The Laboratory for Social Geography/ Laboratorio di Geografia Sociale (LaGeS) of the SAGAS Department is happy to announce the beginning of a series of seminars for the academic year 2021-2022. The seminars have the general title Reading (through) space and take the form of reading groups focused on questions of space and society.

The meetings have a twofold aim: first, to critically discuss, and exchange ideas on, a selection of recent and relevant social geographic texts that link to the ongoing international debates; and second, to introspect the discipline, asking what social geography is about, so as to eventually create a common platform for interdisciplinary dialogue within our Department. In this light, all SAGAS members are particularly welcome.

Thematically, the seminars are structured in blocks of three, and each block functions as a thematic umbrella for the readings to be discussed. The theme of the first block (October-December 2021) is Urban marginality.

The second seminar will take place on Tuesday November 16 at 15:00 in Aula Parva. After the first, introductory seminar, the second one aims at discussing Urban marginality in more 'tangible' rather than purely theoretical manners, by bringing forward specific case studies, which speak of different types of urban marginality and relate to different geographical contexts and scales. Precisely, the texts to be discussed and put in dialogue one with another are the following: 

• Uitermark, J. (2014), Governing urban marginality in Western Europe. Int J Urban Reg Res, 38: 1418-1436. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12069
• Boussalem, A. In, out, or somewhere else entirely: Going beyond binary constructions of the closet in the lives of LGBTQ people from a Muslim background living in Brussels. Trans Inst Br Geogr. 2021; 46: 435– 448. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12422

Dr. Nipesh Palat Narayanan and Dr. Panos Bourlessas will introduce and coordinate the discussions.

For anyone interested in participating, due to COVID-19 regulations and in order to receive the text to be discussed, please contact us to the following addresses:

nipesh.palatnarayanan@unifi.it & panagiotis.bourlessas@unifi.it

We are eager to meet you all in order to exchange views on marginality and urban space.

Kind regards,

Panos Bourlessas and Nipesh Palat Narayanan (LaGeS)