Digital Geographies Research Group

The image is a profile introducing the Committee chair, Tess Osborne. On the left hand side of the image, there is a professional photo of Tess with blonde hair, looking off to the side, seated at a table with a water bottle and a microphone pack. To the right of the image, the text reads: "Introducing... TESS OSBORNE Lecturer in Human Geography @ University of Leicester & Honorary Research Fellow @ University of Birmingham." Below this is a text box section titled "Two of my recent projects include:" listing "Biosocial Walking: exploring how movement and emotion shape migrant belonging in cities," and "AI Images: investigating how AI understands and misrepresents place." A quote follows: "For me, digital geographies shows how tech quietly choreographs our lives, sometimes helping, sometimes getting in the way." A final text box at the bottom states: "Research interests: how digital tech shapes movement, bodies and health and wellbeing: from migrant journeys to later-life mobility." The background is a mix of white and intersecting grey and black geometric shapes to highlight the quoted information.

🎉 Meet the DGRG Committee!

Over the coming days, we’ll be spotlighting the brilliant humans who keep the DGRG running, including a mix of familiar faces and new members.

First up (because someone has to go first)… our Chair, Tess Osborne (she/her/hers)! 👇 @tessosborne.bsky.social

#DGRGCommittee

Sign the Petition Save Geography at the University of Leicester

Please consider signing and circulating petitions, supporting striking colleagues, engaging with upcoming DGRG events on precarity, and/or extending other forms of solidarity to our (digital) geography community. 6/6

Save Geography at the University of Leicester petition:

States of precarity in UK Higher Education geography Findings from a discipline-focused research project exploring the lived realities of precarious academic work within UK Higher Education geography.

We recognise those impacted by and experiencing the effects of precarity, and encourage DGRG members to offer their support. 5/6

www.rgs.org/research/hig...

Funding crisis in higher education | RGS The Society is concerned about the current situation in many UK universities where academic and professional staff are at a risk of redundancy and departments at threat of merger or closure.

The current sectoral crises see these issues touch down in our institutions and impact the daily lives of University staff and students. As a research group, we stand in solidarity with the Royal Geographical Society's concerns relating to the current situation in many UK universities. 4/6

Geography remains a discipline vital in understanding and responding to a changing world punctuated by complex and intersecting issues and crises. As a discipline, Geography is underpinned by notions and practices of justice, equity, and activism. 3/6

From announced closures to proposed and potential redundancies, such processes and pressures directly impact digital geography research group members, geography colleagues, and the discipline more widely.  2/6

DGRG A Research Group of the RGS-IBG

Statement from the Digital Geographies Research Group (RGS-IBG)

The Royal Geographical Society’s (RGS-IBG) Digital Geographies Research Group (DGRG) are deeply concerned about the impacts and implications of ongoing crises facing Geography departments in UK Universities. 1/6

States of precarity in UK geography report launch We're invitomh all geographers to the launch of the States of Precarity in UK Higher Education Geography report.

Today, we’re starting a countdown to the launch event for our States of Precarity in UK HE Geography report. Based on 364 responses from across the discipline, it maps how precarity is shaping academic lives. #StatesofPrecarity

Follow along as we share the findings week by week.

Register below👉

💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥

We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.

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

Thank you to Daniela Ferreira and Mário Vale for organising the 4th Digital Geographies Conference (lnkd.in/eYeFD6P4) at IGOT-ULisboa. Great to engage with diverse international digital geographies research, and to share my research on 'Feminist digital geographies in flight: Everyday drone stories'

🌐🚨 CALL FOR PAPERS 🚨🌐

'The Visual Politics of Digital Ecologies'

🗓️ 2-3 February 2026
📍 @oxfordgeography.bsky.social

We invite one-word titles (e.g. hallucinating, zooming, obscuring, glitching, generating)

Deadline: 14th November

Full info: digicologies.com/cfp

Calling all geographical filmmakers! 🌏

We are seeking submissions for a winter film night in February 📹 Share your work with an engaged public audience in our Ondaatje Theatre.

Deadline 7 November. Find out more: https://www.rgs.org/about-us/our-work/latest-news/calling-all-geographical-filmmakers

Digital Geographies Research Group A Research Group of the RGS-IBG

Via novel intra-viewing AI, questionnaires, diaries, & interviews, Levina examines how students engage with ChatGPT & what this reveals about the distributed nature of thinking, authorship, & subjectivity.
More info below & stay tuned to learn more about the research 2/2 digitalgeographiesrg.org

a man in a tuxedo is holding a piece of paper and says `` and the winner is ... '' . Alt: A gif of a a man with short hair in a tuxedo standing in front of a red curtain. He is holding an envelop which he opens and at the bottom of the gif white text states 'and the winner is ... ''

The DGRG Dissertation Prize 2025 Winner is Levina Purewal for “‘I can’t think without ChatGPT’: A Cognitive Sociotechnical Assemblage Analysis of Student-AI Entanglement at Durham University”. Reviewers praised the contribution, multi-method approach, analysis & ambition 1/2
@geogdurham.bsky.social

📣Deadline tomorrow!

We're a welcoming and active research group. If you're looking to meet new people, get involved in digital geographies activities, learn about Geography research groups, and much more make sure you apply

Applications open to geographers and those in similar disciplines

Info⬇️

a cartoon of tweety and jerry saying they are a team . ALT: a cartoon of tweety and jerry saying they are a team .

We're looking for fantastic digital geographers to join our committee!

A few committee roles are open, and we’d love to see new (and familiar) faces step up. It’s a chance to meet other digital geographers and help shape what we do next.

Apply here: shorturl.at/kvDIv
Deadline: 24th Sept.

It was a pleasure to deliver this year’s
@dgrgrgs.bsky.social annual lecture at #RGS2025. Thank you @adammpacker.bsky.social
& @tessosborne.bsky.social for the kind invitation, to @debbiehopkins.bsky.social for rich discussant reflections, and to all who joined the session ⭐️

Three @dgrgrgs.bsky.social chairs, no table #RGSIBG25

Iconic trio 👏

We have a day of exciting events today, don't miss out!

🔹Our AGM at 13:10 is a chance to hear from the committee & details of our upcoming election

🔹Our inaugural lecture from @ahjackman.bsky.social on her fascinating research

🔹And many more DGRG sponsored sessions throughout the day

#RGSIBG25

Welcome to RGS-IBG AC25!

We have an exciting lineup of 14 (co-)sponsored session over the next few days, as well as our Annual Lecture & Reception. Join us for conversations across a broad range of topics intersecting the digital.

Please check ExOrdo for locations/timings.

@rgsibg.bsky.social

Are you at the RGS-IBG conference in Birmingham this week? And do you have a story to share about a place that is meaningful to you?

Look out for our Pin the Tale stand in the Teaching and Learning Building foyer, where you can browse our online map, read other people’s stories and add your own.

📣Today's the day!! Don't miss our exciting RGS pre-conference event. It's also a great chance to meet some members of the committee. We're a friendly group and welcome anyone whether your key focus is digital geographies or you're just starting to explore ideas

12pm-5pm Room 125 & the Map Room

Pre-conference activities - RGS Find out more about activities taking place in the run-up to the conference.

There is also a Pin the Tale workshop you can take part in TOMORROW as part of the @dgrgrgs.bsky.social pre-conference event, 'Exploring place-based creativity in a digitally-mediated world', 12pm - 5.30pm.

www.rgs.org/research/ann...

The poster shows a picture of Dr Anna Jackman University of Reading alongside her social media handles for BlueSky and LinkedIn with the title of her presentation ‘Feminist digital geographies in flight: Diversifying drone stories’ and the abstract. The header reads ‘RGS-IBG 2025. Digital Geographies Research Group Annual Lecture. Thursday 28th August 2025, Lecture Theatre 1 - LG19’.

We warmly invite you to the Digital Geographies Research Group Annual Lecture at @rgsibg.bsky.social AC25 at @unibirmingham.bsky.social

Our inaugural lecture will be given by @ahjackman.bsky.social (@uniofreading.bsky.social) on ‘Feminist digital geographies in flight: Diversifying drone stories’

Image is a screenshot of black text on a pale pink background with a plum coloured border in a squiggly line. The text states: Psychedelics, multiverses and radical creativity: towards an aesthetics of the commons - Professor Oli Mould This talk explores the potential of radical aesthetics to reawaken political imagination in the face of neoliberal capitalism’s cultural stranglehold and it's ushering in of the fascist horizon. Drawing on Mark Fisher’s unfinished project of Acid Communism, it argues that contemporary art and culture must reclaim the psychedelic, affective, and collective energies of the countercultural movements of the 1960s. This is not to indulge in nostalgia, but to rupture the present’s temporal and ideological capture by financialised capitalism. Central to this argument is the reconfiguration of time: whereas high-frequency trading and extractive logics sever the present from past and future, psychedelic aesthetics reanimate the now as a fertile commons, rich with collective memory and utopian possibility. I aim to critique the complicity of mainstream cultural institutions in sustaining capitalist realism and proposes an ‘aesthetics of the commons’ grounded in mutual aid, proletarianised cultural, digital and analogue production, and multiversal imaginaries. From pandemic-era art activism to the radical temporalities, psychedelic imaginaries and lucid dreaming, it seeks to chart an emergent, insurgent cultural politics that is not about building the future, but refusing capitalism’s version of it, and revelling instead in the shared abundance of the present.

Not long until our RGS pre-conference event: Exploring Place-based Creativity in a Digitally-Mediated World!

Featuring workshops + a keynote from @olimould.bsky.social
Psychedelics, multiverses and radical creativity: towards an aesthetics of the commons.

Register: www.rgs.org/research/ann...

RGS-IBG International Annual Conference 2025: DGRG Pre-Conference Event Exploring Place-based Creativity in a Digitally-Mediated World Tuesday 26th August 2025 – 12pm – 5pm Organisers: Dr Adam Michael Packer (University of Birmingham), Dr Nina Willment (Uni…

Planning your RGS annual conference itinerary? Don't miss our pre-conference event!

Join to explore placed-based creative practices of researchers, content creators & game designers
🔹AI in the Street
🔹Pin the Tale
🔹Sounds of Birmingham
🔹Keynote by Oli Mould
digitalgeographiesrg.org/rgs-ibg-inte...

RGS-IBG International Annual Conference 2025: DGRG Pre-Conference Event Exploring Place-based Creativity in a Digitally-Mediated World Tuesday 26th August 2025 – 12pm – 5pm Organisers: Dr Adam Michael Packer (University of Birmingham), Dr Nina Willment (Uni…

Planning your RGS annual conference itinerary? Don't miss our pre-conference event!

Join to explore placed-based creative practices of researchers, content creators & game designers
🔹AI in the Street
🔹Pin the Tale
🔹Sounds of Birmingham
🔹Keynote by Oli Mould
digitalgeographiesrg.org/rgs-ibg-inte...

And finally, we are thrilled to be joined by Prof @olimould.bsky.social (Royal Holloway, University of London) who will be presenting the preconference keynote, and whose presentation is titled 'Psychedelics, multiverses and radical creativity: towards an aesthetics of the commons' - very exciting!