cultural geographer
affect, mobilities, work
negativity
economic + affective transitions
IAG Film Shorts
KSCA
SCGRG
Bristol
Scholar
Book — “Revisiting New Words, New Worlds: A Correspondence, June-September 2024“
Last November, Chris Philo and I put out a ‘correspodence’ in the form a small self-published book (seems impertinent to call it a book, but I suppose that’s an accurate description of the physical form it takes). The correspondence reflected on the early life of the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) of the RGS-IBG and its role in the emergence of the influential ‘New Cultural Geography’ in the 1980s and 90s, specifically around the publication New Words, New Worlds published November 1991.
Several timelines converged and intertwined themselves early in 2024 to bring this project to life.
The earliest goes back to Chris examining my PhD thesis in early 2021. In the years since, we’ve kept in touch, and in the course of preparing lectures for an introduction to cultural geography unit as I started at Bristol, New Words, New Worlds kept cropping up in my reading - and yet, no matter where I looked, I couldn’t seem to find a copy. Seeing the Chris was the compiler, I got in touch to ask him about it.
When the 50th anniversary of the SCGRG came up (of which I’ve been Treasurer the last few years), Chris and I came up with the idea to make NWNW available again, to honour the role of the group in bringing the original publication together, and to put some contextualising words to the life NWNW has taken in the 33 years since.
To pull this together, Chris and I exchanged emails every few weeks for much of 2024. I loved receiving each thoughtful missive, and I’m thankful to Chris for taking the time to engage so wholeheartedly in this correspondence.
Last November, Chris Philo and I put out a ‘correspodence’ in the form a small self-published book (seems impertinent to call it a book, but I suppose that’s an accurate description of the physical form it takes). The correspondence reflected on the early life of the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group (SCGRG) of the RGS-IBG and its role in the emergence of the influential ‘New Cultural Geography’ in the 1980s and 90s, specifically around the publication New Words, New Worlds published November 1991.
Several timelines converged and intertwined themselves early in 2024 to bring this project to life.
The earliest goes back to Chris examining my PhD thesis in early 2021. In the years since, we’ve kept in touch, and in the course of preparing lectures for an introduction to cultural geography unit as I started at Bristol, New Words, New Worlds kept cropping up in my reading - and yet, no matter where I looked, I couldn’t seem to find a copy. Seeing the Chris was the compiler, I got in touch to ask him about it.
When the 50th anniversary of the SCGRG came up (of which I’ve been Treasurer the last few years), Chris and I came up with the idea to make NWNW available again, to honour the role of the group in bringing the original publication together, and to put some contextualising words to the life NWNW has taken in the 33 years since.
To pull this together, Chris and I exchanged emails every few weeks for much of 2024. I loved receiving each thoughtful missive, and I’m thankful to Chris for taking the time to engage so wholeheartedly in this correspondence.
3/2025
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Citation: Philo, C. & Zhang, V. (2024). Revisiting ‘New Words, New Worlds’: A Correspondence. Social and Cultural Geography Research Group: Bristol. https://doi.org/10.71706/29b99027-6c3b-46ab-bf6b-54a74a746105
Learn more about the SCGRG 50th event and publication, and read the original New Words, New Worlds: https://scgrg.co.uk/50th
Citation: Philo, C. & Zhang, V. (2024). Revisiting ‘New Words, New Worlds’: A Correspondence. Social and Cultural Geography Research Group: Bristol. https://doi.org/10.71706/29b99027-6c3b-46ab-bf6b-54a74a746105
Learn more about the SCGRG 50th event and publication, and read the original New Words, New Worlds: https://scgrg.co.uk/50th
New paper — “Embodying industrial transitions: Melancholy loss, interrupted habit and transitional memory after the end of a coal mine“
After finally finding some time to write between moving from Singapore to Bristol, I’ve recently had a paper published in Transactions drawing on my PhD research on two coal mine closures in Australia and China.
The overall project aimed to trace the gamut of ways in which workers responded to the unwilled changes presented by the mine closures, exploring how people embodied the closure’s afterlife through changing circumstances, intensities and evaluations.
This particular paper presents a slice of this project that focuses on the slower-paced bodiy transformations afoot in everyday life, and the non-linear intensities associated with these melancholy transitions. It’s an attempt to show (what might be called) ‘non-representational’ and ‘representational’ forces as always imbricated in embodied life, through the plural operation of memory in unfolding experience. I use the term ‘affective transition’ to denote this transformative process, but something about the term is still unsatisfactory to me insofar as it suggests clear boundaries for a timespaces whose fuzzy edges necessarily reach across unremembered pasts, unassimilated presents and unrealised futures (as I argue in the paper). So the paradoxes remain.
I first wrote up these ideas during my PhD, so as a piece of work it feels old despite being newly out. I did enjoy coming back to the vignettes and smoothing out the original argument, but I think I’ve had enough of this more didactic academic writing style for the next while. In this version, I ended up grounding the narrative in the idea of ‘memory’ because I felt it resonated more widely, but I do think ‘melancholy’ really is the driving void at the heart of this paper - it’s an affective condition that keeps calling to me, and no doubt I’ll continue to grapple with it in the future.
After finally finding some time to write between moving from Singapore to Bristol, I’ve recently had a paper published in Transactions drawing on my PhD research on two coal mine closures in Australia and China.
The overall project aimed to trace the gamut of ways in which workers responded to the unwilled changes presented by the mine closures, exploring how people embodied the closure’s afterlife through changing circumstances, intensities and evaluations.
This particular paper presents a slice of this project that focuses on the slower-paced bodiy transformations afoot in everyday life, and the non-linear intensities associated with these melancholy transitions. It’s an attempt to show (what might be called) ‘non-representational’ and ‘representational’ forces as always imbricated in embodied life, through the plural operation of memory in unfolding experience. I use the term ‘affective transition’ to denote this transformative process, but something about the term is still unsatisfactory to me insofar as it suggests clear boundaries for a timespaces whose fuzzy edges necessarily reach across unremembered pasts, unassimilated presents and unrealised futures (as I argue in the paper). So the paradoxes remain.
I first wrote up these ideas during my PhD, so as a piece of work it feels old despite being newly out. I did enjoy coming back to the vignettes and smoothing out the original argument, but I think I’ve had enough of this more didactic academic writing style for the next while. In this version, I ended up grounding the narrative in the idea of ‘memory’ because I felt it resonated more widely, but I do think ‘melancholy’ really is the driving void at the heart of this paper - it’s an affective condition that keeps calling to me, and no doubt I’ll continue to grapple with it in the future.
2/2024
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Citation: Zhang, V. (2024). Embodying industrial transitions: Melancholy loss, interrupted habit and transitional memory after the end of a coal mine. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. doi.org/10.1111/tran.12672
Citation: Zhang, V. (2024). Embodying industrial transitions: Melancholy loss, interrupted habit and transitional memory after the end of a coal mine. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. doi.org/10.1111/tran.12672
New paper — “What should we do with bad feelings? Negative affects, impotential responses”
Thomas Dekeyser, David Bissell and I have a new article out open access in Progress in Human Geography on the politics of ‘negative affects’.
We explore the ethics of responding to bad feeling in human geography, identifying an ‘ethics of rehabilitation’ which recurs across the discipline, that seeks to repair bad feeling through attempts to work away negativity and activate latent potential.
Against this persistent desire to overcome negativity and seek potential, we ask why, and how, geographers might explicitly make space for impotentiality. We outline two forms of impotentiality — incapacities (when one is unable to act) and negative capacities (when one decides not to act) — and draw on these positions to put forward an ‘ethics of impotentiality’ that, we suggest, might sidestep some of the more troubling effects of the rehabilitative position, and acknowledge the validity not only of bad feelings, but also the impotence that one might experience in the face of those overwhelming feelings.
Despite the topic matter, writing with these with these two irrepressibly brilliant and kind people was only full of good feels, and I’m looking forward to working with them again. We would love to hear your thoughts on the article if you find time to read it.
Thomas Dekeyser, David Bissell and I have a new article out open access in Progress in Human Geography on the politics of ‘negative affects’.
We explore the ethics of responding to bad feeling in human geography, identifying an ‘ethics of rehabilitation’ which recurs across the discipline, that seeks to repair bad feeling through attempts to work away negativity and activate latent potential.
Against this persistent desire to overcome negativity and seek potential, we ask why, and how, geographers might explicitly make space for impotentiality. We outline two forms of impotentiality — incapacities (when one is unable to act) and negative capacities (when one decides not to act) — and draw on these positions to put forward an ‘ethics of impotentiality’ that, we suggest, might sidestep some of the more troubling effects of the rehabilitative position, and acknowledge the validity not only of bad feelings, but also the impotence that one might experience in the face of those overwhelming feelings.
Despite the topic matter, writing with these with these two irrepressibly brilliant and kind people was only full of good feels, and I’m looking forward to working with them again. We would love to hear your thoughts on the article if you find time to read it.
12/2023
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Citation: Dekeyser, T., Zhang, V., & Bissell, D. (2023). What should we do with bad feelings? Negative affects, impotential responses. Progress in Human Geography. doi.org/10.1177/03091325231213513
Citation: Dekeyser, T., Zhang, V., & Bissell, D. (2023). What should we do with bad feelings? Negative affects, impotential responses. Progress in Human Geography. doi.org/10.1177/03091325231213513
Field trip — Hengyang, Hunan, China
It’s been a year for unexpected field trips — this time with second year undergraduates from Guangzhou University’s geography program during my extended visit to GZU’s Centre for Human Geography and Urban Development this autumn.
Together, we rode the old 绿皮车 ‘green-skin’ slow train; learned about the important work on intangible cultural heritage by geography colleagues at Hengyang Normal University; (futilely) attempted to disentangle the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian influences at the Great Temple of Nanyue; climbed (or rather strolled a paved road up) sacred Mount Heng, one of China’s Five Great Mountains; burned our mouths on the aromatic but **spicy** Hunan cuisine; and burned the midnight oil with students preparing for their research presentations on the final day.
Alongside our group activities, the students were tasked with undertaking a mini research project in three days, and they blew me away with their dedication, ingenuity, teamwork, persistence and style.
I had a lot of fun exploring this new city, hearing about what excites and ails students today, and above all learning from the wonderful teaching crew — Yuan Zhenjie, Yang Rong, Teng Li & Chen Xiaoyue. I am so thankful that they allowed me join them.
It’s been a year for unexpected field trips — this time with second year undergraduates from Guangzhou University’s geography program during my extended visit to GZU’s Centre for Human Geography and Urban Development this autumn.
Together, we rode the old 绿皮车 ‘green-skin’ slow train; learned about the important work on intangible cultural heritage by geography colleagues at Hengyang Normal University; (futilely) attempted to disentangle the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian influences at the Great Temple of Nanyue; climbed (or rather strolled a paved road up) sacred Mount Heng, one of China’s Five Great Mountains; burned our mouths on the aromatic but **spicy** Hunan cuisine; and burned the midnight oil with students preparing for their research presentations on the final day.
Alongside our group activities, the students were tasked with undertaking a mini research project in three days, and they blew me away with their dedication, ingenuity, teamwork, persistence and style.
I had a lot of fun exploring this new city, hearing about what excites and ails students today, and above all learning from the wonderful teaching crew — Yuan Zhenjie, Yang Rong, Teng Li & Chen Xiaoyue. I am so thankful that they allowed me join them.
10/2023
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