In this article, we present the research method we developed in two books devoted to the villa architecture of Poznań. The houses in which we are interested, built in the interwar period, are viewed in the context of their social functioning and the material culture associated with them. We reflect on the public-private dichotomy, while at the same time attempting to break the ‘silence of the house’ and reveal what is hidden inside it. For this purpose, we focus not only on the surviving buildings and construction documentation, but also on documents relating to the social dimension of the house: land registry data, registration books, address books, written memoirs, diaries, correspondence, family photographs, and eyewitness accounts. Our goal is to answer questions both about the past and about changes in architecture over the decades. We refer to various perspectives and methodological concepts. We start from a “spatial turn”, conceiving the house as a frame in which history takes place. Following Karl Schloegel’s research, we focus on the interior, which allows us to learn about the history of specific people and social groups on the one hand, and the objects that accompany them on the other. In the first of these areas, the spatial turn is combined in our research with oral history. Witness accounts that we incorporate cover a whole range of statements, spanning the territory straddling storytelling and life writing. In the second area, we trace the biography of various, broadly understood objects: architecture, everyday items and photographs, presenting them as active actors in history, directly linked to people’s lives. We present the method we use in one of the chapters of our book.

ABSTRACT Research into university campuses and students’ use of space has rarely used place-based or longitudinal methods. To address this, student experiences were gathered via a novel combination of walking interviews, participant photography and mapping, from 2019 to 2022. The study adopted an online methodology during 2020/21 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This approach resulted in new spatial findings on how individuals and social groups use campus, the influence of the institutional structure and changes over time. This article reflects on the practice of participatory walking interview methods. Practicalities on how to carry out walking interviews, handle the participant-researcher dynamic and insider status, and respond to changes throughout a longitudinal study are shared. This article contributes to a spatial turn within educational and psychological research and shows the potential of place-based methods to explore people, social structures and place, in a moment and over time.

ABSTRACT The pre-imperial Chinese Tai 臺 [terrace], through its vertical and horizontal forms, symbolizes cosmic order and serves as a physical link between heaven and humanity. Traditionally, the pre-imperial Tai has been understood primarily through a functionalist lens, lacking a theoretical exploration of its symbolic meaning and mobility. This study examines Tai through three dimensions: The sacred, which grounds its sacred narratives; the order, which explains its transition from mythic consciousness to spatial practice; and the power, which illuminates its religio-political interface through historical events. These dimensions overlap and interact, offering a fresh perspective on the terrace. By situating Tai within mythological, religious, and political contexts, we have explored the interplay between religious beliefs and spatial practices in early China. This paper contributes to the spatial turn in the humanities, enhancing the understanding of traditional Chinese architectural culture.

Abstract This article discusses two imperial Roman literary descriptions of architectural space (Luc. 10.111–35 and Stat. Silv. 4.2) as responses to the real architectural space of two imperial palatial complexes in Rome, Nero’s Golden House and Domitian’s Palatine palace. Building on definitions of baroque spatiality in architecture and on concepts of literary space, it explores the interplay between the textual worlds created by these writers and the real spaces fashioned by Roman imperial architects. It considers the convergences and divergences between the architects’ ‘Baroque’ spatial strategies and the authors’ literary conceits that intimate an illusory materiality, and between the narrated memories or virtual reconstitutions of desolate imperial vastness and the physical experiences of populated space. Finally, it reflects on both differing and common perspectives towards real and literary space constructed in the ‘Baroque’ manner by considering neo-Baroque sensibilities today in both literature and the visual arts and how these might not only problematise but also allow a convergence between the spatial turn of archaeological studies and the exploration of similar spatialities in literary culture.

Abstract The “spatial turn” in Holocaust studies has led to renewed interest in mapping the Holocaust as both event and experience. This article explores experiments with more multifaceted—and “integrated” (per Saul Friedländer)—mapping of Holocaust space and place to include the emotional dimensions of spatial experience. Drawing on Agnew and Duncan's influential introduction of place as a triad that encompasses location, locale, and sense of place, we seek to map the Holocaust as a complex spatial experience. Agnew and Duncan's definition incorporates the idea of abstract space as it is understood in GIScience (location); the social, cultural, political, economic, and material dimensions of place (locale); and the behavioral and emotional component of place (sense of place). Drawing on a close reading of two Holocaust survivors’ narratives, we map their shifting experiences (over both and time and space) at different spatial scales with a particular focus on exploring the relationships between people, place, events, and emotions. The two survivors—Gilberto Salmoni and Gabor Somjen—represent trajectories at two different scales (the continental and city scale, respectively) and two different national contexts (Italy and Hungary) that went through several different locales, not only locations. The article offers a representational model that allows for comparative research of the Holocaust experience at the resolution of the individual that is scalable in two ways: It can include any number of testimonies, and it can graphically render the events and places of the Holocaust at multiple scales and for different spatiotemporal experiences. While critically assessing the limits of the model—specifically vis-à-vis representing emotions and sense of place—the article suggests the value of comparative cartographic analysis in understanding the shifting emotional landscapes of the Holocaust and the place-based nature of victim experience.

This paper investigates the spatial turn in postcolonial literary theory, foregrounding the entanglement of place, narrative, and power in literary representations of geography. The title ‘mare incognitum’—the ‘unknown sea’ marked on colonial maps—serves as a metaphor for the epistemic violence of imperial cartography, and for the counter-cartographic strategies deployed by postcolonial writers. This study interrogates how literary texts unsettle colonial spatial logics and reimagine geography as a discursive and affective terrain. The concept of landscape constitutes the central focal point to the inquiry. It is a hybrid neologism that fuses ‘landscape’ with ‘space’ to emphasize the relationship between spatial representation and narrative form. Drawing on postcolonial theory and geography, this study examines how spatial metaphors—particularly the oceanic, the archipelagic, and the periphery—disrupt hegemonic cartographies and open sites for subaltern expression and transnational solidarity. In this article, the term ‘landscape’ will be approached as a hybrid concept that will simultaneously mean landscape and space. The analysis presents a selection of postcolonial literature from the Indian subcontinent and South Asia including Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, as well as the narratives of E. M. Forster and Daniel Defoe. This study investigates how spatial tropes—borders, thresholds, ruins, and archipelagos—mediate histories of displacement and resistance. The texts in question do not merely represent space; they perform spatial critique, reconfiguring geography as a palimpsest of violence, memory, and survival. Ultimately, the present study theorizes literary space as a site of epistemological intervention, where dominant narratives of territory, belonging, and modernity are deconstructed and rewritten. By treating geography as a semiotic system subject to contestation, this study also contributes to ongoing debates in literary theory about the politics of space, the aesthetics of place-making, and the decolonization of knowledge.

This paper examines the role of universities in post-colonial nation-building, using India as a case. Moving beyond the conventional view of universities in postcolonial contexts as mere extensions of the developmental state, the paper argues for a decentralized understanding of their role in the process of nation-building. Drawing on the spatial turn in sociology, particularly Jeff Malpas’s conceptualization of place as a bounded yet dynamic opening shaped by intersecting forces, the paper conceptualizes universities as active, contested sites where meanings of nationhood, modernity, and identity are continuously constructed and negotiated. Through an analysis of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), established in 1962, the paper explores how this institution became a pivotal site for constructing a particular postcolonial vision of Indian modernity during the 1960s. Delving into the complex negotiations and the influence of diverse actors and stakeholders, the study traces how a specific sociotechnical imaginary of management science—blending American models with Indian modernization aspirations—was embedded in IIMA’s curriculum, selection processes, and campus design. By foregrounding universities as co-producers of national imaginaries rather than passive instruments of state policy, this paper underscores the importance of recognizing the agency of universities in nation-building processes.

ABSTRACT Despite the acceleration of focus on the ‘spatial turn’ for inclusive and special education in recent decades, it is recognised that spatial understandings have remained under-theorised in this domain. Central terms that rest on spatial frames of understanding are inclusion, exclusion, segregation, identity as norm-versus-other and co-location of services in schools. This article aims to develop and apply a theoretical framework that proposes concentric spaces as spaces of mediation, as spatial processes of in-betweenness that bring a greater connectivity than diametric oppositional, hierarchical spaces of exclusion, in order to offer a candidate spatial system for inclusion. In doing so, a concentric spatial turn for special and inclusive education seeks to offer a path out of sterile alternatives between spaces in diametric opposition and mirror image us/them exclusion, on the one hand, and undifferentiated spaces of monistic fusion, on the other hand. This conceptual, desk-based review presents a vision of connective, concentric relational spaces in inclusive and special education using Ireland as an illustrative example. Developing a spatial interpretative methodology, sources for application of this spatial analysis were selected based on their direct relevance to major shifts in Irish special education policy and their representation of critical perspectives.

Anthropology of movement is one of the modern optics in humanitarian movements, which arose in the context of modern “turns” in philosophy, such as the “material turn”, “spatial turn”, “mobility turn”, which drew attention to the significance of material structures in social being. The study examines the leading approaches in this direction, developed by J. Urry, T. Ingold, Russian anthropologist and ethnographer A.V. Golovnev. The methodological framework of the systems of interconnected mobilities (J. Urry), ecological anthropology of landscape paths (T. Ingold), the scheme “motive-decision-action” (A.V. Golovnev) can be successfully applied in the field of academic religious studies, applying to the analysis of various cases, both in the field of sociology of religion, the study of the autopoiesis of religious communication reflected in texts, as well as in the field of private religion.

В статье рассматриваются новые подходы к исследованию проблем истории науки в целом и истории географии, в частности, а также их практическое преломление в изучении средневековой исламской геокартографии. Новое понимание пространства, стимулированное «пространственным поворотом» в социально-гуманитарном знании в 70–80-е гг. XX в., привело к проблематизации универсальной природы научного знания как такового, что, в свою очередь, способствовало формированию нового направления в историко-географической науке – географии знания, изучающей характерное для всей истории человечества пространственное неравенство в распространении знания и региональные особенности его производства, потребления, циркуляции и передачи. Специфику различных «пространств знания» ярко демонстрирует история создания крупнейшего географического произведения арабского средневековья – трактата ал-Идриси «Отрада страстно желающего пересечь мир» (1154). Арабоязычное сочинение ал-Идриси было создано не на территории исламского мира, а в Европе, при дворе христианского государя, норманнского короля Сицилии Рожера II (1130–1154), и по его заказу. Место, где ал-Идриси работал над составлением своего сочинения, оказало решающее влияние и на масштаб проделанной географом работы, и на содержание его труда. Если общие принципы землеописания, примененные ал-Идриси, демонстрируют несомненную принадлежность его трактата к исламской географической традиции, то содержательно его сочинение многим обязано его многолетнему пребыванию в Палермо при дворе Рожера II, где ученый имел беспрецедентные для исламского географа возможности сбора информации о европейских странах и народах. The article examines new approaches to the study of the problems of the history of science in general and the history of geography in particular, as well as their practical application in the study of medieval Islamic geocartography. The new understanding of space, stimulated by the “Spatial turn” in social and humanitarian knowledge in the 1970s and 1980s, led to the problematization of the universal nature of scientific knowledge as such, which, in turn, contributed to the formation of a new direction in historical and geographical science — the geography of knowledge, which studies the spatial inequality in the dissemination of knowledge and the regional features of its production, consumption, circulation and transmission. The specificity of various “spaces of knowledge” is clearly demonstrated by the history of the creation of the greatest geographical work of the Arab Middle Ages — al-Idrisi’s treatise “The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands” (1154). Al-Idrisi’s Arabic-language work was not created in the Islamic world, but in Europe, at the court of the Christian ruler, the Norman King of Sicily Roger II (1130–1154), and by his order. The place where al-Idrisi worked on compiling his work had a decisive influence on both the scale of the work done by the geographer and the content of his work. If the general principles of geography applied by al-Idrisi demonstrate the undoubted belonging of his treatise to the Islamic geographical tradition, then in terms of content his work owes much to his many years of stay in Palermo at the court of Roger II, where the scientist had unprecedented opportunities for an Islamic geographer to collect information about European countries and peoples.

This article explores Virginia Woolf’s 1927 essay “Street Haunting: A London Adventure” and its depiction of female flânerie in the city. It begins by observing the importance of place in literary studies and the shift towards a “spatial turn” in contemporary scholarship. The text then examines the role of the city in modernist literature, particularly in shaping its settings, narratives, and themes. It also overviews the main ideas of some of the pioneers of that “spatial turn” such as Henri Lefebvre and Yi-Fu Tuan. It is suggested that Woolf’s essay offers a unique perspective on flânerie as she navigates the city streets with a sense of introspection and emotional resonance. Woolf’s observations of urban landscape and encounters with strangers allow her to create a rich texture of potential narratives reflecting the complexities of everyday urban life. The present study also discusses Michel de Certeau’s theory of walking as a tactical-rhetorical act of resistance and meaning-making, and it highlights the relevance of de Certeau’s ideas to Woolf’s essay. The article proposes that, unlike the figure of the male flâneur, Woolf’s flânerie is not only about detached observation of the crowds and her surroundings, but also about authorship as she uses her affects and experiences in the city to inform her writing. Overall, Woolf’s portrayal of the flâneuse challenges traditional notions of public space and emphasizes the ways in which women’s experiences redefine the urban environment and its representations.

ABSTRACT Connecting the concepts of space, time, and pace, in this article I theorise how distinct narratives of (post-)conflict spaces impact people’s differing experiences of the pace of peace processes and post-war transitions. Drawing on 14 walking interviews in post-war Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), I identify three experiences of paces of the peace process connected to spaces across town: slow pace of liminality, acceleration of life, and fast-paced neoliberal development. By zooming into narratives about places in the city, I demonstrate that space influences people’s heterogeneous perceptions of slowness and fastness of the peace process. These findings improve our understanding of temporalities in transitional societies by demonstrating how spatial settings shape people’s temporalities of post-war transitions. Moreover, it helps advance the spatial turn in peace and conflict studies by employing spatial analysis to provide insights into the varied paces at which people experience peacebuilding processes and post-war reconstruction.

Abstract It is well understood that archaeologists, by definition, always strive to assess time as precisely as possible. However, the lack of efficient temporal data interoperability limits our understanding of cross‐cultural historical evolution. This Special Issue of Archaeometry on chronological modelling features nine contributions which, while not covering all existing methods, provide a useful snapshot of current research on formalisms, methods, and standards. We hope it will help spark a ‘temporal turn’ in archaeology, much like GIS initiated a ‘spatial turn’ in the field more than 30 years ago.

The three-part discussion undertaken here begins with a summary of the ways space and place figure in contemporary approaches to religion particularly as shaped by the so-called ‘spatial turn’. A key point concerns the tendency for such approaches to subsume the notion of place under that of space, resulting in a mode of purely spatialized analysis in which place is effectively replaced by mere spatial location. The discussion then explores the limitations of such spatialized analysis, setting out the elements of a contrasting approach, the topological, that takes place as central, and showing why such an approach remains indispensable. The final part examines the role of place in religious experience and how this plays out in relation to presence, encounter, and transcendence.

ABSTRACT Social works scholarship pays increasing attention to space and place. This ‘spatial turn’ stresses that place is more than a background in which social work unfolds and intends to study the co-constitution of people, places, and institutions. This article presents Lefebvre’s social production of space to study social work from a geographical perspective. For Lefebvre, space is produced in the interactions between spatial practices and layouts (perceived space), representations and classifications of space (conceived space), and direct experiences of space (lived space). We apply this framework to the Dutch Canon of Social Work to analyse how space and social work co-constituted. This analysis identifies three periods with distinctive relations between perceived, conceived, and lived spaces; integration (1848–1925), emancipation (1925–1983), and participation (1983–2013). We argue that Lefebvre’s framework offers a theory to take space and place out of their passive context; can guide strategic interventions for social work to reshape places; and opens avenues to study social work, public service, and space as dynamic, co-constituting elements. This article emphasises the political nature of space and place, showcases the different roles social work(ers) played over time, and positions social work as an active constituent in the production of space.

The article addresses a key challenge faced by Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs: how to reconcile the growing multilingual reality of society with the limited adoption of multilingualism in educational practice. It begins by providing an overview of ITE and some of its challenges. It then examines the importance of Critical Multilingual Language Awareness (CMLA), which emphasizes multilingualism as essential for equity and inclusion in linguistically diverse contexts. To extend the discussion of CMLA, the idea of Emotional Geography of Languages (EGL) is introduced as a conceptual framework grounded in the affective turn in Applied Linguistics and TESOL, the spatial turn in education, and Indigenous views of land-people relationality. EGL explores how emotions and identities, tied to places and languages, shape human relationships while challenging policies that marginalize mother tongues and heritage languages. The article concludes by demonstrating how EGL can inform teacher candidates’ CMLA, preparing them to contribute to pedagogical and social transformation in linguistically diverse settings.

Abstract This paper explores the critical role of spatiality and scale in industrial ecology (IE) research to promote circularity within the built environment. Traditional IE frameworks are predominantly a‐spatial and a‐political, overlooking the complex socio‐ecological–technological dynamics of urban–regional environments. This gap limits the development of holistic assessments and effective strategies for circularity, often externalizing political, economic, and societal implications. In this paper, we emphasize the need to integrate diverse spatial entities, such as social actors, natural resources, and infrastructure, into IE frameworks. Drawing on recent developments within the IE community (including insights from the ISIE 2023 conference) we demonstrate how multiple spatialities and politics are already integral to several areas of IE research and practice, such as circularity accounting and industrial symbiosis. We highlight how spatial concepts—such as urbanization patterns, geographic features, territory, place, and actor‐networks—reveal context‐specific drivers and barriers to circular transformation. We then leverage the concept of scales established across spatial sciences to introduce a typology of scales relevant to IE, and identify which scale types have yet to be operationalized in IE research. Given the potential analytical yield of each scale type, we advocate for a reflective multi‐scalar approach to incorporate multiple spatialities into IE research. Ultimately, we call for a spatial turn in re‐conceptualizing IE tools to support the transformation of the built environment toward circularity.

This article explores the potential of employing a spatial approach in the study of the Ural city during the twentieth century. The established tradition of studying the Soviet industrial space with predominant reliance on the theory of modernisation corresponds to the logic of its perception in the categories of the modern era. At the same time, the conceptual framework of modernisation theory proves challenging to implement when attempting to characterise sociocultural processes within a Soviet city. The development of an “anthropocultural paradigm” for studying the Soviet city, a need that was first articulated approximately three decades ago, remains a subject of ongoing discourse. The article analyses the legacy of Soviet and Russian urbanism in the academic study of the Soviet city. The author examines the place of the idea of space in the study of the history of human society. The analysis draws upon the works of theorists of “social space,” the idea of “production of space” by A. Lefebvre, and adherents of the “spatial turn” who have studied Soviet material. The article emphasises the significance of the contributions of A. Lefebvre and E. Soja, who represent the “Chicago School” of urbanism, for the study of the urban spatial environment. The author of the article employs D. Läpple’s scheme, created under the influence of Lefebvre, to characterise the social space of the Ural city in the Soviet period. The scheme identifies the following constituent elements: physical space, social practice in the production, use, and appropriation of the material substrate, rules and norms as a connecting link between the former and the latter, and symbolic encoding and spatial perception. Given Soviet realities, it is necessary to consider the parallel existence and constant interaction of official and unofficial urban space. Almost all elements of official space can be easily reconstructed with the help of conventional sources used to study the Soviet industrial past. For the examination of unofficial space, among others, sources of personal origin are quite applicable, although locating them requires rigorous additional efforts. The most salient issue today is the subject of symbolic ideas about space in the context of “Ural identity” in the logic of the “spatial turn.” The author concludes that interdisciplinarity must be expanded in the study of the Soviet urban spatial environment. The key to successful application of the spatial paradigm to the study of the Soviet city is extensive experience in its implementation for the analysis of urban problems in various countries and regions worldwide.

ABSTRACTThe scholarly study of religion has experienced substantial change over the past quarter‐century. Central among these was recognizing religions as existing within and shaped by spatial relations—a.k.a. religious studies’ “spatial turn.” Engaging geographic theory offered several benefits, particularly concerning interreligious conflicts, religions and secularisms, and religions’ intersections with other, seemingly divorced facets of lives and livelihoods. Yet religion's spatial turn remains incomplete. One striking omission is that of scale. A nuanced concept central to understanding spatialities and their relations, geographers have recently centered on scale and multiscalar relations when theorizing spatialities. Greater engagement with scale and especially multiscalarity would similarly benefit the scholarly study of religion.

The article examines the intellectual legacy of a major Soviet and Russian economic geographer and Americanist, Alexander Pavlovich Gorkin (1936–2022) and his regular coauthors (primarily, his closest associate, L.V. Smirnyagin) in the context of modern theories of economic geography and regional economics. A systematic comparison of the main theoretical provisions of Gorkin’s key publications in different years with Russian and international studies of similar time and their critical comparison with modern (as of the early 2020s) approaches to the relevant problems was carried out. Four key components of Gorkin’s intellectual heritage are identified. It is shown that Gorkin’s theoretical and empirical studies (including the Gorkin–Smirnyagin concept of factors and conditions for the location of production) reflect the realities of both the industrial and postindustrial eras. The systemic–structural approach to studying the territorial organization of industry in the Gorkin–Smirnyagin–Gokhman interpretation is considered in the context of discussions about the territorial structure of the economy in the 1970s–1980s and modern theoretical trends—the concept of assemblage according to DeLanda, the “spatial turn” in the social sciences, etc. Gorkin’s vision of the relationship between microgeographical (the problem of locating enterprises) and macrogeographical (transformation of the country’s industry) aspects of territorial organization is revealed. It is shown that in Gorkin’s ideas about the territorial organization of industry, the mesogeographical level is relatively weakly expressed—research at the level of specific regions and groups of interrelated firms. The limitations of his theoretical approaches are revealed, related to the specifics of his key subject of empirical research and the subject of theoretical reflection: US industry at a certain stage of development. It is shown that in Gorkin and his coauthors' theoretical constructions, innovative processes, which play a key role in modern concepts of spatial organization of the economy and regional development, occupy a secondary place. The problem of updating the intellectual heritage of Russian geographical thought and the constructive application of classical economic and geographical concepts in modern conditions is posed.