Geographical topics with a focus on wars

Every semester, the Institute of Geography's lecture series (GIB Lecutre Series) focusses on topics of geographical research and invites guest lecturers under a main topic. They present their work and are open to a Q&A session afterwards. The lecture series is also broadcast via Zoom.

This semester, the topic of political geography with a focus on "Spaces of War" is particularly topical and relevant due to the current military conflicts.

"The lecture series offers geographical perspectives on wars and violent conflicts," explains Prof Dr Martin Doevenspeck, Professor of Political Geography. "The Russian attack on Ukraine once again shows the importance of spaces, places, territorialities and geopolitical imaginaries for the emergence, course and possible pacification of violent conflicts."

The lectures take place on Tuesdays from 16.15 to 17.45 in H8 (GEO II building).

About the lecture: Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is a term from the world of intelligence services and describes the gathering of information from freely available sources. In his lecture, Dr Kevin Limonier explains this approach and uses practical examples with reference to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine to show how OSINT can be used for investigations into political geography and geopolitics.

About the speaker: Dr Kevin Limonier is Assistant Professor of Geography and Slavic Studies at the French Institute of Geopolitics at the University of Paris and Deputy Director of the Geode Research Centre, which deals with the geopolitics of the data sphere, and Head of the Observatory for Russian-speaking Cyberspace of the French Ministry of Defence.

About the lecture: There has long been a close relationship between war and geography. In his lecture "Geographies of War: The Anatomy of Modern War", he discusses different forms of military and paramilitary violence and uses Gaza, Ukraine and Syria as examples to address five closely linked characteristics of modern war: the spatial dissolution of the boundaries of the battlefield, the digitalisation of war, exceptional spaces under international law in which killing is legal, the media spaces of war and civilian victims.

About the speaker: Derek Gregory is currently Peter Wall Distinguished Professor and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is the author of a number of outstanding publications on the relationships between power, knowledge and geography.

About the lecture: War refugees are not passive, but new actors of urban change. Using the example of Ukrainian refugees and their translocal perspective, Dr Valeria Lazarenko examines how new spaces are created in cities by host communities, thus challenging established urban power relations. In response to the emotional geographies of displacement, practices such as renaming, the creation of new spaces of solidarity and the claiming of public space will be discussed.

About the speaker: Valeria Lazarenko completed her doctorate at the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv and currently works at the Georg Simmel Centre for Metropolitan Research at the Humboldt University in Berlin.