Events

Invited Lecture

 

Sabine Panzer-Krause (1980) graduated in Geography at the University of Jena, Germany, in 2005, with minors in Sociology and Political Science. Her studies included overseas stays in New Zealand, Vanuatu and Ecuador. From 2005 to 2010, she was a research associate in Economic Geography and Regional Development at the University of Jena where she obtained her PhD in Geography in 2011, with research focusing on businesses’ financing opportunities in rural regions under shifting market conditions. Transitioning to a project leadership role, she worked with the regional development agency “projekt REGION BRAUNSCHWEIG GmbH” from 2010 to 2012, managing initiatives in business development, sustainability, and education. Since 2012, Sabine Panzer-Krause has been a research associate and associate professor at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. She is responsible for leading research and teaching in Human Geography, particularly in the fields of rural tourism, resilience, and sustainability transitions. In 2022, she completed her Habilitation, contributing significant research on the ways tourists and tourism businesses shape rural regions and paths towards sustainability, based on empirical studies conducted in Germany and Ireland. Current research projects in Norway, Austria and Germany analyse the influence of digitalization, particularly of social media, on the rise and fall of rural tourism destinations and their sustainability efforts.

 

 

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Invited Lecture

 

Melinda Hajdu-Smahó  (1978) graduated as an economist at Széchenyi István University in 2002 and started her academic career at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Centre for Regional Studies West-Hungarian Research Institute (2002-2010). She obtained her PhD degree at Széchenyi István University Doctoral School of Regional- and Business Administration Sciences in 2009 based on the thesis titled The Relation between Knowledge and Regional Development. She has been working as an assistant professor at Széchenyi István University since September 2010. Since October 2021 she has been working as research fellow at HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies. Institute for Regional Studies West-Hungarian Research Department (HUN-REN CERS IRS WHRD) in Győr. During her researcher and instructor career, she has been co-author and co-editor of scientific books both in Hungarian and foreign languages. As foreign scholarship holder, she obtained both study (Linz, 2002) and research experience (Vienna, 2006; Berlin, 2012; Katowice, 2022) abroad. Her present research interests are the relation between knowledge and regional development, as well as economic and social impacts of autonomous vehicles in cities. 

 

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Activitate pentru studenţi

 

 

Event within RESTORY project

 

 

 

Climate and Justice Event at Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Perception, Mitigation and Adaptation to Current and Future Effects of Climate Change at Local and Regional Level 

On the 30^th of March 2022, from 5 to 7.30 p.m. EET, an academic debate took place on Microsoft Teams, with the topic Perception, Mitigation and Adaptation to Current and Future Effects of Climate Change at Local and Regional Level. This was organised by the Faculty of Geography and the Research Centre for Territorial Identities and Development, both in Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The institutional coordinators were Associate Professor Iulian-Horia HOLOBÂCĂ, Ph.D. and Oana-Ramona ILOVAN, Ph.D. The event was part of the Worldwide Teach-In on Climate and Justice, a project of Bard College from New York, the USA, together with the Open Society University Network. Our event was one of the more than 300 Teach-ins on climate and justice throughout the world, which aimed at raising awareness and encouraging action to address the causes and impact of climate change.

Speakers at the debate were academics, representatives of public institutions (Cluj County Council and the Office for Regional Development North-West) and of NGOs (the Association Clujul Sustenabil). They presented the general scientific background on climate change, as well as the activities and projects of their institutions concerning the topic. The urgency of acting against climate change, especially at the local level, was emphasized. Students of the Faculty of Geography, at all levels of study, took the opportunity to ask questions on climate and justice and discuss various issues with the speakers and professors participating at the debate. A total of thirty-two people participated, including five professors, six guests, and university students.

This academic debate was only a step in what the organisers hope to be a series of similar events in the years to come.

 

Programme

 

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Qualitative Research Workshop

Structured Data in Qualitative Historical Research

Speakers:

Vlad Popovici, PhD

Lecturer, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Department of Modern History, Archival Science and Ethnology;
Researcher, Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

vlad.popovici@ubbcluj.ro

Angela Cristina Lumezeanu, PhD
Researcher, Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Centre for Population Studies

angela.lumezeanu@ubbcluj.ro

 

Within the narrative-dominated field of Humanities, historical research included, structured data is frequently associated with calculations and quantitative approaches, to the point in which traditional historical research makes use of it in very basic forms and with limited explanatory aims. Our presentation focuses on the methodology and qualitative outcomes of employing structured data in the research of 19^th and early 20^th centuries by means of a general theoretical framework and several historical case studies. The central idea of the presentation is that properly re-structured information from historical sources opens the way for a better understanding of the past and for more intricate historical conclusions even before undergoing statistical analysis, thus being closer to the average historian’s means and perspective.

 

Click here to Microsoft Teams link

 

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Open call for papers

Special Issue  2022

Place Attachment during Territorial Development Challenges

 

Guest Editors: Iwona MARKUSZEWSKA¹ and Oana-Ramona ILOVAN²
1 Adam Mickiewicz University, Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences, Poznań, POLAND
2 Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Territorial Identities and Development Research Centre
(TIDRC), Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA

 

Environment and landscape are under constant change that transforms land, places, and habitats. Various interests and power relations, considering diverse decision-makers (e.g. public administration, economic and cultural entrepreneurs, citizens, civil society), impact the sustainable management of communities. At the same time, communities’ demands and expectations are to live in a safe and clean environment. This is a challenge to the sustainable management and development of urban and rural areas, and it frees up questions about preserving and (re)constructing attachment to places and maintaining social wellbeing.

Adjustment to change requires local communities to reinterpret their perception on and their attitude towards places. Changes require that we (re)define place meaning and (re)develop place attachment. We understand attachment to place as a set of feelings (lived either currently or as part of memory) about a geographic location that emotionally binds a person to it.

We welcome contributions, from any theoretical perspective, on the following themes, but not limited to these:
· From topophilia to topophobia. From topophobia to topophilia. Local community perception of landscape changes;
· Processes of enhancing the sustainability of communities through place attachment;
· Preserving and building territorial identities and place attachment under new social, cultural and economic challenges;
· Feelings of connectedness and loss in fragile communities, undergoing disruptive changes;
· Tangible and intangible resources for sustainable development and (re)connecting people to places;
· Lessons of success and failure in experiencing new development paths and how people’s place attachment was affected;
· Greening and making a better place. Sustainable development of regenerated landscapes and place attachment;
· Urban bioregions and place attachment. Urban/rural regeneration practices, social capital and activism;
· Home is where my heart is: building territorial identity and place attachment within immigrant communities;
· When place attachment creates conflicts: individual versus common needs. Sustainable use of landscape resources;
· How migration, political and economic changes impact building identity processes and place attachment in a new place;
· Living together – how multicultural and multinational integrated communities contribute to shaping common place identity and individual place attachment;
· Misplaced and rooted out of the homeland – lost landscape in the immigrant community’s memories;
· Building place attachment through educational discourses;
· Quantitative and qualitative approaches to researching place attachment during community transformation.

 

For more details please check here

 

 

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IGU Congress, Paris, 18-22 July 2022

Call for Abstracts

Session “Drastic Territorial Changes”

Reference for abstracts submission: A101442TB

 

 Session Convenors:

• Tiziana Banini, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, tiziana.banini@uniroma1.it
• Oana-Ramona Ilovan, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, oana.ilovan@ubbcluj.ro

 

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Qualitative Research Workshop: First Meeting

Rubik – Individual Permutations in Search of Optimal Solutions for Structural Problems

Speakers: Alexandra Mocan & Helga Thies

Fabrica de Pensule/Paintbrush Factory Federation

mocanalexandra@yahoo.com

helga@fabricadepensule.ro

 

Rubik is a platform for identifying, connecting and consolidating independent artistic initiatives deeply affected by the aggressive growth of the real estate market in Cluj-Napoca. Configured by the instinct to signal an alarming current that affects an artistic scene that was, until recently, effervescent and to support remarkable but fragile local initiatives, Rubik is formulated as a host space meant to represent multiple identities, like the color palettes of a Rubik’s cube, as metaphorical root of the project. A platform which supports artistic initiatives that face the difficulty of carrying out their activities in a stable space, Rubik can be identified in the cultural scene as a manifest-space that identifies the need to support this sector deeply affected by the expansion of the local real estate market.

Strategically located precisely in a stereotype-space of the real estate market that has destabilized part of the local cultural movements, the initiative seeks to manifest itself precisely in a place with a specific of commandeering the art scene, establishing an inversion process here, a castling – like moving a cube around – movement specific to the cubes that make up the Rubik game.

A project of the Paintbrush Factory Federation curated by Alexandra Mocan and Matei Toșa, in collaboration with Lateral ArtSpace Association, Young Actions and Abstractions Association (AiciAcolo Pop-Up Gallery) and the initiatives Grota and Gara Mică.

 

Click here to Microsoft Teams link

 

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Qualitative Research Workshop

 

Workshop convenors: Alina Branda, PhD & Oana-Ramona Ilovan, PhD

The main aim of this workshop is to gather specialists in various socio-human sciences (human geography, ethnology, socio-cultural anthropology, history, social psychology, letters, etc.) committed to interdisciplinarity, who engage qualitative methodologies in their research.

The current pandemic crisis has different consequences and impact on research practices and policies in general, influencing in specific ways the ones in socio-human sciences. The intention of the workshop is to encourage participants to present their current research.

 

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Territorial Identities and Sustainable Development.
Challenges and Solutions

Dear Authors and Reviewers,

Territorial Identities and Heritage.
Discourses and Practices

Dear Authors and Reviewers,

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Book presentation poster

 

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Special Issue
“Culture, Heritage and Territorial Identities for Urban Development”

Dear Colleagues,

The economic globalization of the recent decades has generated faster rhythms in cities’ adaptation to novelty and consequently triggered customed urban restructuring and regeneration policies and practices. From the 1970s onwards, towns and cities have experienced deindustrialization processes, while seeing a gradual growth of tertiarization and diversification of services, including cultural ones. Until then, culture in relation to cities’ development was important, especially from a historical perspective, in terms of its influence on urban forms and characteristics. With more accelerated socioeconomic dynamics, the role of culture in urban development has grown progressively. With the different, both positive and negative, effects introduced by new cultural interpretations of cities (e.g., culture in public spaces, cultural and creative industries, culture as marketing tools, cultural commodification, etc.), the concept of culture has become increasingly associated with urban image and identity. In finding solutions within regeneration processes, policies often rely on tools from the cultural and creative fields. Additionally, built material and immaterial heritage can have significant roles: e.g., converting heritage sites and buildings through cultural projects or new functions, or capitalizing on specific traditions and place memory for local identity and place attachment. 

This Special Issue focuses on cultural approaches in connection with urban development and aims for contributions from various research fields. The volume invites researchers and academics worldwide to publish their original research articles on the following themes, but not limited to these:

– Cultural activities and their role in urban development;
– Cities (re)constructing their identity, relying mainly on culture and heritage;
– Culture as a relevant component of current spatial planning policies;
– Urban strategies, attracting creative people;
– Urban image, heritage and culture;
– Culture, local memory and local identities;
– Heritage and industrial culture;
– Subcultures within cities and processes of urban change.

Contributions have to follow one of the three categories (article/review/conceptual paper) of papers for the journal and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Dr. Andreea-Loreta Cercleux
Mr. Harfst Jörn
Dr. Ilovan Oana-Ramona
Guest Editors

 

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Special Session at the 8^th EUGEO 2021 Congress on the Geography of Europe

June 28 – July 1, 2021

Prague, Czechia

Change and Sustainability. Preserving and (Re)Constructing Place Attachment during Territorial Development Challenges

 

Organizers:

Oana-Ramona ILOVAN (Faculty of Geography, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania),

Iwona MARKUSZEWSKA (Faculty of Geographic and Geological Sciences, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland)

Environment and landscape are under constant change that transforms land, places, and habitats. Various interests and power relations, considering diverse decision makers (e.g. public administration, economic and cultural entrepreneurs, regular citizens, civil society), impact the sustainable management of communities. At the same time, communities’ demands and expectations are to live in a safe and clean environment. This is a challenge to the sustainable management and development of urban and rural areas, and it frees up questions about preserving and (re)constructing attachment to places and maintaining social well-being.

Moving towards sustainability, which refers to human-environment coexistence in harmony, is a challenge for decision makers to meet the expectations of landscape stakeholders. Sustainability also challenges communities and individuals who feel they have to choose between maintaining economic benefits and an environmentally-friendly behaviour to reduce negative impact on landscape and regenerate destroyed landscapes and places.

Adjustment to change requires local communities’ reinterpreting their perception on and attitude towards places. This is true also for re/immigrated societies. Changes require that we (re)define place meaning and (re)develop place attachment.

We welcome contributions, from any theoretical perspective, on the following themes, but not limited to these:

1. From topophilia to topophobia. From topophobia to topophilia. Local community perception of landscape changes;
2. Processes of enhancing the sustainability of communities through place attachment;
3. Assessing the sustainability of resource management based on historically informed and validated human activities and practices;
4. Preserving and building territorial identities under new social, cultural and economic challenges;
5. Feelings of connectedness and loss in fragile communities, undergoing disruptive changes;
6. Tangible and intangible resources for sustainable development and (re)connecting people to places;
7. Lessons from success and failure in experiencing new development paths and how were affected people’s place attachment;
8. Greening and making a better place. Sustainable development of regenerated landscapes;
9. Urban bioregions. Urban/rural regeneration practices, social capital and activism;
10. Home is where my heart is: building territorial identity within immigrant communities;
11. When place attachment creates conflicts: individual versus common needs. Sustainable use of landscape resources;
12. How migration, political and economic changes impact building identity processes in a new place;
13. Living together – how multicultural and multinational integrated communities contribute to shaping common place identity and individual place attachment;
14. Misplaced and rooted out of the homeland – lost landscape in the immigrant community’s memories;
15. Quantitative and qualitative approaches to researching place attachment during community transformation.

Keywords: landscape transformations, regeneration, environment, territorial identities, power

For registration: https://on-line-form.eu/eugeo2021/abstracts/index.php?coo=1

See also: https://www.eugeo2021.eu/important-dates/

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Open call for papers

 

Special Issue, no. 7/2021

 

Territorial Identities and Heritage. Discourses and Practices

 

 

Guest Editors: Oana-Ramona ILOVAN¹ Marinela ISTRATE^2
1 Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Territorial Identities and Development Research Centre (TIDRC), Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA
² Al. I. Cuza University, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Iaşi, ROMANIA

 

Territorial identity involves both the place attachment and belonging and the politics of territorial planning. Various types of identity (place, urban, regional, national, cultural, personal, community, etc.) have been proven to contribute to the identity of place, as these are viewed in relation to its historical heritage and characteristics. At the same time, local identity harbours emotional and symbolic meanings people ascribe to a sense of self and attachment to place.

 

This special issue starts from a relational, dynamic, and participatory notion of territorial identity. Therefore, it will host the results of original empirical and theoretical scientific research on territorial identity and its representations as constructed through discourses and practices.

 

We welcome contributions on the following topics of interest, but not limited to these:

 

• Representations of territorial identity and development: discourses, images, practices
• Heritage management
• Perceptions of territorial identity at various levels
• Constructing, preserving and promoting territorial identities
• Place/regional attachment in time
• (Re)defining place meaning and topophilia
• Territorial identity and territorial planning
• Territorial identity and public policy
• Territorial identity and formal and informal education
• Theoretical contributions for the study of territorial identity within the discourse of Cultural Geography
• Research methodology for the study of territorial identity

 

For more details please check here

 

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Open call for papers

 

Special Issue, no. 8/2021

 

Territorial Identities and Sustainable Development. Challenges and Solutions

 

 

Guest Editors: Oana-Ramona ILOVAN¹ Marinela ISTRATE^2
1 Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Territorial Identities and Development Research Centre (TIDRC), Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA
² Al. I. Cuza University, Faculty of Geography and Geology, Iaşi, ROMANIA

 

Territorial belonging and territorial attractiveness are elements of strategic relevance for development at various levels. Therefore, territorial identity is relevant for building the social capital so useful during the processes of development and territorial planning. The concern about territorial identity and development is part of the same trend that occurred in the academic and political environment after the 1990s, when it became obvious that there was a strong connection between these and environmental, social and economic well-being.

 

This special issue will host the results of original empirical and theoretical scientific research on territorial identity and its relation to sustainable development.

 

We welcome contributions on the following topics of interest, but not limited to these:

 

• Territorial identity and (un)sustainable community development (rural and urban)
• Territorial identity, regional development, and regional inequalities
• Territorial identity and territorial planning
• Territorial identity and public policy (including gender policies)
• Territorial identity and smart communities
• Territorial identity and green economies
• Disruptive changes, resilience, and sustainable development
• Tangible and intangible elements of territorial identity for sustainable development
• Urban and rural regeneration based on territorial identities
• Landscape transformations and sustainability
• (Re)developing place attachment and meaning
• Historically informed practices for resource management
• Theoretical contributions for the study of territorial identity within the theoretical discourses on sustainable development
• Research methodology for the study of territorial identity

 

For more details please check here

 

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