Geography Of Europe Research Articles

Arcangelo Ghisleri and the “Right to Barbarity”: Geography and Anti‐colonialism in Italy in the Age of Empire (1875–1914)

AbstractThis paper addresses the work of early critics of colonialism and Eurocentrism within Italian geography in the Age of Empire. At that time, a minority but rather influential group of Italian scholars, influenced by the international debates promoted by the anarchist geographers Reclus, Kropotkin and Mečnikov, fumed publicly at Italy's colonial ambitions in Africa. Their positions assumed, at least in the case of Arcangelo Ghisleri, the character of a radical critique of both political and cultural European hegemony. These approaches were linked to a similar critique of “internal colonialism”, both Austrian in the Italian‐speaking regions of Trento and Trieste, and Piedmontese in southern Italy. Based on primary sources, and drawing on the international literature on imperial geography and colonial and postcolonial sciences, this paper conjures up the Italian example to discuss how some European geographers of the Age of Empire were also early critics of racism, colonialism and chauvinism, and how these historical experiences can serve current debates on critical, radical and anarchist geographies.

Estimating greenhouse gas emissions from travel – a GIS-based study

Abstract. Conferences, meetings and congresses are an important part of today's economic and scientific world. But the environmental impact, especially from greenhouse gas emissions associated with travel, can be extensive. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions account for the warming of the atmosphere and oceans. This study draws on the need to quantify and reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with travel activities and aims to give suggestions for organizers and participants on possible ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, demonstrated on the example of the European Geography Association (EGEA) Annual Congress 2013 in Wasilkow, Poland. The lack of a comprehensive methodology for the estimation of greenhouse gas emissions from travel led to an outline of a methodology that uses geographic information systems (GIS) to calculate travel distances. The calculation of travel distances in GIS is adapted from actual transportation infrastructure, derived from the open-source platform OpenStreetMap. The methodology also aims to assess the possibilities to reduce GHG emissions by choosing different means of transportation and a more central conference location. The results of the participants of the EGEA congress, who shared their travel data for this study, show that the total travel distance adds up to 238 000 km, with average travel distance of 2429 km per participant. The travel activities of the participants in the study result in total GHG emissions of 39 300 kg CO2-eq including both outward and return trip. On average a participant caused GHG emissions of 401 kg CO2-eq. In addition, the analysis of the travel data showed differences in travel behaviour depending on the distance between conference site and point of origin. The findings on travel behaviour have then been used to give an estimation of total greenhouse gas emissions from travel for all participants of the conference, which result in a total amount of 79 711 kg CO2-eq. The potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by substituting short flights with train rides and car rides with bus and train rides is limited. Only 6 % of greenhouse gas emissions could be saved by applying these measures. Further considerable savings could only be made by substituting longer flights (32.6 %) or choosing a more central conference location (26.3 %).

Linking Nordic landscape geography and political ecology

Widgren, M. 2015. Linking Nordic landscape geography and political ecology. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 00, 00–00. ISSN 0029-1951The article analyses and compares two schools of landscape research – post-war European landscape history and Nordic landscape geography – and compares them with political ecology. Each of them developed within a specific political, environmental, and intellectual context. European landscape history developed as curiosity-driven research, but in the shadow of previous ideological misuse of settlement history. Political ecology developed in the context of the Sahel crisis and provided a radical answer to Malthusian simplifications of the desertification and land degradation. In contrast to that, Nordic landscape geography grew as an intellectual critical reaction to a European situation in which post-productivist landscape policies were on the agenda. The article also speculates on challenges ahead and suggests that the epoch when we understand European landscapes mainly from a post-productivist standpoint may be over.

Reimagining Kievan Rus’ in Unimagined Europe

Russia’s place in Europe is an old question, one that is answered differently depending on its eras of history, the generations of scholars who study this issue, and their backgrounds. How the Kievan Rus’ period of Russian history may “fit” into medieval European history is perhaps not as well studied as are other epochs, although Soviet historiography is quite strong, as it nearly always attempted to situate Rus’ into “Feudal Europe.” Marxist historians had no doubts that Kievan Rus’ was European, as were West European medieval cartographers and geographers. Reasons for why, when, how, and where Russia came to be written out of medieval Europe, which has been generally understood as the Latin West, are still not clear. Recent scholarship has argued for the need to reevaluate the entire antiquated notion of “medieval Europe” being only the Latin West and include into it the “Other Europe,” or the Eastern-rite states that occupied the other half of the Continent. The new book by Christian Raffensperger attempts to find ways to situate Rus’ into “Europe” through reimagining its place in it. However, because the author does not reimagine “Europe,” he squeezes Rus’ into the Latin West, which compromises the former’s uniqueness as it also writes the rest of the Eastern-rite European states out of medieval Europe.

The Use of Exhaustive Micro-Data Firm Databases for Economic Geography: The Issues of Geocoding and Usability in the Case of the Amadeus Database

Economic geography has begun to explore the options involved in micro-data. New databases have become available and new techniques and an increase in computer power allow their treatment. However, two major issues impede the use of these datasets: the lack of geocoded spatial location and lack of exhaustivity in coverage. In this article, I explore the possibilities of using large micro-scale firm databases for economic geography in Europe. I show that current evolution in European official spatial data dissemination alows for geocoding of such databases using means that are accessible for researchers with minimal programming knowledge. For the specific case of the Amadeus database of the Bureau Van Dijk, I show that its limitations in terms of coverage have to be taken into acount, but do not hinder its use for analysis. Resulting maps show how the data allows to go further than classic databases such as the Eurostat Structural Business Statistics.

Collaborative multilingual knowledge management based on controlled natural language

User interfaces are a critical aspect of semantic knowledge representation systems, as users have to understand and use a formal representation language to model a particular domain of interest, which is known to be a difficult task. Things are even more challenging in a multilingual setting, where users speaking different languages have to create a multilingual ontology. To address these problems, we introduce a semantic wiki system that is based on controlled natural language to provide an intuitive yet formal interface. We use a well-defined subset of Attempto Controlled English (ACE) implemented in Grammatical Framework. Our wiki system offers precise bidirectional automatic translations between ACE and language fragments of a number of other natural languages, making the wiki content accessible multilingually. Because ACE has a partial but deterministic mapping to the Web Ontology Language, our wiki engine can offer automatic reasoning and question answering over the wiki content. Users speaking different languages can therefore build, query, and view the same knowledge base in an intuitive and user-friendly interface based on the respective natural language. We present the results of a user evaluation where participants using different languages were asked to write and assess statements about European geography in our wiki environment. Our results show that users reach a high level of consensus, which is not negatively affected by the presence of automatic translation.

Seine Gateway® at the heart of North-Western European freight flows: regional dynamics and current challenges

In the context of global freight flows and increased competition between ports, this article deals with the question how the Seine River Valley and its ports rate in the European geography of exchanges of saleable goods. It is discussed what transport infrastructures the Seine River Valley has and what opportunities will need to have to confront the stakes involved in development. The strategic position of Le Havre, the first importation port, upstream from the Pas-de-Calais strait and Paris’ natural maritime inbound port, raises the question of the intensification of East-West exchanges that logically will accompany the shift of Europe’s centre of gravity towards the East. The authors present what measure the Seine Gateway® constitutes an adapted response to massify the flows of freight in the Seine River Valley area and to enlarge its hinterlands.

Continental European geographers and World War II

This special issue considers the lives and work of Continental European Geographers during World War II. There is a range of work on the complicity of American and British geographers in this global conflict, but barely any consideration of geographers in mainland Europe. The six essays collected here provide detailed biographical and regionally specific case studies of the entanglements between geography and war in France, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Romania and The Soviet Union between 1939 and 1945. This introduction delineates this important gap in the literature on the liaison between geography, geographers and World War II, and flags a number of ways in which it might be conceptualised and contextualised.

Portugal, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Geographical study

Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico [Portugal, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic]:2 regardless of their branches of study, areas of expertise, or even epistemological views of the geographical praxis and theorization, very few Portuguese geographers would not claim knowledge of, and reverence for, this seminal piece and, more generally, of its author’s work. Un-arguably one of (if not) the most distinguished and recognised Portuguese Geography professors and researchers, and one of the most important european geographers of the XXth century, Orlando ribeiro (1911-1997) numbered among his many career achievements the creation of the renowned Centre for Geographical studies of the University of Lisbon and the organization of the first post-war congress of the international Geographical Union (1949), a group for which he was elected vice-president in 1952. as stated in the website dedicated to the spreading of his life and worki, “particularly important landmarks [hence definitely not falling short from those mentioned earlier] of his career are Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico, one of his best known works of synthesis, first published in 1945, and the creation of Finisterra in 1966, a journal that still continues as one of the major publications to divulge the Portuguese geography, at a national and international level.” Given the previously stated, the intended purpose of this text is – through the association of these two landmarks, and taking the opportunity for dissemination provided by an issue of finisterra published in english – to contribute to expand on the festivities of the centenary of his birth, which took place all around the year 2011, through the presentation and reviewing of the latest (the 8th)ii and celebratory edition of Portugal, o Mediterrâneo e o Atlântico, published in that same year. the Portugal presented in this book through the hand of this regionalist and humanistic geographer is a markedly rural one; one with a predominantly agrarian economy; one deeply marked by history, and physiographic and climatic features; one resulting from the combination of a myriad of Mediterranean and atlantic influences whose human expressions were still widely visible at the time of its original writing (1945). synthetically, the author expands

Innovative eFreight Solutions for Road Transport Optimization

An analysis of floating vehicle data from transport trucks was carried out. The anonymized track points allowed for a range of innovative uses in transport logistics. Firstly, the spread of speed values throughout Europe shows distinct influences on the driving speed. Most of these are rather obvious such as slow-downs in metropolitan areas, mountainous areas, on the last mile before ferries, and others. Secondly, linking the track points to an European road network geography allowed to calculated average speeds for each network link. These speeds can be used to improve the standard network and thus calculate more realistic travel times. Thirdly, when sufficient amounts of data are present, it is also possible to calculate truck speed patterns for one-hour intervals during each day. This will influence travel times depending on the time of day at which a transport trip is carried out.

The past is always in the present. Aether and the returns of history and Europe’s new post-1989 peripheries. The cases of Mihail Sebastian’s diary and Emir Suljagić’s Srebrenica memoir

In this article I have used the notion of ‘the aether’—radio space—in two non-fiction texts, to analyse how both older and more recent trauma reconfigured post-1989 European literary geography into a new constellation of a centre and peripheries. I describe how Mihail Sebastian’s Diary, written between 1935 and 1944, but not published until 1996, reflects the idea of a European Hochkultur that could be maintained by listening to classical music on the radio, while anti-Semitism and ethnic persecution denied the author his cosmopolitan Romanian-Jewish identity. The author’s ‘identity confusion’ was transposed in the 1990s, when his diary’s first publication in the midst of ‘Romania’s cultural wars’ (Livezeanu) led to heated debates about the holocaust in Romania as a moral touchstone for its ways into Europe. The case of Sebastian is discussed alongside Emir Suljagic’s literary Srebrenica memoir, in which comparison with the holocaust deeply influences both the protagonist’s interpretation of his own experience of ethnic persecution, and the European world’s failure to identify with his position. The two cases shed light on how an imaginary European centre emerged in Eastern-Europe and the Balkans from the perspective of two peripheries, one old, one new.

European geography of Alnus incana leaf variation

The intra- and inter-population and geographic differentiation of Alnus incana were examined biometrically on the basis of morphological character of the leaves. The study results only partly confirmed the assumption that Carpathian and Alpine populations of the species differ significantly. This may indicate that gene exchange continued during glacial periods as these regions were not sufficiently isolated from each other. The geographic variation of grey alder along the Balkans–Scandinavia axis is more eminent. It is debatable whether A. incana has migrated northwards from montane refugia, along Central European rivers, mostly the Vistula and Oder. It can be, however, noted that the Masurian, Sudetan and East Carpathian populations are similar to one another.

The geography of education and comparative education

This article examines the synergy between a long established discipline, geography, and the younger discipline of educational studies, especially its component, comparative education. Although this synergy was recognised by the founding father of comparative education, Michael Sadler, and one of his principal followers, George Bereday, the geography of education has yet to take its place alongside the other foundations of education. Possible reasons for this will be examined as well as the literature of the geography of education as it has slowly developed over the last 40 years.Since the majority of that literature has come from British academics,others have been excluded from this account due to constraints of space but it can be mentioned here that there have been significant inputs from European geographers, especially Peter Meusberger. Throughout, the value of a more sophisticated perception of the spatial dimension of educational activity and provision will be argued, especially in relation to comparative education.

Structural Similarities between Brain and Linguistic Data Provide Evidence of Semantic Relations in the Brain

This paper presents a new method of analysis by which structural similarities between brain data and linguistic data can be assessed at the semantic level. It shows how to measure the strength of these structural similarities and so determine the relatively better fit of the brain data with one semantic model over another. The first model is derived from WordNet, a lexical database of English compiled by language experts. The second is given by the corpus-based statistical technique of latent semantic analysis (LSA), which detects relations between words that are latent or hidden in text. The brain data are drawn from experiments in which statements about the geography of Europe were presented auditorily to participants who were asked to determine their truth or falsity while electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were made. The theoretical framework for the analysis of the brain and semantic data derives from axiomatizations of theories such as the theory of differences in utility preference. Using brain-data samples from individual trials time-locked to the presentation of each word, ordinal relations of similarity differences are computed for the brain data and for the linguistic data. In each case those relations that are invariant with respect to the brain and linguistic data, and are correlated with sufficient statistical strength, amount to structural similarities between the brain and linguistic data. Results show that many more statistically significant structural similarities can be found between the brain data and the WordNet-derived data than the LSA-derived data. The work reported here is placed within the context of other recent studies of semantics and the brain. The main contribution of this paper is the new method it presents for the study of semantics and the brain and the focus it permits on networks of relations detected in brain data and represented by a semantic model.

Genomics Recapitulates History in Europe

Genomics Recapitulates History in Europe

Géographie de l’Europe et géographie de la construction européenne

Cet article concerne les visions relatives de l’Europe et de l’Union europeenne (UE) fournies par les manuels de geographie de l’enseignement secondaire dans differents pays. Dans la plupart d’entre eux, l’enseignement de la geographie de l’Europe precede celui de l’UE. L’Europe tend alors a etre presentee comme un objet reifie alors que l’UE apparait plutot comme un ensemble d’acteurs politiques developpant leurs propres strategies. Cette succession aboutit au melange de differents paradigmes geographiques, chacun d’eux induisant un prisme ideologique specifique. Cette accumulation de cadres epistemologiques contradictoires fournit une vision ambigue qui complique la possibilite de developper une comprehension claire des enjeux geopolitique lies a la construction europeenne.

Population structure and cultural geography of a folktale in Europe

Despite a burgeoning science of cultural evolution, relatively little work has focused on the population structure of human cultural variation. By contrast, studies in human population genetics use a suite of tools to quantify and analyse spatial and temporal patterns of genetic variation within and between populations. Human genetic diversity can be explained largely as a result of migration and drift giving rise to gradual genetic clines, together with some discontinuities arising from geographical and cultural barriers to gene flow. Here, we adapt theory and methods from population genetics to quantify the influence of geography and ethnolinguistic boundaries on the distribution of 700 variants of a folktale in 31 European ethnolinguistic populations. We find that geographical distance and ethnolinguistic affiliation exert significant independent effects on folktale diversity and that variation between populations supports a clustering concordant with European geography. This pattern of geographical clines and clusters parallels the pattern of human genetic diversity in Europe, although the effects of geographical distance and ethnolinguistic boundaries are stronger for folktales than genes. Our findings highlight the importance of geography and population boundaries in models of human cultural variation and point to key similarities and differences between evolutionary processes operating on human genes and culture.

Metropolis und Exotik: Heinrich Heine uber Leopold Robert und Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps

The author argues that Heine outlined an imagined geography of Europe via reference to a number of paintings, divided into historical (France, England) and national exotic (Italy, Tirol, the Pyrenees). Heine’s social and historical actuality did not exclude the creation of ideological and non-historical images. Heine over-interpreted Alexandre Gabriel Decamps’s genre painting “Cadji-Bey, chef de la police de Smyrne, faisant sa ronde” as an image of injustice; the image represents a world that is not only devoid of civilization but degenerate and bestial. Animal resemblance denies history to that world. Finally, the author explores the significance of the gaze from outside in addressing exoticism in the works of Decamps and Leopold Robert and the way in which looking from the outside may create exotic images derived not from foreign cultures, but from the peripheries of European countries.

“Futuristic geography”. The role of geographers in shaping the borders of East Central and South‑Eastern Europe, 1914‑1920

This article represents an attempt to analyse the political desiderata underlying the activities of East Central European geographers during the First World War and in its immediate aftermath. These scholars, drawing on the achievements of German and French geographical studies, and who were frequently graduates from western European universities, employed sophisticated research tools and arguments in the service of legitimising national interests. The apogee of the political impact of their intellectual concepts came during the peace negotiations in Paris, but indirect evidence of the efficacy of this generation of geographers in the region can also be seen in the fact that they were to become points of reference and arsenals of knowledge utilized by the interwar revisionist propaganda of Germany and Hungary.

European Geography Higher Education Fieldwork and the Skills Agenda

The Bologna Declaration focuses on skill acquisition as a means of improving student employability and fieldwork is considered to be a pivotal teaching method for geography students to obtain such skills. This paper presents results from a major substantive survey of European geography academics and students which investigated their perspectives with regard to the role of geography fieldwork in the gaining of transferable employability skills. Results are compared with past research in the wake of the European Commission's geography ‘TUNING’ project, which provided a set of subject-specific and generic skills attained through fieldwork.