CFP International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place

Proposals are invited for the 15th annual IASESP (International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place) conference, to be held at Liverpool John Moores University, 24 – 26 April, 2019. The conference theme is ‘Spaces and Places on the Edge: Margins, Borders, and Thresholds’

Place or space identified as on the edge is often the result of a judgment from the center. But it is also along the edges that one can shape or define the center. Edge and center are clearly relational and dynamic. What is a liminal space from one perspective can be the center from another vantage point. A border or frontier can be a boundary defining a space, a frame, or a threshold to a different environment, a gateway. It can be a physical or virtual space as well as a psychological or emotional state. Where is the edge? Borders circumscribe or limit space but they also are zones of contact. How does one distinguish between a border and a threshold? How do people experience edges, borders, and thresholds (alarm, excitement, indifference)?

This interdisciplinary conference will explore questions related to spaces and places on the edge spatially, socially, politically, and metaphorically.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Barriers/perimeters
  • Borderland(s)
  • Boundaries
  • Buffers/buffer zones
  • Coastlines
  • Dialectic of center and periphery, metropole and frontier
  • Ecotones/ecoclines
  • Extinction thresholds
  • Fringe areas/movements
  • Frontiers
  • Horizons
  • Interstices
  • Liminality
  • Marshes
  • Mapping the edges
  • Marginalia
  • Marginalized people or places
  • Midrash or Tafsir
  • Natural or manmade borders
  • Phenomenology of edges
  • Suburbs
  • Thresholds

Please send an abstract and brief CV by 15 February 2019 to Troy Paddock, paddockt1@southernct.edu