The causes of Sudan’s protracted armed conflicts from a human geography and ecology perspective

Geographers examine spatial and social aspects of place destruction that occurs during warfare. This Forum considers aerial bombing with special attention to the impact on cities, often called urbicide. A 1983 article in The Annals by Kenneth Hewitt is taken as a starting point. Forum authors examine what has changed in our discipline since Hewitt’s publication and what geographers can do to contribute to our understanding with the advent of shifts in technologies and critical thinking approaches in human geography.

This article examines the affective and spatial dynamics of the Museum of Broken Relationships (MOBR) in Zagreb, Croatia, through the conceptual lenses of resonance, theatricality, and assemblage. The MOBR curates personal objects donated by individuals to commemorate the end of intimate relationships. Through a multisensory and carefully staged exhibition design, the museum fosters emotionally charged encounters between visitors, objects, and narratives. Drawing on affect theory, critical geographies, and the ethics of care, this article explores how the MOBR becomes a space where absence is made present, and where spectators are invited to engage in a form of affective co-witnessing. The concepts of resonance and theatricality are deployed to analyse how visitors are moved—not necessarily through shared experience, but through a desire to connect, to “feel-with” the stories of strangers.

Psychological burdens during genocide: A psychocartographic qualitative study of civilian experiences in Gaza, December 2024-February 2025.

ABSTRACT In this essay, we critique the exceptionalist notion of European rhetoric and politics as egalitarian and unpolarized, particularly when it serves as an argument against US-based scholarship for being too activist and partisan. Using contributions from prominent rhetoricians in Scandinavia about the difference between doing rhetorical scholarship in this region and in the United States (Bjørkdahl; Kjeldsen) as examples, we show how rhetorical regionalism risks attributing problems bound up in a geopolitical context, such as racism and colonialism, to a different region, thus blinding the “European” scholar to important struggles. We suggest combining regional rhetorics (Rice) with the field of critical geography can serve as a critical bulwark against Nordic and/or European exceptionalism in rhetorical thinking. A critical rhetorical geography approach enables scholars to shift perspectives and see similarities in oppressive rhetoric as it guards and bolsters territorial borders.

ABSTRACT Higher education in geography has been emphasizing active learning approaches that connect academic knowledge with professional practice. This paper presents a case study of an attempt to integrate Problem-Based Learning and Project-Based Learning within a master’s course in Human Geography focused on Healthy Urban Planning. The learning design, centred on urban green spaces as real-world planning challenges, engaged students in the analysis of environmental urban infrastructure with a focus on health promotion. The course involved graduate geography students working collaboratively through problem definition, data collection, analysis, and solution development, mirroring professional workflows. Students’ perceptions of the learning experience were explored through two anonymous open-ended surveys administered after course completion. Thematic analysis revealed high problem engagement, enhanced understanding through applied learning, and the development of autonomy, collaboration, and other transferable professional skills. Instructor guidance and peer interaction were identified as key supports, while challenges related to workload and uneven participation were also reported. The findings suggest that integrating Problem-Based and Project-Based Learning offers a valuable pedagogical framework for geography and planning education, particularly for place-based topics. The paper contributes to ongoing discussions on innovative teaching practices in higher education by illustrating how active learning supports disciplinary understanding and professional skill development.

This article introduces the concept of ‘agrarian masculinities in displacement’ to critically examine how displaced Greek Cypriot men reconfigured patriarchal rural identities following the 1974 mass displacement, amid wider processes of urbanisation and socio-economic transformation. Drawing on ethnographic research and oral history interviews with mostly middle-class men, it explores how masculinities formed within a pre-1974 rural habitus—where land ownership, gendered agricultural labour, and patriarchal lineage structured everyday life—were reinvented through practices that enabled a semblance of post-displacement reconstruction while simultaneously reinforcing conservative gender norms. Unlike existing scholarship on rural or displaced masculinities, this framework interrogates how such continuity not only provides a form of masculine symbolic ‘repair’ in the aftermath of displacement but also reproduces inequalities by marginalising women’s agricultural contributions, sidelining alternative masculinities, and resisting broader social change towards gender equality. The analysis unfolds across three interrelated dimensions: men’s determination to acquire farmland despite economic barriers, often enabled by service-sector incomes; the strengthening of kinship ties through intergenerational agrarian labour, which privileges patriarchal male lineage; and the gendered organisation of farming practices that continue to marginalise women. While grounded in Cyprus’s history, ‘agrarian masculinities in displacement’ offers transferable insights into how displacement might intersect with post-colonial and post-displacement socio-economic transformations to sustain patriarchal structures. In doing so, the study advances critical geographies of displacement by questioning the political implications of symbolic ‘resilience’, highlighting how it may function not only as a resource for recovery but also as a barrier to gender equality and transformation.

ABSTRACT Blended learning has reshaped geography education, yet how students experience blended Human Geography courses remains insufficiently understood. This study investigates how teaching resources, teaching methods, and instructional interaction shape students’ course experiences in a blended Human Geography class at a major Chinese university – part of one of the world’s largest geography education systems yet rarely examined in depth. Drawing on structural equation modeling and in-depth interviews, the study finds that instructional interaction is the strongest determinant of course experience, exerting both direct and indirect effects through engagement and perceived learning outcomes. Teaching resources and methods contribute primarily through mediated pathways, indicating that meaningful experiences emerge when online and offline components are coherently integrated. Qualitative findings further reveal that dialogic learning, feedback, and collaborative inquiry help students bridge abstract theory with applied spatial practice. Together, these results demonstrate that blended Human Geography teaching in China operates as a systemic and relational pedagogy. The discussion highlights interaction-centered design as key to transforming geography learning into a process of knowledge co-creation. The study offers a contextually grounded yet globally relevant framework for understanding blended geography education and highlights how interaction-driven design can bridge conceptual knowledge with spatial practice in the digital age.

ABSTRACT Infrastructure has become a key driving force in development globally with an assumed efficient and fluid route from initiation to delivery. However, many infrastructure projects will fail; an understudied real-world outcome with enormous implications for our societies and natural environment. This Special Issue (SI) investigates the political economy of infrastructure failure not as an inferior counterpart to ‘success’ but as a daily lived experience. The present article provides a framework for investigating infrastructure failure, concentrating on its spatiality and temporality. Subsequently, across a range of scholarly fields and geographical spaces, the remaining seven articles in the SI analyse infrastructure failure through nuanced studies to help us better understand what infrastructure failure means. What are the temporal and spatial aspects of these failures? What can we learn from them as political economists? How can we measure infrastructure failure? Whom does infrastructure failure benefit? We anticipate this SI will offer a benchmark for studying infrastructure failure within the fields of anthropology, IPE, human geography, sociology, and infrastructure/urban studies.

This research examines expert advice on interventions for populations facing social vulnerability. Based on semi-structured interviews with professionals in psychosocial support, health, education, human geography and public policy, the study employs reflexive thematic analysis to detect common themes in how vulnerability is perceived and managed in practice. The results identify three interconnected clusters: first, viewing vulnerability as a product of structural factors, highlighting issues like institutional fragmentation, bureaucratic obstacles, and policy inconsistencies rather than individual shortcomings; second, emphasising relational and recognition processes, such as trust, active listening, and respect for personal journeys as key to meaningful engagement; and third, focusing on mediation and empowerment tactics, including institutional mediation, critical education, and digital literacy, to improve access and agency without shifting responsibility to individuals. Overall, the findings suggest that effective intervention demands integrated strategies that address structural conditions, relational factors, and empowerment methods. By consolidating expert insights, the study offers empirically based guidance for practice and service organisation, emphasising the need for structurally aware, relationally grounded, and context-sensitive responses to current vulnerabilities.

Celebrity former residences, as cultural carriers shaped by historical evolution, embody profound cultural significance and hold immeasurable historical, social, political, and economic value. Grounded in the theories of human settlement science, settlement geography, and landscape ecology, this study takes the preserved celebrity former residences in Huanggang City as its research objects. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and adopting a geographical perspective, eight geographical evaluation factors were selected in ArcGIS to represent topography, hydrology, ecology, and geomorphological stability as assessment indicators. By analyzing the relationship between these geographical factors and the spatial distribution of the residences, a suitability evaluation system for the landscape environment of celebrity former residences in Huanggang was established. The results indicate that, among the 136 officially protected celebrity residences in the city, 66 are located in highly suitable areas, accounting for 48.53%; 49 are located in suitable areas, accounting for 36.03%; 18 are located in less suitable areas, accounting for 13.24%; and 3 are located in unsuitable areas, accounting for 2.20%. In addition, a case study of the former residence of Li Siguang in Tuanfeng County demonstrates that its siting highly corresponds to the established evaluation framework. These findings suggest that geographical environmental factors are not only closely linked to the site selection of celebrity residences in Huanggang but also provide valuable references and guidance for future architectural siting and landscape environmental planning.

ABSTRACT This paper questions how competent physical and human geographers are at handling religion when they encounter it in passing. It specifically asks whether religious illiteracy is a problem in geographical education in the UK. It suggests that, despite significant advances in geographical scholarship on religion this century, this progress is yet to translate routinely into textbooks. These tend to repeat outdated claims about a supposed conflict between science and religion, and hinder the creation of inclusive and diverse classrooms by implying that students who belong to faith communities cannot be serious geographers. Using the example of water management in the Columbia River catchment/watershed and Indigenous communities and religious beliefs, the paper goes on to show why this matters in geographical education.

ABSTRACT In recent years, European Cohesion Policy has gained renewed significance amid rising inequalities in the European Union. This paper examines territorial cohesion by analyzing the Territorial Agenda 2030, the current strategic policy document for territorial development, through the lens of Amartya Sen's capabilities approach. It examines the policy framework of ‘A Just Europe’ and reveals theoretical connections with spatial justice, as well as policy-related overlaps with the social investment approach. The Agenda, by adopting a ‘new’ meaning of territorial cohesion, as ensuring ‘a sustainable future for all places and people in Europe’, introduces a human geography perspective that promotes an individual-based idea of cohesion linked to spatial justice and the social investment paradigm. However, social investment policies to date have revealed key limitations, primarily due to their lack of place sensitivity and their narrow focus on employability and human capital. The research question guiding this paper is how the Territorial Agenda 2030, the concept of spatial justice, and social investment policies can be meaningfully linked through Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach. This could enable a future social investment policy to emerge, one that is urgently needed in the current spatially challenging environment of ‘left-behind places’ and expanding ‘geographies of discontent’.

• Provides a case study of China’s E-CNY, a central bank digital currency project led by the People’s Bank of China. • Analyses the development of the E-CNY as an instance of state capitalism in China. • Advances a framework for understanding state capitalism in the context of monetary production and payments. • Argues that the E-CNY features the hierarchical re-layering of the public–private institutions and infrastructures in China. • Shows how the E-CNY favours state-owned banks and puts private BigTech payment platforms in the service of the state. In human geography and political economy research, the recent proliferation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) is explained as the re-establishment of state power and authority in response to the digitalization of money and payments by private firms. Focusing on the most advanced CBDC project to date – China’s E-CNY – this paper builds on the limited work to date that has identified the importance of central banks to new state capitalism and does this by foregrounding payments and the rise of CBDCs. This paper combining and developing two literatures: recent work on state capitalism that foregrounds the economic roles of state institutions, especially in the contemporary period of geo-economic and technological competition; and longer-standing research that stresses the public–private hybridity of monetary production and payment systems. It is argued that while CBDCs are an instance of the new state capitalism to some extent, the E-CNY case demonstrates how distributed and relational state actions feature multiple institutions of different kinds. Given extant monetary production and digital payment infrastructures in China, the E-CNY project entails a distinctive institutional hybridity. To reposition itself in the ‘re-layered’ payment infrastructures of the E-CNY, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has reasserted the importance of state-owned banks (SoBs) within these infrastructures and redefined the roles of private banks and the leading BigTech firms which dominate the intermediation of digital payments.

Amidst a growing awareness of the need for liveable and sustainable cities, urban renewal strategies are increasingly concerned with community well-being. Place attachment is a key element in understanding the impact of neighbourhood regeneration, as the resulting economic and social changes may positively or negatively affect the emotional ties that bind people and places together. Though widely studied in psychology and human geography, place attachment's potential in urban planning remains underexplored, especially in urban redevelopment or preservation. To overcome this gap, this study critically reviewed 124 relevant studies using thematic analysis and bibliometric visualisations to construct a framework of influence mechanisms between urban regeneration and place attachment. The bibliometric and thematic analyses reveal five main clusters: (A) place attachment and community dynamics, (B) creative urban design and public space, (C) gentrification and social change, (D) place identity and sustainable development, and (E) community health and quality of life, each representing critical dimensions of place attachment's manifestation in urban renewal. These clusters reveal the social and physical factors shaping place attachment, showing how they reinforce or diminish it and influence the success of renewal projects. Based on this, we introduce a place attachment assessment framework to guide future urban regeneration projects and ensure that urban regeneration strategies are inclusive and socially sustainable. The study highlights the critical need to address place attachment among urban regeneration, providing theoretical and practical guidance for improved understanding and methodological support towards community-oriented urban planning. • Systematically assesses how urban renewal reshapes place attachment across multiple dimensions. • Introduces an integrated assessment framework linking urban renewal processes with place attachment dynamics. • Derives planning guidance to strengthen social structure and improve resident satisfaction in renewal areas.

ABSTRACT This article examines the emergence of “green fintech,” a diverse subset of new financial technologies with expressly environmental aims. We suggest that an analysis of “green fintech” offers us a useful lens on the contradictions of green finance more generally. The paper looks at a range of examples, spanning processes of AI‐enabled investment screening, tokenization, and gamification, and draws recent debates about the Marxian category of “fictitious capital” into conversation with critical geography debates about processes of valuation in green finance. Green fintech applications reveal especially clearly how green finance relies on specific forms of fictitious capitalization. In particular, we argue that green fintech makes visible how green finance as a form of fictitious capital is reliant not just on articulating abstract, quantified valuations of nature, but also valorizing them through exchange.

ABSTRACT This paper applies a critical geography lens to illuminate the socio-spatial forces that (re)produce staffing challenges in Queensland’s hardest-to-staff schools. Drawing on data from an Australian Research Council (ARC) study of hardest-to-staff schools we ask: How are teacher shortages socially and spatially (re)produced in two different regions of Queensland? To answer this question, we compare a metropolitan coastal region and a very remote region, representing contrasting ends of the State’s geography. Two teachers’ union officers responsible for these regions were interviewed to explore how shortages are experienced and what strategies are used to attract and retain teachers. Findings highlight five key forces shaping teacher attraction and retention: location and geography, human resource practices, housing access, media representations, and individual circumstances. Together, these forces demonstrate that teacher shortages are not simply a workforce problem of supply and demand, but this maldistribution can be understood as a socio-spatial justice issue with implications for how policymakers and employers address inequitable access to teachers.

ABSTRACT Podcasts become more and more popular in university teaching and learning. However, there is a lack of systematic understanding of how podcasts used as assessment format impact students’ competence gains compared to conventional written assignments. This study explores the potentials and limitations of using podcasts as an assessment format for education students. A human geography study project for teacher students at a German university serves as a comparative case study. We studied the students’ competence gains conducting online surveys and focus group interviews. Findings indicate that podcasts can enhance presentation and communication skills, aligning with the needs of future teachers. Students find podcasts more enjoyable and motivating than traditional written assignments, fostering greater engagement and personal competence. However, the study identifies several limitations: auditory podcasts do not replace academic writing skills, may involve technical challenges, and are less suitable for content requiring visual elements. The impact on subject-specific and methodological competencies remains unclear. The novelty of this format can go along with uncertain expectations and evaluation criteria. The research suggests that podcasts are better suited for advanced students with prior experience in academic writing. Further studies are needed to better integrate podcasts into educational assessments, ensuring alignment with learning objectives.

The mobilization of political discontent in the development of new political formations, and their electoral successes, are frequently linked to the use of digital infrastructures, dominating social media platforms, and utilizing elaborate online strategies. The focus on digital media offers a key point of entry for scholarly engagement with the transformation of political systems throughout the Global North and the rise of political actors operating largely without – or against – established party structures. However, we observe a danger in fetishizing digital media, which can reproduce blind spots such as losing sight of the socio-spatial effects of digitalization on politics as mediated through the organization and strategic practices of political parties. Recapitulating the existing human geography literature on the establishment of political parties and their treatment of ‘the digital’, we identify a need for an increased engagement with the geography of the political party and the role of digital platforms. We develop the argument that there are linkages between ruptures of party systems and platformization since the 2008 financial crisis which require integrated conceptualization. Therefore, we use three empirical examples from German elections that took place in 2024 and 2025 to discuss the interplay between platformization and the changing constellations of political parties. Our empirical examples illustrate not only the platformization of politics and the politics of platformization but also how platform research is able to enrich work on political parties from a political geographic perspective.

ABSTRACT This commentary critically examines David Seamon’s processual understanding of place in light of contemporary urban transformations in China. While Seamon’s framework highlights the dynamic formation of place through interaction, identity, and design, its explanatory scope is challenged by three conditions. First, large-scale redevelopment and state-led planning demonstrate the decisive role of structural forces in shaping urban space. Second, heritage-led and themed developments reveal how place identity is often strategically constructed through design and cultural representation. Third, patterns of mobility and housing instability disrupt the everyday rhythms through which place attachment typically develops. These dynamics suggest that place processes are increasingly difficult to sustain in rapidly transforming environments. However, this does not diminish the value of Seamon’s approach. Instead, it underscores its critical importance in resisting the reduction of place to commodified and consumer-oriented space. A renewed humanistic geography must therefore integrate structural analysis while preserving its commitment to lived, processual experience.