Experimental Geographies Workshop (event for SoGE academics, researchers and DPhil students)

This day-long workshop will explore how the verb ‘to experiment’ has been taken up in a range of contexts, catalysed different methodological approaches, and expanded the collection of what we consider to be geographical ‘outputs’. No longer understood as an activity that is confined to the laboratory (if it ever was), we will explore the ways in which certain spaces (from the city, to the kitchen, to the atmosphere) have come under scrutiny in explicitly experimental terms. Equally, a range of creative impulses in the discipline has come to the fore under the banner of ‘experimental geographies’, resulting in an ever-expanding collection of outputs (from storytelling, to data visualisation, to film). In light of this ‘turn’ to experimentation, then, questions around the status and value (however understood) of such experiments come to the fore. In particular, we hope to think through the vexed question of success and failure of such alternative, wild, or possibly ethico-aesthetic experiments.