Interdisciplinary approaches to space and place

Space and place play an important, if under-theorised, role across many of the disciplines studying the human mind. The distinction between place and space has been a central concern in phenomenology and human geography, but it is often glossed over in disciplines like memory studies, cognitive science, or environmental psychology. The aim of this interdisciplinary workshop is to critically assess the dangers of focusing on space to the detriment of place, as well as topological notions (like inside/outside or internality/externality) and the tension between spatialisation and relationality.

The workshop takes place on the occasion of the visit of Jeff Malpas to the Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory. Jeff Malpas will be the keynote speaker of the workshop.

Abstracts (max. 300 words not including references) should be sent as a pdf attachment to [email protected] by 19th July 2026.

Jeff Malpas FAHA is an Australian philosopher and emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. He was founder and, until 2005, Director of the university's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books with some of the world’s leading academic presses and has published over 120 scholarly articles on topics in philosophy, art, architecture, and geography. His work draws on the thinking of a diverse range of thinkers including, most notably, Albert Camus, Donald Davidson, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Much of his work is focussed on the idea of place and on the character of human being as standing in an essential relation to place leading to the characterisation of his work as a mode of 'philosophical topography'. Among his best-known works is Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography, and his most recent book is In the Brightness of Place: Topological Thinking in and after Heidegger.

Established in late 2024, the Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory is funded by a £4M award from the Leverhulme Trust over five years. Led by Professor John Sutton and Deputy Director Professor Paula Reavey, the Centre is a dynamic, collaborative, interdisciplinary research project advancing knowledge in relations between place and memory. Anchored in Philosophy and housed in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the Centre draws on cognitive sciences, social sciences, and the arts to break new ground in the study of spatial thinking, disorientation, and remembering. It connects the sciences of space and memory with contemporary practical concerns about memory, cognition, emotion, and place. Centre researchers deploy diverse methods, integrating conceptual, experimental, qualitative and ethnographic approaches to address pressing questions about how people locate and orient themselves in space and time.