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Owain Jones

Bath Spa University, Centre for Environmental Humanities, Emeritus Professor

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Following

94

Co-authors

21

Public Views

Positions

Professor of Environmental Humanities;
AHRC Peer Review College;
Associate Editor: Journal of Children’s Geographies;

Research Interests

Tidal Geographies (temporalities of nature);
Animal geographies;
Geographies of the sea and coast;
Geographies of weather;
Place, landscape and memory;
Healing nature-society relations;
Children's geographies;

Theoretical foci

Affect/emotion/memory;
Non-rep theory and creativity;
Pragmatism;
Phone: 07871572969

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University Of Roehampton

Teresa Marat-Mendes

ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL)

Kansas State University

Flinders University of South Australia

Estella Weiss-Krejci

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Ucla

Mercyhurst University

Felicity Picken

Western Sydney University

Camelia Dewan, PhD

Uppsala University

Universiti Brunei Darussalam

InterestsView All (13)

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Papers by Owain Jones

Geography, Memory and Non-Representational Geographies

Geography Compass, Dec 1, 2011

I discuss the presence of memory within geography, particularly in relation to the interweaving n... more I discuss the presence of memory within geography, particularly in relation to the interweaving non-representational ⁄ peformative ⁄ affective 'turns'. Memory seems under-considered in these nonrepresentational geographies (nrgs) which focus on the affective performativities of the present and the richness and creative potentials therein. As memory is a fundamental aspect of becoming, the roles it plays in the peformative moment need to be considered. Richness, potential and creativity emerges not simply from the moment per se, but from the legacies of the past carried into the present, not least through memory which underpins imagination, creativity and (productive) affective exchange. Emerging work on geography and memory does show some 'non-representational' traits and thus there is a potential for bringing this kind of work more fully into nrg. This is set in wider contexts of geographical approaches to memory, and the notion of ecologies of memories which form of interlinkages between individuals, various social collectives, materialities, texts, and past ⁄ present ⁄ future timespaces. 'self' are key themes, whereas memory is at best a ghostly presence (for exceptions, see Anderson 2004; Lorimer 2006). Memory makes us what we are, and, along with emotion ⁄ affect, forms the interrelating foundational processes of our ongoing lives (Damasio 1999), and is inextricably linked to imagination ⁄ creativity (Greenfield 1997). We are conglomerations of past everyday experiences, including their spatial textures and affective registers. Memory should not be seen as a burden of the past, rather it is fundamental to GEC3 459

The Supply of, and Demand for, Skilled Labour for the Heritage and Rural Landscape Sector in Gloucestershire: A report for the National Heritage Academy (South West)

Body Pictographs and the Disappeared; Ghosting (through) City Spaces. A Short Essay with Photographs

ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, Apr 1, 2014

This essay and accompanying photographs forms a contemplation of pictographs of the human form wh... more This essay and accompanying photographs forms a contemplation of pictographs of the human form which are routinely painted onto city surfaces to demark walkways, cycleways and pedestrian zones. Whole series of initially identical pictographs can take on individual appearance as they fade and distort. Over time their original purpose wanes and other (possible) associations can form. I suggest that such images of the body can never be neutral or innocent, as they will always carry some political and ethical 'charge'. And when these images do become distorted and/ or faded, they become suggestive of the political body and the body damaged by industry and other forms of political violence. They begin to whisper of other graphic images sometimes painted onto, or even burnt into city surfaces. Some of these 'other' images are pictographs of resistance which have represented the bodies of the Disappeared in a range of harsh political regimes. The information pictographs can thus become, and speak of, 'spectral traces'-ghostly presences in the city. They can link everyday city spaces to other places and other times through the geographic-empathetic imagination, and through the flow of texts and images through physical and virtual space-time.

Duke University Press eBooks, Feb 7, 2022

Policy Implications of the Postmodern Countryside: Report to the Commission for Rural Communities

Study of Determined Town and Village Green Applications: Final Report to Common Land Team, Defra

is Senior Research Fellow within the CCRI and has over 20 years' experience of rural research and... more is Senior Research Fellow within the CCRI and has over 20 years' experience of rural research and over 10 years on issues concerning common land and town and village greens. Chris was part of the consortium involved in evaluating the impact of the proposals for reform that ultimately became the Commons Act 2006, as technical project manager of a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) completed for Defra. He is also the convenor of the National Seminar on Common Land and Village Greens, 1999 to 2009 which has attracted well over 1000 delegates during this period. Chris was project manager for this research and was involved at every stage, including the analysis and report writing.

The Social Impacts on England's Inshore Fishing Industry: Final Report

An invitation to the Hydrocitizens online community

On narrative, affect and threatened ecologies of tidal landscapes

All stories are true. I know that now. Unwritten memories and bodies Subside like pit villages. B... more All stories are true. I know that now. Unwritten memories and bodies Subside like pit villages. But they leave small spaces Where poppies and dandelions grow Amongst resurgent grass Poem extract from Burials by Adam Horovitz (2013/2011) This is a story about tides, about tides in Bristol, about two characters that we found in the mud of the Severn Estuary-Peri and Proxi. It is also a story about telling stories as a method for the creative accounting of eco-social histories, presents and futures, and material and nonmaterial entanglements of such through space-time. And it is a story about loss-of ecologies of ecocide, of getting lost, and of finding a way through stories. As so much of life is, this is an experimental mixing. Tides mix things-fresh and salt water, land and sea. In unsettling boundaries and definitions they invite a focus on interrelationships, and on flux and change. Intertidal landscapes are in constant motion, change and cycles, denying fixity and stasis. As such they unsettle both linear thinking and linear understanding that, in spite of movements to break away from, continue to shape historical and geographical accounts in many areas of thinking. This chapter is tidal in its approach, ecological. It tells stories of stories through the tides, an ebbing and waning, from solid to fluid and back again with all that comes in between. It embraces the constant motion of life and understanding, and attempts to bring this into a textual representation. In short it is a story of an ecological approach to eco-social storytelling.

Intimate knowledge: building local/lay knowledge and sense of place into Flood Resilience planning after the July 2007 floods in the UK

The role of local/lay flood knowledge in building community resilience: the case of the 2007 floods, Gloucestershire, UK

Scrutiny reviews after the 2007 floods, UK (Cabinet Office 2008; DEFRA 2008) have highlighted dif... more Scrutiny reviews after the 2007 floods, UK (Cabinet Office 2008; DEFRA 2008) have highlighted different types of knowledges needed for effective flood risk management, along with knowledge gaps. This paper evaluates critically the changing nature of local flood knowledge in community settings, based on research undertaken after the 2007 floods. The paper explores the nature of local knowledge of flood risk and the impact of interventions. In particular, the scale of local/lay flood knowledge and associated local senses/values of place is important in validating and challenging expert knowledge. The paper reflects on how flood knowledge can be captured, used and harnessed in flood resilience planning, and on the role of local knowledge and sustainable flood memory in developing community flood resilience. It concludes that the 2007 UK flood experience is generating new understandings of the value of local knowledge, and how this knowledge might be successfully used in flood risk management practice.

Duke University Press eBooks, Feb 7, 2022

Arnos vale cemetery and the lively materialities of trees in place

This paper tells a story of the Victorian cemetery movement and one particular and controversial ... more This paper tells a story of the Victorian cemetery movement and one particular and controversial example-Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, Southwest England. The narrative shows how places such as this are distinct spaces, but also fluxes of process where all manner of flows of materialities, politics, culture and economy come together to spatilise the place into being. This being is, however, unstable and given to change as variations in unfolding presences and agencies occur. Attention is first given to the emergence of the new cemeteries in the 19 th century and the influential cemetery design of JC Loudon and the tree planting he advocated. Trees were central to Loudon"s "cemetery style" and he drew on the vastly expanded palette of available trees species being collected from around the world, and on tree cultures/spaces from ancient times and exotic places, to develop his exacting specifications. Then attention turns to Arnos Vale itself and its markedly mixed and changing fortunes and formations over the last 170 years. This history is cross-cut it with current interests in the agency of non-humans and theorisations of places as dynamic processes with all manner of things coming together (intentionally and otherwise) over time. Trees bring their own lively materialities and temporalities to these places which inevitably transform them, despite best laid plans, and reconfigure them in the shifting material space of the city and in the complex cultural contexts (local to global) which surround them. "Trees are [ ] at the heart of things. How could it be otherwise?" (Tudge: 2005, 404)

Idylls and othernesses

Introduction: More-than-human participatory research: contexts, challenges, possibilities

This collection arises from an AHRC-funded research project called In Conversation with…: codesig... more This collection arises from an AHRC-funded research project called In Conversation with…: codesign with more-than-human communities that ran in 2013, as well as a series of panels held at the RGS-IBG International Conference in 2014 on the Co-Production of knowledge with non-humans. ln both cases we sought to explore the notion of a 'more-thanhuman participatory research'. Yet to say 'more-than-human participatory research' seems like too much of a mouthful. These are words that do not roll easily off the tongue, but instead suggest some kind of cacophony, some noisy dissonance. These are words that seem like they should not really sit beside each other, words that do not quite make sense. Nonetheless, our aim in this collection, which we will explain further below, is precisely to explore the potential of bringing together the growing field of 'more than-human research' (MtHR) with the more established practices of 'participatory research' (PR). In bringing these seemingly disparate fields together, we want to point to more entwined histories than initially might seem obvious, and at the same time, to also open up a series of new questions: What might it mean to invite 'the morethan-human' to be an active participant, and even partner, in research? How are prevailing ways of conceiving research in terms of issues of knowledge, ethics, consent and anonymity challenged and transformed

Co-FAST (Community Flood Archive Enhancement through Storytelling) project flood

The project involved working with lower Severn communities to capture their digital stories aroun... more

Rethinking rural nature in the era of ecocide

This chapter seeks to explore what happens to the rural/urban divide and to notions of CULTURE/na... more This chapter seeks to explore what happens to the rural/urban divide and to notions of CULTURE/nature when (a) the very idea of nature, in the enlightenment/modern world-view, is lost, in two conflicting senses; and (b) the very idea of rural/urban space is challenged by topological systems-based readings of the interconnected world. This is done in the context of the contemporary world being ‘urban’, and through the concept of ecocide (Guattari, 1989/2000). It is suggested that as the world urbanizes the impacts of ecocide are, in some ways, most obvious in what could be called ‘rural’ and ‘wilderness’ areas: as the apparent ‘homes’ of nature these are where extinction and despoliation of various kinds are most evident. To understand the condition of rural/urban space and nature within them an enfolding of topological and topographical approaches is asked for which can deal with the shifting complexities of rural/urban space and nature. Whatever sustainable futures might look like,...

Visual Culture in the Northern British Archipelago

This edited collection, including contributors from the disciplines of art history, film studies,... more This edited collection, including contributors from the disciplines of art history, film studies, cultural geography and cultural anthropology, explores ways in which islands in the north of England and Scotland have provided space for a variety of visual-cultural practices and forms of creative expression which have informed our understanding of the world. Simultaneously the chapters reflect upon the importance of these islands as a space in which, and with which, to contemplate the pressures and the possibilities within contemporary society. This book makes a timely and original contribution to the developing field of island studies, and will be of interest to scholars studying issues of place, community and the peripheries.

Sustainable flood memories, lay knowledges and the development of community resilience to future flood risk

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2016

Stepping from the wreckage: Geography, pragmatism and anti-representational theory

Geoforum, 2008

Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material depo... more Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material. UWE makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited. UWE makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights. UWE accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement.

Geography, Memory and Non-Representational Geographies

Geography Compass, Dec 1, 2011

I discuss the presence of memory within geography, particularly in relation to the interweaving n... more I discuss the presence of memory within geography, particularly in relation to the interweaving non-representational ⁄ peformative ⁄ affective 'turns'. Memory seems under-considered in these nonrepresentational geographies (nrgs) which focus on the affective performativities of the present and the richness and creative potentials therein. As memory is a fundamental aspect of becoming, the roles it plays in the peformative moment need to be considered. Richness, potential and creativity emerges not simply from the moment per se, but from the legacies of the past carried into the present, not least through memory which underpins imagination, creativity and (productive) affective exchange. Emerging work on geography and memory does show some 'non-representational' traits and thus there is a potential for bringing this kind of work more fully into nrg. This is set in wider contexts of geographical approaches to memory, and the notion of ecologies of memories which form of interlinkages between individuals, various social collectives, materialities, texts, and past ⁄ present ⁄ future timespaces. 'self' are key themes, whereas memory is at best a ghostly presence (for exceptions, see Anderson 2004; Lorimer 2006). Memory makes us what we are, and, along with emotion ⁄ affect, forms the interrelating foundational processes of our ongoing lives (Damasio 1999), and is inextricably linked to imagination ⁄ creativity (Greenfield 1997). We are conglomerations of past everyday experiences, including their spatial textures and affective registers. Memory should not be seen as a burden of the past, rather it is fundamental to GEC3 459

The Supply of, and Demand for, Skilled Labour for the Heritage and Rural Landscape Sector in Gloucestershire: A report for the National Heritage Academy (South West)

Body Pictographs and the Disappeared; Ghosting (through) City Spaces. A Short Essay with Photographs

ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, Apr 1, 2014

This essay and accompanying photographs forms a contemplation of pictographs of the human form wh... more This essay and accompanying photographs forms a contemplation of pictographs of the human form which are routinely painted onto city surfaces to demark walkways, cycleways and pedestrian zones. Whole series of initially identical pictographs can take on individual appearance as they fade and distort. Over time their original purpose wanes and other (possible) associations can form. I suggest that such images of the body can never be neutral or innocent, as they will always carry some political and ethical 'charge'. And when these images do become distorted and/ or faded, they become suggestive of the political body and the body damaged by industry and other forms of political violence. They begin to whisper of other graphic images sometimes painted onto, or even burnt into city surfaces. Some of these 'other' images are pictographs of resistance which have represented the bodies of the Disappeared in a range of harsh political regimes. The information pictographs can thus become, and speak of, 'spectral traces'-ghostly presences in the city. They can link everyday city spaces to other places and other times through the geographic-empathetic imagination, and through the flow of texts and images through physical and virtual space-time.

Duke University Press eBooks, Feb 7, 2022

Policy Implications of the Postmodern Countryside: Report to the Commission for Rural Communities

Study of Determined Town and Village Green Applications: Final Report to Common Land Team, Defra

is Senior Research Fellow within the CCRI and has over 20 years' experience of rural research and... more is Senior Research Fellow within the CCRI and has over 20 years' experience of rural research and over 10 years on issues concerning common land and town and village greens. Chris was part of the consortium involved in evaluating the impact of the proposals for reform that ultimately became the Commons Act 2006, as technical project manager of a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) completed for Defra. He is also the convenor of the National Seminar on Common Land and Village Greens, 1999 to 2009 which has attracted well over 1000 delegates during this period. Chris was project manager for this research and was involved at every stage, including the analysis and report writing.

The Social Impacts on England's Inshore Fishing Industry: Final Report

An invitation to the Hydrocitizens online community

On narrative, affect and threatened ecologies of tidal landscapes

All stories are true. I know that now. Unwritten memories and bodies Subside like pit villages. B... more All stories are true. I know that now. Unwritten memories and bodies Subside like pit villages. But they leave small spaces Where poppies and dandelions grow Amongst resurgent grass Poem extract from Burials by Adam Horovitz (2013/2011) This is a story about tides, about tides in Bristol, about two characters that we found in the mud of the Severn Estuary-Peri and Proxi. It is also a story about telling stories as a method for the creative accounting of eco-social histories, presents and futures, and material and nonmaterial entanglements of such through space-time. And it is a story about loss-of ecologies of ecocide, of getting lost, and of finding a way through stories. As so much of life is, this is an experimental mixing. Tides mix things-fresh and salt water, land and sea. In unsettling boundaries and definitions they invite a focus on interrelationships, and on flux and change. Intertidal landscapes are in constant motion, change and cycles, denying fixity and stasis. As such they unsettle both linear thinking and linear understanding that, in spite of movements to break away from, continue to shape historical and geographical accounts in many areas of thinking. This chapter is tidal in its approach, ecological. It tells stories of stories through the tides, an ebbing and waning, from solid to fluid and back again with all that comes in between. It embraces the constant motion of life and understanding, and attempts to bring this into a textual representation. In short it is a story of an ecological approach to eco-social storytelling.

Intimate knowledge: building local/lay knowledge and sense of place into Flood Resilience planning after the July 2007 floods in the UK

The role of local/lay flood knowledge in building community resilience: the case of the 2007 floods, Gloucestershire, UK

Scrutiny reviews after the 2007 floods, UK (Cabinet Office 2008; DEFRA 2008) have highlighted dif... more Scrutiny reviews after the 2007 floods, UK (Cabinet Office 2008; DEFRA 2008) have highlighted different types of knowledges needed for effective flood risk management, along with knowledge gaps. This paper evaluates critically the changing nature of local flood knowledge in community settings, based on research undertaken after the 2007 floods. The paper explores the nature of local knowledge of flood risk and the impact of interventions. In particular, the scale of local/lay flood knowledge and associated local senses/values of place is important in validating and challenging expert knowledge. The paper reflects on how flood knowledge can be captured, used and harnessed in flood resilience planning, and on the role of local knowledge and sustainable flood memory in developing community flood resilience. It concludes that the 2007 UK flood experience is generating new understandings of the value of local knowledge, and how this knowledge might be successfully used in flood risk management practice.

Duke University Press eBooks, Feb 7, 2022

Arnos vale cemetery and the lively materialities of trees in place

This paper tells a story of the Victorian cemetery movement and one particular and controversial ... more This paper tells a story of the Victorian cemetery movement and one particular and controversial example-Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, Southwest England. The narrative shows how places such as this are distinct spaces, but also fluxes of process where all manner of flows of materialities, politics, culture and economy come together to spatilise the place into being. This being is, however, unstable and given to change as variations in unfolding presences and agencies occur. Attention is first given to the emergence of the new cemeteries in the 19 th century and the influential cemetery design of JC Loudon and the tree planting he advocated. Trees were central to Loudon"s "cemetery style" and he drew on the vastly expanded palette of available trees species being collected from around the world, and on tree cultures/spaces from ancient times and exotic places, to develop his exacting specifications. Then attention turns to Arnos Vale itself and its markedly mixed and changing fortunes and formations over the last 170 years. This history is cross-cut it with current interests in the agency of non-humans and theorisations of places as dynamic processes with all manner of things coming together (intentionally and otherwise) over time. Trees bring their own lively materialities and temporalities to these places which inevitably transform them, despite best laid plans, and reconfigure them in the shifting material space of the city and in the complex cultural contexts (local to global) which surround them. "Trees are [ ] at the heart of things. How could it be otherwise?" (Tudge: 2005, 404)

Idylls and othernesses

Introduction: More-than-human participatory research: contexts, challenges, possibilities

This collection arises from an AHRC-funded research project called In Conversation with…: codesig... more This collection arises from an AHRC-funded research project called In Conversation with…: codesign with more-than-human communities that ran in 2013, as well as a series of panels held at the RGS-IBG International Conference in 2014 on the Co-Production of knowledge with non-humans. ln both cases we sought to explore the notion of a 'more-thanhuman participatory research'. Yet to say 'more-than-human participatory research' seems like too much of a mouthful. These are words that do not roll easily off the tongue, but instead suggest some kind of cacophony, some noisy dissonance. These are words that seem like they should not really sit beside each other, words that do not quite make sense. Nonetheless, our aim in this collection, which we will explain further below, is precisely to explore the potential of bringing together the growing field of 'more than-human research' (MtHR) with the more established practices of 'participatory research' (PR). In bringing these seemingly disparate fields together, we want to point to more entwined histories than initially might seem obvious, and at the same time, to also open up a series of new questions: What might it mean to invite 'the morethan-human' to be an active participant, and even partner, in research? How are prevailing ways of conceiving research in terms of issues of knowledge, ethics, consent and anonymity challenged and transformed

Co-FAST (Community Flood Archive Enhancement through Storytelling) project flood

The project involved working with lower Severn communities to capture their digital stories aroun... more

Rethinking rural nature in the era of ecocide

This chapter seeks to explore what happens to the rural/urban divide and to notions of CULTURE/na... more This chapter seeks to explore what happens to the rural/urban divide and to notions of CULTURE/nature when (a) the very idea of nature, in the enlightenment/modern world-view, is lost, in two conflicting senses; and (b) the very idea of rural/urban space is challenged by topological systems-based readings of the interconnected world. This is done in the context of the contemporary world being ‘urban’, and through the concept of ecocide (Guattari, 1989/2000). It is suggested that as the world urbanizes the impacts of ecocide are, in some ways, most obvious in what could be called ‘rural’ and ‘wilderness’ areas: as the apparent ‘homes’ of nature these are where extinction and despoliation of various kinds are most evident. To understand the condition of rural/urban space and nature within them an enfolding of topological and topographical approaches is asked for which can deal with the shifting complexities of rural/urban space and nature. Whatever sustainable futures might look like,...

Visual Culture in the Northern British Archipelago

This edited collection, including contributors from the disciplines of art history, film studies,... more This edited collection, including contributors from the disciplines of art history, film studies, cultural geography and cultural anthropology, explores ways in which islands in the north of England and Scotland have provided space for a variety of visual-cultural practices and forms of creative expression which have informed our understanding of the world. Simultaneously the chapters reflect upon the importance of these islands as a space in which, and with which, to contemplate the pressures and the possibilities within contemporary society. This book makes a timely and original contribution to the developing field of island studies, and will be of interest to scholars studying issues of place, community and the peripheries.

Sustainable flood memories, lay knowledges and the development of community resilience to future flood risk

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2016

Stepping from the wreckage: Geography, pragmatism and anti-representational theory

Geoforum, 2008

Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material depo... more Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material. UWE makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited. UWE makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights. UWE accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement.

Geography and Memory: Explorations in Identity, Place and Becoming

Geography and Memory: Explorations in Identity, Place and Becoming, 2013

Geography and Memory creates a new space of study by assembling international scholars and emergi... more Geography and Memory creates a new space of study by assembling international scholars and emerging talent for the first coherent and co-ordinated approach to explorations of identity, place and becoming. In focusing upon these three dynamics the editors have organised the relationship between geography and memory into an accessible framework for approaching key aspects of memory, remembering, archives, commemoration and forgetting in modern societies. The contributors are drawn from a range of local, national and international contexts, including the UK, Germany, USA, Malaysia and Australia. The book uniquely opens up the disciplines of geography (human, political, cultural and physical) into a dialogue with other disciplines such as media, the arts, heritage, psychology, psychotherapy, politics, sociology and cognitive science so as to present a wide-ranging and nuanced approach to memory studies.

Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees, and Trees in their Place

Review extract 'a very satisfying and timely analysis of many of the issues that cultural geogr... more Review extract
'a very satisfying and timely analysis of many of the issues that cultural geographers need to confront in understanding and penetrating the cross cutting relations between society and nature...Tree Cultures is a valuable book. It is helpful in being a very useful reader for many relevant issues, and it has the real value of being very lucidly written. The arguments are precisely and elegantly stated, and the style is clear, concise and informative. There has been much care taken over the writing of this book, and much thought in the assembling of its ideas and concerns, in formulating some coherent thinking in breaking down the redundant barriers between the natural world and us.' Richard Tipping, University of Stirling ""

Environmental Humanties Blog

Environmental Humanties Blog

Tidal Cultures Blog

A blog about a recent project and all things tidal

Towards Hydrocitizenship Project

This 3 year project will investigate, and make creative contributions to, the ways in which citiz... more This 3 year project will investigate, and make creative contributions to, the ways in which citizens and communities live with each other and their environment in relation to water in a range of UK neighbourhoods. The research asks a series of questions about what communities are, how they function, and the role of environmental (water) assets and issues in the coming together of communities, conflicts within and between communities, and progress to interconnected community and environmental resilience. Funded by the Arts and Humanties Research Council, UK

by Owain Jones and Bettina Van Hoven

Project Blog for ‘“Between the Tides”. Comparative arts and humanities approaches to living wi... more Project Blog for

‘“Between the Tides”. Comparative arts and humanities approaches to living with(in) intertidal landscapes in UK & the Netherlands. Learning from those who live and work with complexity, change and fragility’:

Funded by – The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (UK) Humanities Research Networking and Exchange Scheme

More Than Human Participatory Research; PI Michelle Bastian

I was Co-I on this innovative Arts and Humanities Research Council project. "In conversation wit... more I was Co-I on this innovative Arts and Humanities Research Council project. "In conversation with...: co-designing with more than human communities" is a project funded by the AHRC as part of their Connected Communities theme. Our aim is to explore how a broader account of community - one that recognises the active participation of non-humans - might challenge understandings of how research can be co-designed and co-produced. PI Michelle Bastian> Follow the link to see full details including the full project team.

Sustainable Flood Memories. Economic and Social Research Council Project

Bristol 80 x 18 Project - Idea 56: See the Tides

Towards Hydrocitizenship: Introduction and overview

Overview of the Hydrocitizenship Project given at Warwick University Nov 2016. A previous version... more

Hugging the lamppost till the train passes. On ecocide, haunting and (self)destruction

Paper presented at the Stories of the Anhtropocene Festival Stockholm 2016

Further towards sonifications of elemental ecological systems/relationships: salt marsh ecology experiments in temporal immersion and exchange

by Owain Jones and Michaela Palmer

Elemental Experiments RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Exeter, September 2015

“Within the Tides”. Comparative Cultural Ecologies of Tidal Places in the UK, Holland and Beyond

by Bettina Van Hoven and Owain Jones

Paper presented at the The Nordic Geographers Meeting Tallinn & Tartu, Estonia on 15 – 19 June 20... more

Ecocide Water Art

A keynote paper given at the OSR Gallery, "Invisible Landscapes" Seminar. 04 12 2015

Owain Jones: Is My Flesh Not Public? Thinking of bodies and the public through water

Public talk at Bremen Univeristy NaturenKulturen Lecture Series. This was filmed ans is now onlin... more

“Within the Tides”. Comparative Cultural Ecologies of Tidal Places in the UK, Holland and Beyond

This paper reports upon collaborative NWO-AHRC research conducted by UK and Dutch cultural geogra... more This paper reports upon collaborative NWO-AHRC research conducted by UK and Dutch cultural geographers and artists into tidal ecologies of place in the UK and Holland and beyond. Tidal zones are extraordinarily dynamic spaces which generate complex ecologies which interconnect land and sea, air and water as elements, salt water and fresh water as variations of the latter, and a range of eco-social assemblages. All these interconnecting processes are set in series of rhythms driven by tidal cycles. Tides literally mix space, time and materiality. Tidal processes in different locations vary markedly in term of range, the habitats and ecologies generated, and in the way local culture and economy engage with them (ecologies of place). For a range of reasons which include possible climate change induced sea level rise, and various forms of development and exploitation, tidal areas around the world, and the important interconnected natural and culture they support, are under a great deal of pressure. Accounts of tidal ecologies of place, particularly as generated by artists, in the Severn Estuary UK and the Wadden Sea Netherlands will be discussed.

Is My Flesh Not Public? Thinking of bodies and ecological citizenship through water (Or) ‘well – how did I get here?’ THs

An invited seminar to the Dept of Geography. QMUL. 10 02 2015. Many thanks to Proffesor Catherin... more

Traces of Tide & Time in Bristol

by Owain Jones and Antony Lyons

‘Traces of Tide & Time in Bristol’. Paper given at ‘A Second City Remembered: Rethinking Bristol’... more ‘Traces of Tide & Time in Bristol’. Paper given at ‘A Second City Remembered: Rethinking Bristol’s History, 1400-2000’. A conference organized by the Regional History Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, in partnership with M-Shed, the Museum of Bristol, University of the West of England, Bristol, 23-24 July 2010.

The (Bristol) Tide Machines. The role of machines in understanding, monitoring, and predicting the complex tidal rhythms of the earth’s oceans for scientific, political and commercial purposes.

The paper explores how the Bristol tide machines, and other tide recording/tracking devices (such... more The paper explores how the Bristol tide machines, and other tide recording/tracking devices (such as tide clocks), have been embedded in scientific/commercial networks in pursuit of ever more precise understandings and predictions of tidal patterns. A series of examples will be drawn upon, illustrating the precise tidal predictions needed in a number of historic and contemporary engineering/logistical/military/planning processes. The machines struggle to tame the liveliness and unruliness of this, at the broad scale, very predictable, rhythm of nature, monitoring and calibrating it for the purposes of hybrid engineering of the social and commercial. Machines have played a duel interconnecting role of recording and then predicting tides. The machines are/were parts of wider assemblages which included the human body. They are mediators between nature-culture which can be used for many purposes including the control of empire and the execution of complex military and commercial logistics.

“Another Place”: affective time-spaces of tidal processes as rendered in literature and art

‘Close to: on the embodied, emplaced (and thus) geographical becomings of animals’.

The proposal in this paper is that animal becoming and animal personhood is articulated in partic... more The proposal in this paper is that animal becoming and animal personhood is articulated in particular spatialised, embodied practices. These embodied practices are differently materialised and socialised in the particular and specific spatial narratives of individual animals’ lives, as well as being sketched out in their instinctive species’ repertoires. Animal enact - animal are - geographical embodied becomings. Thus geography, as the spatial science, has an intellectual, moral and political duty to engage with them. Their life is our trade – dealing with/in space. My aim is to develop animal geography by stressing various aspects of the spatialised, embodied becomings of animals. In particular, to answer the still very challenging questions – how do we ‘hear animal voices’ or ‘bring them into our accounts as others’ – the proposals are; pay close heed to their embodied, spatial practices, and to continuities between human and animal becoming. This involves getting close to animals and regarding them. It does not involve Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘becoming animal’, an approach which has been directly challenged by Haraway (2008). We can effectively get close to animals in a number of ways; scientific study; working with animals; artist (literary) practice; or simply by paying close attention to the animals we live with. Various themes are explored within this overall aim. These include seeing animals as strange persons (who look back), re-thinking anthropomorphism; questions of the open, ethics and welfare, and witnessing as a form of ‘knowing’ animal embodied becoming.

Presented at Welfare Quality International Conference. Knowing Animals: cross-fertilization between natural and social sciences for understanding the quality of life of animals. Florence, March, 2009.

Places of Trees: Affective Embodiment, Identity and Materiality

This paper suggests that new affect based understandings of place and landscape can be of use in ... more This paper suggests that new affect based understandings of place and landscape can be of use in understanding of how individuals and communities engage with forest spaces in imaginative and in embodied (practical) terms, and also in how the complex composition of forest spaces (as cultural, ecological, political, economic, and living entities) can be appreciated. These ideas are connected to questions of wellbeing and social benefit through the ways people construct their individual and collective identities in terms of sense of self and sense of place. These approaches to people/place/landscape focus upon a range of affective processes which are often ignored by, or simply inaccessible to, standard social science concepts and methods (e.g. visitor survey techniques). These new approaches treat places/landscapes as complex temporal-spatial-material processes into which social, cultural, and symbolic meaning entwine. Peoples’ engagement with (differing) places is articulated through a range of affective bodily practices such as walking, sitting, climbing, doing (voluntary work) sensing (touch, sight, sound, small), and a range of non-cognitive affective processes (feelings, emotions), which at not necessarily articulated or articulatable in thought and/or language. Thus these approaches can be seen as post-phenomenological as set out in Ingold’s dwelling approach and Thrift’s ‘ecologies of place approach’.

Presented at: Urban Forests and Political Ecologies: Celebrating Transdisciplinarity; University of Toronto, April 2013.

Towards a reading of temporal ecology and differentiated natural temporalities (durations, rhythms, tempos) in the narrative timescapes of modernity

The film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) was notable for being one of the early Hollywood made, hig... more The film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) was notable for being one of the early Hollywood made, high budget general release films that addressed issues of climate change. Setting aside both its interesting twists – American citizens crossing into Mexico for security reasons, cynical and disbelieving national politicians eating humble pie, and mawkish family based sentiments that beset so many American movies – what interests me is the treatment of time in relation to narrative and plot. To affect a classic Hollywood pattern of quest, conflict, suspense and resolution within the narrative, the writers and director simply speeded the process of climate change so that America (and in fact the whole Northern Hemisphere) was subject to a new ice age in the period of six weeks!! Standard Hollywood motifs of (car) chases were created in a new forms. Killer temperature gradients literally chasing a protagonist and his comrades through the streets of New York, who just make their refuge in time, the killer weather sounding menacingly at the door just as they slam it shut. And two military helicopters being over taken and frozen out the sky by another high speed killer weather front. This, and similar examples, tells us a lot about the challenges of representing ecological time within the temporalities of human narratives. Stories are the tissue – or essence - of life itself as A S Byatt says. They underpin constructions of the self, individual and collective identities, and cultural, social and political atmospheres more broadly. The narratives which dominate enlightenment culture are set at human pace and to human durations -so narratives of lives and generations of lives, and the twists and turns in the common time frames of human life, be they in hours, days, week, season, years, stages of life. There is little tradition or skill within these modern narratives of extreme human exceptionalism and a split nature-culture, of weaving many forms of natural temporality into our stories. Indeed it could be argued that modern narratives rest in part on stripping non-human temporalities out of our stories. Be they the differing processes speeds of non-human brains; the very other life cycles of other beings (from weeks to centuries): the ‘long’ rhythms within the biosphere such as ice ages, and sun spot cycles, we don’t know how (with some emerging exceptions) to tell stories with these other temporalities woven into the plot. This is one reason why, as the one of the greatest (most tragic) events ever unfolds (the unravelling of the current diversity of the biosphere by a self-other destructive single species), as the band Talking Heads put it, “as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention”.

Presented at: Im/mortality and In/finitude in the Anthropocene Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities Conference; Environmental Humanities Laboratory. Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm; 2-4 December 2014.

Sylvan Spirits. Trees as makers and shapers of strange places.

Presented at: Strange Naturalisms: reflections on occult geographies’ workshop; Dept of Geograph... more

Views over the Sound. Speculative imaginings of (Northern) Isles as grounds for alternative narratives of becoming non-modern;”

Further North Conference; Northern Peripheries Network (AHRC Funded); University of Northumbria; ... more Further North Conference; Northern Peripheries Network (AHRC Funded); University of Northumbria; 4th and 5th September 2014

Views over the Sound. Speculative imaginings of (Northern) Isles as grounds for alternative narratives of becoming non-modern

I have long had Romantic inflected imaginings of islands and island life – particularly Northern Islands. My recent visit to a few have not disavowed me of such – but possibly deepened them, and mixed a series of remembered views into the creative milieu with is the interplay of imagination and memory. Particularly powerful memories (some reflected in photographs) were the views across the sounds that separated Skye and Lindisfarne from the mainland, and the differing isles of Orkney . These, sometimes their reflecting light textured by a ferry’s wake, with the far shore hazily in view, spoke of nearness and remoteness; of possibilities closed off – and others excitingly opened. These are (to me) resonantly affective views – speaking somehow of life that can or could be other – outside ‘mainland’ conventions. Perhaps my most intimate knowledge of an island is that of Caldey (Pembrokeshire) where I have visited on many occasions, and in part my Romantic notions stem from that. Islands set you in a differing relation to time and space and nature – nature as manifested in combinations of the sea, light, weather, the flora and fauna, local cultures/practices. Of course Romanticism was set against the enlightenment and modernity, and we still need to be travelling away from the political, social, economic and technical settlements of that era, which have, as Guattari has it, ushered in ‘ecocide’ of the three ecologies (natural, social/cultural, psychological). Islands seem to have an affective charge in relation to place space and time, and (thus) airs of possible alternative settlements of nature-culture.

Places of Water and of Trees: Affective Embodiment, Identity and Materiality

Drawing upon recent research into water issues and community, and previous work on trees and plac... more Drawing upon recent research into water issues and community, and previous work on trees and places, this paper suggests that new affect based understandings of everyday life and practice can be of use in understandings of how individuals and communities engage with materiality in imaginative and in embodied (practical) terms, and also in how the complex composition of watery and treed spaces (as cultural, ecological, political, economic, and living entities) can be appreciated. Peoples’ engagement with (differing) places and their vibrant materiality is articulated through a range of affective bodily practices such as dwelling (home making, eating), communing, walking, sitting, climbing, doing (hobbies, gardening, diy) and a range of non-cognitive affective processes – haptic, sensing (touch, sight, sound, smell) - emotional (feelings, moods) which are not necessarily articulated or articulable in thought and/or language. Thus these approaches can be seen as post-phenomenological as set out in Ingold’s ‘meshwork’ and Thrift’s ‘ecologies of place’. Places/landscapes are considered to be as much temporal as they are spatial, as complex interviewing of the topographic and the topologic, and as incoherent assemblages of both presences and absences, which never fully settle into stable, (fully) knowable ground. The essential fabric of the production of place is process which is articulated through bodies, martials, which come together in events and which form patterns into which social, cultural, and symbolic meaning entwine. Places are pattern outcomes. This is why things like trees and water – and anything else really - need to be taken seriously because the force of process is channelled through their specific materialities habits. In thinking about how to live sustainably in such an envisioned world key premises is that notions of community need to be extended beyond the social, and that the affective dimensions of life need to be foregrounded. We need an ecologicalisation of philosophy, politics and ethics if we are to make any sense going forward in terms of understanding of society and reimagining of how it can flourish. This can draw upon a whole range of thinking from Latour, deep ecology, ecofeminism, pragmatism, non-representational theory and affect centred politics.

Is My Flesh Not Public? Thinking of bodies and ‘the public’ through water

The human body is 50 – 70 % water. Less known is how quickly that water cycles. In an average ad... more The human body is 50 – 70 % water. Less known is how quickly that water cycles. In an average adult body there might be 42 litres of water. In average conditions 10 % of that water is lost a day. After 3 or more days no further intake is fatal. So total water cycling is 5 – 10 days. In all societies the water that cycles through our bodies is part of the hydrological cycle which moves through land, ocean, atmosphere and all manner of systems, spaces and processes. In modem societies the water will cycle though complex supply, consumption, disposal and recycling systems (hydro-social cycle). Water in the urban (human) body will have already been through neighbouring bodies. And in all those cycles your body water has been, and will be again, the medium of other lives in terms of habitat, practice. Water inevitably makes us public, makes us ecological in very palpable ways (as air, food, energy and other staples do). The idea that the ‘public cannot be taken for granted’ is a yet another symptom of modern notions of the social as separate from nature. This paper sets out the perspectives and aspirations of the recently commissioned Arts and Humanities Research Council, Connected Communities Environments and Sustainability Large Grant; “Towards hydrocitizenship. Connecting communities with and through responses to interdependent, multiple water issues”. The aim of the project is to investigate interconnections, disjuncture and conflicts within and between local communities in relation to multiple water issues, and to re-imagine and affect how ideas and practices of community and citizenship can extend within and through hydrological (ecological) connectivities in both urban and rural contexts. The project is interdisciplinary across a number of arts and humanities and social science disciplines. One key premise of the project is that thinking of the public , and communities, in narrow social (human) terms is a profound misreading of how ongoing (public) life is formed and practiced. There is no such thing as private in ecological terms. What might it look like to re-understand ourselves (individually and as ‘the public’) in ecological terms?

Tidal Connections. Comparative ecologies of tidal Places in the UK, Holland (and beyond)

This paper reports upon collaborative NWO-AHRC research conducted by UK and Dutch cultural geogra... more

Mendopaedia: and some thoughts on the practicing of mending. 2012

Sonic Severn. Soundscapes, sonifications and compositions by staff & students at UWE and CCRI

landdiagrams.wordpress.com

Mendopaedia?? And some thoughts on mending

I have ‘started’ a blog with this title. Why? Because I very interested in mending things. I lo... more I have ‘started’ a blog with this title.

Why? Because I very interested in mending things. I love mending things. Feel I am rather good at mending things (in some ways), want to share this, and to contribute to a culture of mending. So, when Catlin mentioned this network, I was interested and excited.

Of course what really needs to happen is for “Mendopaedia” to be a Wiki, where a community of mending stories and skills and resources can build up. Not sure if I really got time to do the blog. I would be retro fitting it. Alternative is to contribute to Autonopedia.

I have a number of reasons for being attracted to mending, and some reflections on being a mender, and the consequences of that. I am going to go through a number of these, one per slide, with a brief illustrating ‘mend’, or related point or two, for each. There is some overlap, and also themes, between/within the points to be made.

Biodiversity on your plate

What kind of grass?

Do your bit for biodiversity

Book Review: Geographies of young people: the morally contested spaces of identity

This book is likely to be a key text for those interested in studying, teaching and researching t... more This book is likely to be a key text for those interested in studying, teaching and researching the geographies of childhood. The 14th volume in the excellent Routledge Critical Geographies series, it is testament to the burgeoning interesting in children's and young people's geographies (and perhaps the interests of the editors of the series) that this is the second book in the series on this topic. Stuart Aitken has been at the forefront of the development of children's geographies during the 1990s.

Evaluation of the Severn Project: 2009

Connected Communities Re-thinking and re-connecting communities with and through water issues: situated (place-time) and therapeutic narratives

Executive Summary This report draws upon workshop activities, conversations, reviews of AHRC and... more Executive Summary
This report draws upon workshop activities, conversations, reviews of AHRC and related interdisciplinary research and policy frameworks, to consider the theoretical and substantive interplays, and potential interlinking artistic, academic, policy, socio-environmental benefits from co-considering communities and flooding/water issues. The main findings are that:
• There is a need for – and growing trend of – considering communities in ways which recognise their embeddedness in landscapes/places which are formed of ecological communities, material actors, processes and agencies.
• Re-envisioning communities in this way asks a series of questions about the connectivities, disconnectivities and conflicts within and between communities be they topographically (place) based and/or topologically (networked, interest) based.
• Flooding (and other ‘single issue’ foci in sustainability/resilience/transition studies) should be considered with other interdependent socio-ecological issues.
• Flooding, when seen in wider/alternative cultural and ecological frameworks, can be seen in more positively as a process with cultural, ecological and economic benefits if planned for appropriately.
• Arts and humanities (a&h) led methods can play key roles in multiple ‘negotiations’ within and between community, science, policy, and biophysical processes.
• Narrative based approaches are emerging to address a range of eco-social conflicts and challenges facing communities and governance delivered policy.
• Further development of situated, therapeutic and digital narratives offer considerable potential in extending the above.

Sustainable flood memory: Remembering as resilience

by Joanne Garde-Hansen, Lindsey McEwen, and Owain Jones

Memory Studies

This article proposes the concept of sustainable flood memory as a critical and agentic form of s... more This article proposes the concept of sustainable flood memory as a critical and agentic form of social and cultural remembering of learning to live with floods. Drawing upon research findings that use the 2007 floods in the South West of England as a case study, we explore and analyse the media representations of flooding, the role of community and communicative memory of past floods for fostering resilience, and map emotional and affective responses to floods. To approach flooding in this way is critical to understanding how communities engage in memory practices (remembering and strategically forgetting) in order to cope with environmental changes. Moreover, the article embraces a research design and strategy in which ‘memory studies’ is brought into a conversation not only with geography (mental maps), social sciences and flood risk management policy but also with stakeholders and communities who collect, archive and remember flood histories in their respective regions.