Gender and Place Making Seminar

The Sustainable Places Research Institute and Cardiff School of Social Sciences co-hosted a Gender and Place Making seminar last Friday on February 27th. The purpose of the seminar, led by Professor Susan Baker and Dr Sara MacBride-Stewart, was to bring together academics and researchers working on gender, place and/or sustainability across the different disciplines within Cardiff University. It was an opportunity to consider how contemporary theories and practices related to gender and place can contribute to the field of sustainable place making in a range of settings.

A mixture of staff and doctoral students from the School of Social Sciences and School of Planning and Geography attended the session. Broad discussions followed, ranging from the gendered differences in mobility, including in the work place, and the uses of nature, to environmental issues in households and on to consideration of environmental change as a gendered phenomenon.

Having identified several themes and common interests, the Gender and Sustainable Place Making group have decided to continue to meet on a monthly basis as a reading group, in the first instance. The next meetings are open to new, interested members from Cardiff University and will take place Mid April in the Sustainable Places Meeting Room, 33 Park Place.

The following was agreed as a reading for the next group meeting: Nielsen, H (2004), Noisy Girls: New Subjectivities and Old Gender Discourses, Young 12(1), 9-30. The online version of this article can be found at: http://you.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/1/9.

If you would like to attend and contribute to discussions on the concept of Gender and Sustainable Place Making please contact Susan Baker or Sara MacBride-Stewart.