The theme for this year’s conference is ‘Adaptation’. First, we recognise the adaptability of geographers to address key questions and issues facing the world in times past as well as today. Our discipline has a long and complex history, and its survival owes much to geographers’ ability to adapt to new and sometimes challenging circumstances in our research and our teaching. Secondly, geography’s core concern with environment-human interactions and relations provides significant intellectual insight into the ways cultures and societies adapt to the changing world around them, as well as how the physical environment is adapted by human impacts and demands over time. Thirdly, adaptation of environments, by ‘human’ and ‘natural’ processes, provides a compelling focus for us as geographers seek to understand and address how future challenges will be met – embracing new technologies, techniques, philosophies and conceptual underpinnings to do so.
We look forward to welcoming everyone back to Queen’s. CIG has been held here twice in recent times, and we hope you will join us in sharing your own research explorations through paper presentations, roundtable discussions and poster displays. As well as three days of sessions and papers, we will have field-trips exploring the theme of adaptation, to local sites around Belfast as well as further afield. We are planning one public-facing event supported by local outreach and local media engagement during the conference and we welcome proposals for sessions that offer opportunities for other forms of public engagement.
We look forward to hosting you in Belfast!
Keith Lilley and Estelle Lowry Conference Co-Chairs