Author: DARG Admin

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David W. Smith Memorial Prize 2015 Winner

We at DARG are delighted to announce the winner of the David W. Smith Memorial Prize 2015, Jack Rogers from Eton School.

The quality and quantity of submissions was high this year so a big congratulations to Jack whose essay to the title ‘Discuss the challenges faced by cities in the developing world in their efforts to become sustainable‘ was awarded first place by the judges. He wins £100 in book vouchers from Routledge Publishers.

We would also like to highly commend Imogen Robinson at The Royal High School, Bath and Lauren Dawe from Mount Kelly, Tavistock for their submissions.

The Developing Areas Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) annual essay competition is in memory of David W. Smith. David W Smith, who also published under the name of David Drakakis Smith, was an outstanding scholar committed to researching on Third World cities. He died in 1999.

The competition is open to A2 level students in England and Wales and Advanced Higher students in Scotland who are invited to write an essay of up to 1500 words to a title chosen by DARG. We will be welcoming submissions once again in February 2016.

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Postgraduate Travel Award

DARG provides an annual award to a postgraduate geography student to encourage and assist fieldwork in developing countries.

It is aimed at those preparing for a PhD in topics related to development studies. Applicants should be based at a British institution of higher education, but may be of any nationality. The award must be spent on travel costs, and preference may be given to students in the early stages of their research. The successful candidate is required to provide a short report for the DARG Website.
The award is £800, although smaller awards are sometimes made.

The annual deadline is 1 May. The criteria for the award are:

· Quality of the project design
· Potential significance of the results
· Support from referee (usually the supervisor)
· Financial need
There is no application form, but the following information must be included in all applications as Word/.pdf documents:

Outline of the proposed research (maximum 3 pages – to include full budget)
A full curriculum vitae (including all qualifications and current institutional affiliation)
Full details of all existing or expected financial support
Applicants must also ensure that a reference (normally from the supervisor) arrives before the deadline. Please note that incomplete or late applications will not be considered. Completed applications will be judged by a panel of development geographers and the result notified in June.

All applications should be sent by email to DARG Chair, Nina Laurie: nina.laurie@st-andrews.ac.uk

Deadline: 1 May 2016

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Development Geography Careers Workshop- 5th June 2015, Manchester

The upcoming DARG workshop ‘Navigating a Career in Academia: Survival Tips for Development Geographers’ will be held on Friday, June 5th 2015, at the University of Manchester.
This one-day workshop is aimed at postgraduate students thinking about how to pursue a career in academia and will cover topics such as publishing from your PhD and how to find the right position for you.
Tickets cost £15 includes lunch. Tickets can be bought HERE
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DARG Undergraduate Development Dissertation Workshop- March 21st 2015

The upcoming DARG Undergraduate Development Dissertation Workshop will be held on Saturday, March 21st 2015, at UCL London.
This one-day workshop is aimed at undergraduate students considering doing their final year dissertation on a topic related to Development Geography while being based abroad or in the UK. It’s a great chance for students to get information and advice on planning and designing their projects, choosing methods and going on fieldwork.
It is £10 for members, £12 to join DARG & attend and includes lunch. Tickets can be bought HERE
A taster of what past workshops have covered can be found HERE
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Call for Papers ‘Family geographies, care and relationality’ paper session. Young People, Borders & Well-Being

Call for Papers ‘Family geographies, care and relationality’ paper session. Young People, Borders & Well-Being, 4th International Conference on Geographies of Children, Young People and Families, San Diego, California, January 12-15, 2015
Session organisers: Ruth Evans, Sophie Bowlby and Sally Lloyd-Evans (University of Reading)
Session theme:
Despite recent interest in relational geographies of age (Hopkins and Pain, 2007) and intergenerationality (Vanderbeck, 2007), research often focuses predominantly on children or youth without paying adequate attention to the complex gendered, age-based, inter- and intra-generational power dynamics that characterise young people’s family lives and connections to others. Analysis of caringscapes and time-space practices of care within family settings bring to the fore questions of relationality. Research suggests that young people’s caring responsibilities in the context of family illness, disability or death and often in low-income households, may have both positive and negative impacts on their wellbeing (Robson, 2004; Evans and Becker, 2009) and may influence young people’s boundary crossings (Valentine, 2003). For example, care may prevent, enable or reconfigure socially expected lifecourse transitions, such as completing education, migrating for work, initiation rites, engaging in intimate relationships, marriage, childbirth and providing for relatives (Punch, 2002; Evans, 2012; 2014). The care provided by other family members – such as by a young person’s parent or sibling to their parent or friends, or the care provided by friends, relatives or professionals to a parent, sibling or other relative – may also impact on young people’s lifecourse transitions and mobilities.
In this session, we hope to explore the informal and formal caring practices and relations that shape young people’s family lives and reflect on the powerful, often emotive discourses associated with ‘family’ in different cultural and policy contexts. We are interested in papers that address a diversity of caring practices and family relations in the global North and South. Care may be undertaken by children, parents or other family members, non-kin significant others or professionals, may be manifested through ‘proximate’ or ‘distant’ caring relations in transnational households, and may focus on care of the living, dead or dying or non-human agents and materialities. We hope that the session will make a significant contribution to the emerging field of family geographies.
Please send your title and abstract of a maximum of 250 words by 1st September 2014 to Ruth Evans (r.evans@reading.ac.uk).
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Call for abstracts: The Third University of Leeds Researchers in Development Network (RiDNet) conference

Call for abstracts: The Third University of Leeds Researchers in Development Network (RiDNet) conference will be taking place on the 12th November 2014. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Does Research Make a Difference in Development? Bridging the gaps between research, policy and practice’ and we are very excited to open up the Calls for Abstracts (attached) to all PhD students and early career researchers across the UK. Deadline for submission for presentation and poster abstracts is 31st August 2014.

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Report on DARG-sponsored meeting on The Caribbean Region: Adaptation and Resilience to Global Change by Duncan McGregor and David Barker

The sixth in the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers British-Caribbean Seminar Series was held at the Department of Geography and Geology, University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, June 23rd-27th, 2014.  The Seminar was organised by Professor David Barker, Dr Thera Edwards, Dr Kevon Rhiney (Department of Geography, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus) and Dr Duncan McGregor (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway), with the financial support of the Climate Change Research Group and the Developing Areas Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers.  These funds were used specifically to provide subsidised conference attendance, including fieldtrips, for 7 postgraduate and 1 undergraduate students from the Caribbean region.
The meeting had a truly international flavour, including as it did participants from the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Colombia and 8 Caribbean Territories (Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, St Vincent, St Kitts & Nevis and Martinique), who enjoyed 3 days of research presentations and 2 field days.
Over 60 participants took part, with 44 papers presented within the overarching  theme of adaptation and resilience to global change within the Caribbean region.  Papers ranged in topic from regional and national frameworks for action; approaches to  resilience-building, in coastal, urban and agricultural systems and through education and technology; with particular groups of papers concentrating on eastern Caribbean and Guyanese environments and on key niche industries such as Jamaica’s coffee industry.  Several ‘local’ and ‘international’ postgraduates presented in these sessions, and this Next Generation acquitted itself with distinction.
Two field days underscored the human vulnerabilities of Jamaica in terms of inner-city regeneration and rural economic adaptation and development, and stimulated much debate during and after the trips. ‘Team spirit’ was fostered by a variety of evening social occasions, which provided ample opportunity for individual exchanges of research experience and ideas, and for ‘networking’. 
A successful publication outcome is anticipated, thanks to generous sponsorship from the Jamaica National Foundation and from USAID Project funds.  Negotiations are under way with the University of the West Indies Press to produce substantive Proceedings, and Special Issues of the regional journal, Caribbean Geography, are anticipated. This will mirror the outputs from previous seminars, which have resulted in four edited volumes and six Special Issues of Caribbean Geography, a total to date of around 100 individual chapters and papers.
In this context, the organisers of the meeting are presently drawing up a synopsis of the principal conclusions drawn from the meeting.  This will not only act as a suitable postscript for the major publications anticipated, but as a strategy document to inform the wider research and decision-making community of the principal problems associated withThe Caribbean Region: Adaptation and Resilience to Global Change, and the major research directions crucial to the alleviation of these problems. 
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Committee Elections – DARG needs you!

As noted in the last newsletter, this AGM will see a significant change in our committee membership, as we will have space for up to four full committee positions, including that of Chair. If you are interested in standing for a place on the committee as a regular committee member or as a PG representative and wish to discuss this, please get in touch with Glyn Williams (glyn.williams@sheffield.ac.uk) or Nina Laurie (nina.laurie@newcastle.ac.uk) to find out more about the roles involved.
Anyone standing for Chair should be a Fellow of the RGS: non-RGS members may stand as committee members, but may not hold the post of Treasurer or Secretary. Nominations must be proposed and seconded by members of the Group and must receive the assent of the nominee before submission to Nina as DARG Secretar (nina.laurie@newcastle.ac.uk). This year, we’re asking all people standing for committee/Chair to write a short statement (maximum 250 words) on what they would bring to the role – and we aim to circulate these to all members ahead of the AGM.
All nominations should be sent to Nina on/before 11th August.  
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Developing Areas Research Group AGM

The DARG AGM will be held during the RGS-IBG Annual Conference, on Thursday 28th August from 13:10-14.25, in the Sunley Room of the RGS.
Any DARG members (or other interested people) who are not registered to attend the conference but who wish to attend the AGM can gain a free visitor pass for the meeting by emailing AC2014@rgs.org and providing their name, affiliation, email address and the meeting(s) they wish to attend.  The RGS will confirm receipt and arrange a visitor pass for them to collect from the registration desk on the day.
Items for the AGM agenda will include our new Constitution, discussion of DARG’s prize to remember the work of David Drakakis-Smith, and importantly the election of new committee members.
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DARG PG Travel Award

This year’s prize winner is Felicity Butler (RHUL), for her research in Northern Nicaragua on Including Unpaid Labour in Community Fair Trade Products.  Congratulations to her: this year’s competition saw a very high-quality list of applications.