Center "Human, Nature, Technology" UTMN invites students, bachelors, M.A. and PhD students to our Summer School about the Spatial Turn and research about Siberia and Urals.

 Dear colleagues,

Center "Human, Nature, Technology" UTMN invites students, bachelors, M.A. and PhD students to our Summer School about the Spatial Turn and research about Siberia and Urals.

See the CfP below

Tyumen State University

23 – 28 August 2021

Summer school

“Spatial turn to the wrong place? A dialogue between interdisciplinary research fields”

The coronavirus pandemic has unexpectedly aggravated the issue of space and place in our global and interconnected world. Last spring the countries all over the world were closed their borders, while movement between states and provinces was strictly limited, if not prohibited. Lockdowns and quarantines forced many people to isolate themselves in their apartments and houses. It meant a massive job loss since many people could not afford the privilege of working from home. In other words, a cohesive space between work and home were disintegrated at once causing big social problems for local neighborhoods, communities and businesses. Such an unprecedent situation has raised the question of new meanings of space in the epoch of global lockdown. Nevertheless, this urgent issue has not appeared out of nowhere.

A French historian Fernand Braudel in his works underpinned the role of environment and space as the most important factor to analyze historical development of society. The fundamental works of Henry Lefebvre (1974) and Foucault (1972) outlined the thesis that the organization of space lies to the core of structure and functioning of modern capitalism. Harvey brought up a question of a critical revaluation of space and spatiality in the social theory. The spatial turn changed the perception of time and space, had been trying to assert a new meaning of space in its interaction with time and social structures (Soja).

Besides that, the significance of the spatial turn can be associated with the development of the postcolonial theory, that casts doubt on the familiar concepts such as “East”, “West”, “North”, “South”, ‘Center”, “center-periphery model”.

However, most of the debates on the role of space takes place out of Russia. It seems to us that the ideas and concepts of the “spatial turn” could be useful for historians and social researchers of Northern Eurasia. We want Summer School to set up this framework for exploring various spaces with a special emphasis on Ural and Siberia. We will try to find the next answers How to study Ural and Siberia from the point of view of spatial turn? Should the space of Ural and Siberia denote only as a metaphor for the study of modernization and transformation processes in the history of Russia in the 19th - 21st centuries? How to apply modern approaches to the study of space to Ural and Siberia and what scholar outputs could be achieved?

The Summer School is open both for young social science scholars and natural scientists (master’s students, PhD candidates). 

Please send your proposals including an abstract (300 words), motivation letter, and CV. (name, email address, institutional affiliation, research interests, and disciplinary anchoring) to spatialschoolutmn@gmail.com by July 1, 2021. 

Working languages are English and Russian

We welcome abstracts related to the topics listed below: 

Approaches and methods to analyze social and natural space relying on data and sources from Ural and Siberia

Nature as a "natural" space in Ural and Siberia

Cultural landscapes, environment and man-made objects

Geoengineering projects and their role in transforming the spaces of Ural and Siberia

The importance of space in the formation of identities and subjectivity

The city as a new space