Participatory Video Festival #1: Reflections
Participatory Video on the lives of homeless people in Belgium, screened at the Participatory Video Festival #1. Photo by Catia Rebelo. Although there is a growing interest in participatory visual methods, these are still far from being ‘conventional’. This brings some challenges, especially to PhD students. Therefore, a group of PhD students from Ghent University, Belgium, decided to create a space for reflection and bring together academics and non-academics that are interested in participatory visual methods. The first Participatory Video Festival took place in May 2018 and was held at De Koer, an arts hub reclaimed by the local community to support art related initiatives. The aim of the Festival was “to push the Participatory Video agenda”, a goal that I clearly support. Indeed, as I am using collaborative visual methods the Festival…
Cheap land available in Portugal: commoning or exclusion?
By Marta Nieto Romero (in collaboration with Alessandro Vasta) The other day I had an interesting conversation with my colleague Alessandro Vasta touching on the issue of Northern Europeans buying…
What if research is a love affair?
I recently read someone arguing that ‘knowing a thing requires loving it’. Be it a place, a person, a Petri dish with microbes, a strand of DNA, an enzyme, a…
Permaculture Design Course experience in Southern Portugal
Within the context of sustainable place-shaping, rural development and bottom-up initiatives, I went to follow a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in a rural area in Southern Portugal. Permaculture is derived…
Bringing consultancy and academia together for sustainability
In a recent post, Sara Grenni shared her experiences of being involved in a consultancy in the context of a 3 month secondment. Like Sara, I also spend three months…
Vacancy for Early Stage Researcher ‘Connected Learning Spaces’
The SUSPLACE position of Early Stage Researcher (ESR) in ‘Connected Learning Spaces‘ has recently opened up again. We are currently looking for an ESR to be appointed for the remaining…
Three months among Strategic Management Consultants
Continuing on the series started by my colleague Lorena Axinte, I want to share my own experience of the three months I spent working with non-academic partner Royal HaskoningDHV in 2017….