Landscapes are the material reflections of societies´ interactions with nature across extensive and different social-ecological timelines. Contemporary landscapes bear the imprint of economic growth-driven processes, such as agro-industrial crop production, extractivism, and expansive land use. Strolling with caution and curiosity through these legacies, we ask: “How can and want to live in and with these environments transcending the confines of economic growth paradigms?

Our walking adventure explores the intertwining paths between a good quality of life and the essence of local places far off the beaten track of a market-based logic. By going through different case studies in Italy, Spain and France, we discuss to what extent the relations people entertain with local places can contribute to contextualized post-growth processes. Dynamic walking interviews are a sensual way to identify these intimate linkages between the self and the local.

We proceed to investigate Walking as a Research Practice (WARP), examining its potential connections between aesthetic and social-ecological methodologies, aiming to cultivate participatory research endeavours. We then move to more inclusive approaches of WARP to include people lacking the capacity or autonomy to participate in freely determined walks (e.g., children and the impaired). Our journey ends by discussing the role of visualising research by emotional mapping to foster scientific communication.

Participants can share reflections on walking in research and life based on their own scholarship, practice, and experience. It can be relevant for students and researchers in humanities/social research with an interest in regional and urban planning, participatory methods and the broad field of sustainability studies.

Format

17:00: Presentation,

17:40: Q&A

18:00: Working groups

18:40: Open discussion

Speaker: Julia Grosinger is a post-doctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB in Barcelona/Spain. She is an interdisciplinary human geographer that investigates the impacts of society-ecosystem relations on social interactions at local scale within the field of transition studies. She is inspired by transdisciplinary approaches, social ecology, and urban studies. Her participatory-based research is driven by the desire to contribute to strategies for a meaningful future against the background of the detrimental effects of global changes.