Happy Summer Holidays from our Research School!
Before we head off for the summer break, we would like to thank everyone who has been part of TRANSPLACE’s conversations and events this spring. As we head into the summer break, we would like to thank everyone who has contributed to our discussions and events this Spring semester. Below, you can find a short overview of this half-year’s activities and some reflections on the themes that have emerged. TRANSPLACE is now taking a summer break, and we look forward to welcoming you back when the autumn programme begins in August.
Happy Summer from Transplace Research School
As we head into the summer break, we would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the discussions and events held this Spring semester.
This semester was punctuated by two courses. The Research School participated in a writing course led by writing pedagogue Åsa Callmer , where we explored experiences and emotions related to climate change through a range of collective and individual writing exercises and genres, whilst reflecting on how research might be communicated differently. Students also took part in a doctoral course on more-than-human philosophy taught by Jonna Bornemark and Krystof Kaspraz at Södertörn University, which delved into post-humanist perspectives and selected traditions within continental philosophy.
In addition, we welcomed three international guests for doctoral seminars and open lectures: feminist cultural theorist and urban researcher Elke Krasny , Land Use and Transport Planning Professor Dominic Stead , and Planning scholar Heather Campbell. We also organised several public discussions, including a panel with researchers and activists on the role of climate activism in a time of uncertainty and backlash, a workshop on the design and artefacts of public transport, and two book events: Philosopher Jonna Bornemak’s De Undanträngda at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, and Kampen om stadsrummet by Kristina Tamm, Jenny Lindblad, Ingrid Gustafsso Nordin, and Sofia Wiberg, organised in collaboration with Föreningen För Samhällsplanering Stockholm.
Taken together, these events invited us to reflect on research’s relationship and modes of engagement with others – whether civil society organisations, practitioners, or more-than-human worlds – and on the possibilities for collaboration, encounters, alliances, and shared practices. We questioned dominant assumptions and expertise within urban planning, examining, for instance, how care becomes materialised and invisibilised in urban spaces, and how the built environment has been conceptualised as a means to shape and transform social behaviours. These conversations also grappled with the implications of some of the pressing challenges of our time, such as the escalation of the climate crisis, declining trust in governmental institutions and the future, and growing authoritarian tendencies. Our discussions interrogated, for instance, what kind of, and how new forms, of knowledge, relations, and actions, might be developed in this context.