Surfing Beyond Clichés: New Water Cultures

This event has ended.

Surfing is a cultural practice that has growing influence in a wide range of areas, including coastal protection, fashion, photography, music, resource use, tourism, and sporting competition. However, in the popular imagination, surfing remains an activity that is predominantly male, white, and able-bodied, and often practiced on short-boards in warm water locations. It is important to not only identify these commodified clichés of surfing culture, but also break them down.

This event unpacks the heterogeneity of surfing culture to move beyond these limiting stereotypes and explore the diversity in how we should understand, conceptualise and critique surfing practice in all its forms.

Chaired by Professor Jon Anderson, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, this event features presentations from esteemed international scholars Professor Krista Comer (Rice University, USA), and Professor Belinda Wheaton (University of Waikato, New Zealand).