'immigrants', and persists upon their return to their spaces of origin after deportation.

New in Area:

'Internal Deportation' by @ayushmanbhagat.bsky.social

This article draws on research undertaken in Nepal to introduce the concept of internal deportation as a form of intra-state expulsion of citizens to their 'spaces of origin'.

doi.org/10.1111/area...

Incredibly excited to share my open-access article, Internal Deportation, published in AREA bsky.app/profile/area...

It introduces the concept of internal deportation as a form of intra-state expulsion of citizens to their ‘spaces of origin’.

Link: rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A graphical abstract of a flowchart which outlines the principles of Process-Oriented Ethics in Geography: reflexivity, dialogicity, situationally, responsibility, representation, self-determination, reciprocity, deference, more-than-human ethic, skills as ethical practice. These fan out into four key areas: ethical support throughout the research process; integrity of knowledge production; responsibility for all research participants; empowerment of researchers. These then culminate in 'implementation': in university, faculty, graduate schools, curriculum.

New in Area:

'Beyond judgment and approval: Establishing process-oriented ethics in Geography' by Jeannine Wintzer & Susan Thieme

This paper proposes a process-oriented ethics approach that engages with ethical questions continuously throughout the research process.

doi.org/10.1111/area...

So pleased to be a part of this, and what a fabulous set of papers!

Look out for the cfp from @stephenlegg11.bsky.social at the end - would highly recommend all geographers (and others!) engage with these collections and see what comes out as a result! 🗺️

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library Click on the title to browse this issue

What happens when you put experts, prescient topics, engaged audiences, and #maps together? A Map Room Conversation!

Our Area special section is now available #openaccess

#geography #skystorians 🗃️

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Francesca Guarino (2026) entitled: 'Blurring Migrant Solidarity: Navigating the Troubled Regime of ‘Helping Others’ From the Urban Ground of Palermo' with a black banner at the top. This paper explores migrant solidarity in the aftermath of the 2015 so-called ‘migration crisis’ from the ground of the Southern Italian ‘solidarity city’ of Palermo, building on ethnographic material collected across 2022/2023. It argues that migrant solidarity both resists and reproduces racialised borders, as it is never entirely and clearly detached from the border regime, but is deeply entangled within it. Although this argument is not new per se, this paper adds empirical depth to it following two strands. First, presenting solidarity in Palermo as embedded within the city's political economy, the paper reflects on how, within a persisting unequal and racialised access to rights, solidarity can allow for multiple extractions to be operated against migrants, while simultaneously providing a ‘safer space’ for existence. Second, drawing on the experiences of migrants who have—at least from a surface level outside perspective—comparatively better positions within the city, the paper defies their portrayals as mere recipients of help, and explores the complex ways in which they navigate the restricted opportunities opened up by solidarity alongside ubiquitous borders. The paper thus shows (1) how in Palermo solidarity has produced several outcomes—moral recognition abroad, local economies, opportunities for a vast array of people involved with migration—in the overall permanence of local shortages and everyday structural racism; (2) how the local solidarity network fills the gaps of a local retreating social care and of the state's repressive politics; (3) how this network is strategically navigated by racialised migrants to carve out opportunities, social ties and space for political development.

New in Area:

'Blurring migrant solidarity: Navigating the troubled regime of "helping others" from the urban ground of Palermo' by Francesca Guarino

This paper explores migrant solidarity in Sicily in the aftermath of the so-called 'migration crisis' in 2015.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Zinaïda Sluijs (2026) entitled: 'More Than a Course, More Than a Method: Study Circles as a Pedagogical and Research Method Working With Asylum Seekers Across Language Barriers and Differences' with a black banner at the top. Participatory research with people in the asylum process faces limits and challenges. Building on ethnographic research on study circles for and with asylum seekers in Sweden, I discuss two methods (collage workshops and card-based discussions) which were introduced to deal with the challenges of conducting participatory research and to foster the inclusion of participants in the asylum process. While collage workshops allowed for conversations on emotional and embodied experiences across language barriers, card-based discussions created space for dialogue and discussion on different experiences of participating in study circles. I argue that these methods were both inspired by the study circle method and participatory methodologies and, therefore, are an example of how research' epistemology and methodology can be aligned to participating organisations' knowledge and practices. Consequently, the contribution of the paper is two-fold: Collage workshops and card-based discussions not only allowed for new participants and perspectives to be included but also enabled the research to intervene in and contribute to the study circle practice.

New in Area:

'More than a course, more than a method: Study circles as a pedagogical and research method working with asylum seekers across language barriers and differences' by @zsluijs.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper reflects on the pedagogical possibilities of cultivating a ‘geography of hope’.

New in Area:

'Teaching a geography of hope' by Mariasole Pepa

This paper explores the spaces within higher education where hope can be cultivated, inside and outside of the classroom.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper turns to the work of Henri Bergson to offer a distinctly geographic perspective on debates around attention by emphasising the intimate links between attention and the material environment....

Congratulations to @georgeburdon.bsky.social for his wonderful paper 'Displaced attention: Bergson, attentive habits and Tony Conrad’s drone music' which has been highly commended as part of the Cultural Geography Study Groups annual paper prize award! rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The paper I published in @areajournal.bsky.social last year has very kindly been 'highly commended' by @culturalgeogaus.bsky.social as part of their annual paper prize for early career researchers. Do consider following the study group if you are a cultural geographer in Australia!

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Jennifer Langill (2026) entitled: 'Researcher Positionality and Relational Power: Playing With ‘Researching Up’ and ‘Researching Down’ in Critical Reflexivity' with a black banner at the top. Critical development scholars and feminist geographers call for reflexivity on the relationships between researchers and the subjects of their research. This includes questioning the power dynamics that shape knowledge generation, while recognising the partiality of these insights and the subjectivity of knowledge production. To advance these debates, I draw on the concepts of ‘researching up’ and ‘researching down’, sometimes used to distinguish between relative ‘power over’ and ‘power under’ interlocutors. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Hmong village in northern Thailand, I reflect on the relationality between myself and research participants, including moments of entering into more or less relational power. I suggest that by mobilising the heuristic of ‘researching up’ and ‘researching down’ as a relational analytic rather than oppositional categories, we can generate new insights into our own positionalities, and subsequently, the social difference, relationality and power dynamics within the populations we learn from. This approach helps to reject homogenising narratives of ‘vulnerable subjects’ to better unravel shifting power dimensions and affect within positional spaces.

New in Area:

'Research positionality and relational power: Playing with "researching up" and "researching down" in critical reflexivity' by @jlangill.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Subham Roy (2026) entitled: 'Everyday Geographies of Night-Time Fear: (Re)Negotiating Fear of Crime, Gender and Safety' with a black banner at the top. Grounded in qualitative research in Siliguri, a rapidly expanding city in eastern India, this paper examined how low-income residents perceive and negotiate fear of crime after dark. Based on immersive, night-time ethnographic methods—including narrative interviews, walk-alongs and sensory observations—this study examines the lived geographies of crime and fear in the everyday urban margins. While extensive literature on fear of crime exists in Western contexts, Global South research remains uneven, with limited attention to how fear is shaped by infrastructural neglect and marginality. In developing countries like India, such place-based, embodied studies remain limited, especially in low-income residential contexts. Findings reveal that night-time fear is deeply gendered, relational, and amplified by territorial stigma and infrastructural neglect. Women deploy everyday tactics—rerouted paths, bodily discipline, walking in groups—to manage insecurity. The paper contributes to scholarship on crime, marginality and emotional geographies by showing how fear is not only a response to threats but a force that reshapes urban life. It calls for a more grounded, context-sensitive understanding of urban safety and affirms the right to move, dwell and be visible in the city after dark. By situating fear as a spatial force that (re)organises urban life after dark, this paper contributes to debates on emotional geographies, urban marginality and the nocturnal geographies of fear of crime in the Global South.

New in Area:

'Everyday geographies of night-time fear: (Re)negotiating fear of crime, gender and safety' by Subham Roy

This paper explores the geographies of crime and fear in a Global South context, drawing on research conducted in Siliguri, India.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Stephen Taylor (2026) entitled: 'Witnessing Health and Place: Sebastião Salgado and the Photographic Legacy of Polio Eradication' with a black banner at the top. The death of Brazilian photographer and photojournalist Sebastião Salgado in May 2025 invites renewed reflection on photography's role in shaping global health narratives. Celebrated for his evocative black-and-white images that document human suffering and resilience, Salgado's work has addressed international issues, such as labour, migration, indigeneity and environmental degradation. Among an extensive portfolio, his documentation of global polio eradication efforts stands out as a significant yet often overlooked contribution, providing vital insights into the spatial dynamics of a global health campaign. This paper situates Salgado's polio photographs within the context of health geography and visual geography, arguing that these images function not only as humanitarian testimony but also as a visual cartography of care. By analysing the spatial, embodied and ethical dimensions of this work, I examine how visual methodologies can enhance geographies of health, vulnerability and intervention. Salgado's archive of polio photographs constructs a powerful visual grammar of place-based inequality and collective resilience, while also raising questions about power dynamics in image production, institutional commissioning and the ethics of witnessing. The paper offers geographers a critical lens through which to understand global health as a situated, contested and relational phenomenon.

New in Area:

'Witnessing health and place: Sebastião Salgado and the photographic legacy of polio eradication' by @wstaylor87.bsky.social

This paper situates the photographic work of Salgado on polio vaccination within debates on humanitarian visual culture.

doi.org/10.1111/area...

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library Sebastião Salgado's photographic series ‘The End of Polio’ offers a critical lens on global health by depicting the spatial and infrastructural realities of polio eradication campaigns. Through an an...

New, by me, on the ethical and political dimensions of global health photography, situating Sebastião Salgado's polio eradication work within debates on representation, witnessing and power in humanitarian visual culture.

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Stefano Pagin & Daniel Sanfelici (2026) entitled: 'Bringing Nuance to Real Estate Financialisation: Insights From Brazil' with a black banner at the top. Real estate has re-emerged as an object of inquiry in geography and urban studies in recent years, particularly through the lens of the financialisation debate. The literature on financialisation has extensively documented how finance has reshaped real estate markets, often prioritising short-term rent extraction in ways that can undermine long-term planning goals and pose risks to fundamental rights such as housing and access to urban space. However, by placing emphasis on the diffusion of financial market logics and interests, much of this literature has overlooked the institutionally specific ways in which real estate markets are shaped, mediated or contested across diverse contexts. This article builds on existing literature on Brazil to offer a more nuanced perspective on the analysis of real estate markets and their financialisation. While recognising the growing influence of financial motives and actors in shaping real estate production, we argue that this process unfolds unevenly, is refracted through local institutional and political dynamics, and coexists with inherited financial infrastructures and alternative forms of real estate provision. We conclude that an institutionally grounded perspective is essential to capture the complex and context-dependent nature of real estate market transformations in the Global South and beyond.

New in Area:

'Bringing nuance to real estate financialisation: Insights from Brazil' by Stefano Pagin & Daniel Sanfelici

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Ran Wei (2026) entitled: 'The Politics and Poetics of Waiting: Residents' Waiting for (Not) Being Relocated in China's Urban Regeneration' with a black banner at the top.

New in Area:

'The politics and poetics of waiting: Residents' waiting for (not) being relocated in China's urban regeneration' by Ran Wei

This paper explores how residents in Anyang, China, strategically deploy waiting as a form of resistance.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Matina Kapsali (2025) entitled: 'For a caring geography: Situated solidarities and feminist care ethics during and beyond crisis' with a black banner at the top. This paper calls for a caring geography that centres care and solidarity as interrelated, embodied practices rather than abstract concepts. Drawing on feminist ethics of care and scholarship on geographies of solidarity, I argue that care becomes politically transformative when coupled with solidarity, understood as negotiated mutuality across difference. Using an auto-ethnographic approach, I reflect on fieldwork conducted in Greece and the UK during intersecting crises of austerity and social reproduction. Through two vignettes—building trust in a women's migrant organisation and navigating the politics of compensating participants—I explore how everyday practices of care and solidarity emerge, are challenged, and can work upwards to reconfigure extractive research relationships. I situate research as a political process that generates new solidarities between researchers and participants under conditions of shared precarity. The paper contributes to debates on feminist methodologies and participatory research by showing how small, situated acts of care can become the groundwork for broader institutional and political transformation.

New in Area!

'For a caring geography: Situated solidarities and feminist care ethics during and beyond crisis' by @matinakapsali.bsky.social

This paper is part of an ongoing Special Section: 'Dialogues in Radical Geography'.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Fascinating demonstration of the importance of language in scientific literature reviews (in geography in particular).

The authors ask "what similarities and differences are revealed in systematic literature reviews of sources in different languages?" (1/3)

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Anh Ngoc Vu, Jonathan Rigg, Felicity Kersting, Ekaterina Tarnovskaya & Loc Duc Nguyen (2025) entitled: 'What Difference Does Language Make? Comparing Systematic Evidence Reviews of Vietnamese and English Language Literatures on Climate Change and the Health of Outdoor Workers' with a black banner at the top. The dominance of English-language scholarship in global research has led to a significant knowledge divide, often marginalising research from non-English-speaking regions, particularly in the Global South. This paper presents a comparative analysis of two systematic literature reviews (SLRs) on the health impacts of climate change on outdoor workers in urban Asia, focusing on English- and Vietnamese-language literature. By comparing these two bodies of scholarship, the study uncovers key thematic convergences and divergences, reflecting broader disparities in knowledge production, research norms and priorities. The English-language literature emphasises macro-level analyses, theoretical frameworks, and long-term policy interventions, while the Vietnamese-language literature offers more localised, context-specific insights, highlighting immediate coping strategies and health risks faced by outdoor workers. We argue that the systematic exclusion of non-English sources risks reinforcing existing epistemic hierarchies, narrowing debate on global health and climate change research. By integrating Southern-language perspectives, research can better and more equitably address the diverse vulnerabilities of outdoor workers and develop more effective and locally attuned interventions. The study emphasises the need to cast our linguistic net more widely to enrich global understanding and help achieve epistemic justice.

New in Area:

'What difference does language make? Comparing systematic evidence reviews of Vietnamese and English language literatures on climate change and the health of outdoor workers' by Anh Ngoc Vu et al.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Screenshot of a paper abstract in Area by Chris Gibson & Andrew Warren (2025) entitled: 'Writing the field: Situational strategies in multi-sited research' with a black banner at the top.

New in Area:

'Writing the field: Situational strategies in multi-sited research' by Chris Gibson & Andrew Warren

This paper outlines a methodological approach to open-ended, multi-sited research that foregrounds 'situations' as anchors for reflexive inquiry.

doi.org/10.1111/area... #geosky

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library The paper highlights the value of dance as a communicative and pedagogical tool, demonstrating its ability to humanise sustainability challenges, with a specific focus on the Sustainable Development ...

New in Area:

'Steps to sustainability: Dance as a learning pathway to enhance engagement with sustainability' by Laura Tuckey & Daniel Bos

This paper highlights the value of dance as a communicative and pedagogical tool, focusing on the Sustainable Development Goals.

doi.org/10.1111/area...