John Urry Annual Lecture: Rethinking landscape and materiality

CeMoRe is delighted to announce that our speaker for this year’s annual John Urry Lecture will be Prof. Tim Edensor speaking on the topic “Rethinking Landscape and Materiality”.

To register for the event please click here to go to the eventbrite. 

Tim Edensor is Professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the Institute of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University. He has written many papers about tourism, national identity, ruins, rhythmanalysis, walking, urban theory, creativity, urban materality and football. He is the author of Tourists at the Taj (1998), National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2002) and Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality (2005), and editor of Geographies of Rhythm (2010). More recently, he has authored From Light to Dark: Daylight, Illumination and Gloom (2017) and Stone: Stories of Urban Materiality (2020). He is also co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Place (2020), Rethinking Darkness: Cultures, Histories, Practices (2020) and Weather: Spaces, Mobilities and Affects (2020).

This presentation explores the multiple qualities of landscape by looking at the chequered history of one artefact, the 9th century stone Barochan Cross from Scotland. The cross has moved location at least three times during its life, and has been interpreted and used in terms of its relation to the landscapes in which it has been sited. The landscapes discussed include medieval, heritage, romantic, tourist, memorial and sacred realms, and draw out symbolic, sensory, affective and generic engagements with landscape.

The event will begin at 4.30 with tea and coffee, with the lecture starting at 5pm. A drinks reception will follow at 6.30-7pm.