[News] RGS-IBG 2025 CfP Stories we tell: Storytelling and the politics of small and different stories in geographical research

Thu Jan 16 10:19:20 CET 2025

Liebe Liste,

wir freuen uns, folgenden CfP für die Session STORIES WE TELL:  
STORYTELLING AND THE POLITICS OF /SMALL/ AND /DIFFERENT/ STORIES IN  
GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH bei der RGS-IBG 2025 in Birmingham mit euch zu  
teilen.

Lg
Melike & Katrin

----

CFP FOR THE SESSION

STORIES WE TELL: STORYTELLING AND THE POLITICS OF /SMALL/ AND  
/DIFFERENT/ STORIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH 

‘Stories, unlike data, contain the affective legacy of our  
experiences. They are a felt knowledge that accumulates and becomes a  
force that empowers stories that are otherwise separate to become a  
focus, a potential for movement.’ (Million 2014: 32-33)

The proposed session is inspired by Million's (2014) observation on  
the power of stories and de Leeuw and Morgan's (2020: 520) addition of  
thinking carefully about how and where, by whom and for whom stories  
are told (i.e. storytelling). We want to create a space to explore the  
potential of storytelling and storylistening and the telling of and  
listening to ‘small’ (Frenette 2024, Lorimer 2003) and ‘other’ stories  
(Solorzano/Yosso 2012) for geographical research at a theoretical,  
methodological and empirical level.

While ethnographic research can already look back on a tradition of  
narrative formats (Coppens et al. 2020: 255) and autoethnographic  
approaches in particular emphasise various forms and formats of  
narrating personal, subjective and intimate moments (Ellis/Bochner  
2000: 739), storytelling has so far played a crucial role in  
geographies that care about the small, embodied and relational  
productions of place and space (Harris 2022, Vasudevan et al. 2023).  
Some researchers have discussed the potentials and challenges of  
storytelling and narrative geographies, such as Schröder (2022) and  
Peterle (2021) in relation to comics or Piscitelli (2023) on the  
medium of documentary film. While these discussions have mostly  
focussed on formats, in this session we want to take a closer look at  
storytelling as a methodological approach.

We understand geographies of (small) stories as a critical and  
interdisciplinary perspective that ‘experiments with narrative forms  
and textual and visual storytelling practices as creative ways to  
deconstruct dominant discourses about cities, places, and spatial  
identities and to activate the plurivocal composition of  
spatial-meanings’ (Peterle 2021: 9). Stories are both particular and  
personal as well as expressions of larger social, political and  
cultural contexts (Cameron 2012: 574), and the telling, sharing and  
hearing of stories is relational, embodied, and affective (McKittrick  
2021: 6). Stories and storytelling can thus also serve to pay more  
attention to the subtleties, pitfalls, uncertainties and  
incompleteness of academic work (McKittrick 2021: 7-8).

In line with the conference theme /Geographies of Creativity /  
Creative Geographies/, in this session we would like to explore how  
storytelling and geographies of (small) stories are particularly  
suited to making the invisible visible, intervening in existing power  
relations and making geographical research more communicable outside  
of academia.

We welcome feminist, creative, innovative and/or political  
perspectives on and discussions on storytelling. Submissions may  
include, but are not limited to, the following questions:

   *   What geographical issues are particularly suitable or relevant  
for using storytelling in order to develop transformative and ‘other’  
perspectives on society? What is the significance of these ‘other’  
stories?
   *   What remains or becomes invisible in geographies of  
storytelling and listening?
   *   To what extent are geographies of storytelling suitable for  
analysing power (mis)relations?
   *   How can the positionalities and situatedness of all research  
participants be considered in storytelling?
   *   What methods are suitable for storytelling?
   *   To what extent is storytelling suitable for communicating  
science to a broader public?

_Presentation format:_ Both traditional paper presentations and other  
formats or approaches to presentation and storytelling can be used.

We look forward to receiving proposals (abstract of approximately 250  
words) BY 28 FEBRUARY 2025 to Melike Peterson (peterson at uni-bremen.de)  
and Katrin Singer (katrin.singer at uni-hamburg.de).

_Cited literature_

Cameron, E. (2012). New geographies of story and storytelling.  
/Progress in Human Geography /36(5): 573-592.

Coppens, L., Dietrich, M.-C. & Schäuble, M. (2020). Audiovisuelle  
Forschungsmethoden. In B. Beer & König, A. (Eds) /Methoden  
ethnologischer Feldforschung /(pp. 241-260). Dietrich Reimer Verlag.

De Leeuw, S. & Morgan, V. S. (2020). Narrating new spaces: Theories  
and practices of storytelling in feminist geographies. In A. Datta et  
al. (Eds) /Routledge Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies /(pp.  
519-530). Routledge.

Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal  
narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject. In Denzin, N. K. &  
Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds) /Handbook of Qualitative Research /(2nd ed, pp.  
733-768). SAGE.

Frenette, A. (2024). Story-listening as methodology: a feminist case  
for unheard stories. Gender, Place & Culture 31 (3): 379-399.

Harris, L. M (2022). Towards enriched narrative political ecologies.  
/EPE: Nature and Space/ 5(2): 835-860.

Lorimer, H. (2003). Telling small stories: Spaces of knowledge and the  
practice of geography. /Transactions of the Institute of British  
Geographers /28(2): 197-217.

McKittrick, K. (2021). /Dear science and other stories/. Duke  
University Press.

Million, D. (2014). There is a river in me: Theory from life. In  
Simpson, A. & Smith, A. (Eds) /Theorizing Native Studies /(pp. 31-42).  
Duke University Press.

Peterle, G. (2021). /Comics as a research practice: Drawing narrative  
geographies beyond the frame/. London: Routledge.

Piscitelli, P. (2023) Film: Filmemachen als transformatives  
Forschungstool. In Singer, K., Schmidt, K. & Neuburger, M. (Eds)  
/Artographies: Kreativ-künstlerische Zugänge zu einer machtkritischen  
Raumforschung/ (pp.157-188). Transcript.

Schröder, V. (2022). More than words: /Comics/ als narratives Medium  
für Mehr-als-menschliche Geographien. /Geographica Helvetica/ 77:  
271–287.

Solorzano, D. G. & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology:  
Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education  
research. /Qualitative Inquiry /8(1): 23-44.

Vasudevan, P., Ramírez, M. M., González Mendoza, Y. & Daigle, M.  
(2023). Storytelling Earth and Body. /Annals of the American  
Association of Geographers /113(7): 1728-1744.
  Dr. Melike Peterson
Postdoctoral Researcher in Urban Geography
Institute of Geography
Universitäts-Boulevard 13
28359 Bremen, Germany

Phone: 0049 421 218 67133
Twitter @MelikePeterson
Project: bibliothekenundrechtaufstadt.wordpress.com
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