The making of development geography

The change from 'tropical geography' to 'development geography' is the focus of the first Asia Pacific Viewpoint Journal annual public lecture at Victoria University.

In his lecture, The Degeneration of Tropical Geography – the role of Keith Buchanan and others, Associate Professor James Sidaway, from the National University of Singapore will examine how the 'colonial' and 'tropical' geography of the post-Second World War period came to be 'development geography' in the 1970s.

The free public lecture, organised in conjunction with the School of Earth Sciences at Victoria University, will be held in lecture theatre 119 in the Hunter Building on Monday July 21 at 7pm.

Associate Professor Sidaway will explore the evolution of development geography, relating them to the geopolitical, economic and social traumas associated with decolonisation.

In particular, he will also examine this change through the work of a series of British geographers, among them Keith Buchanan, a pioneering radical geographer trained at the School of Geography at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, who later worked in South Africa, Nigeria, Singapore and New Zealand.

Professor Buchanan was the first Professor of Geography at Victoria and founded the Asia Pacific Viewpoint Journal.

Before joining the Department of Geography at NUS, Associate Professor Sidaway held posts at the Universities of Birmingham and Reading in the UK and as a Jean Monett Fellow at the University of Seville. His research interests include geopolitics and the geographies of development and post-development as well as the history and sociology of geography. Recent books include Imagined Regional Communities: integration and sovereignty in the Global South (2001) and, with Ron Johnston; Geography and Geographers: Anglo-American Geography since 1945 (sixth edition, Arnold, in press).

Asia Pacific Viewpoint is a scholarly international journal published by Blackwells and edited at the Victoria's School of Earth Sciences. It publishes research in Geography and other disciplines on the economic and social development of countries in the Asia Pacific region.

For more information contact: Dr Warwick Murray, lecturer and APV editor, on 04 463 5029

Issued by Victoria University of Wellington Public Affairs
For further information please contact Antony.Paltridge@vuw.ac.nz or phone 04 463 5873 or 029 463 5873

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