Each year, the HGRG sponsors a variety of sessions at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers). On this page you can find details of previously-sponsored sessions and calls for future session proposals.

2024 Annual International Conference

Sponsored sessions

• Reimagining Early Thematic Mapping
• Travel writing and historical imagery for the conservation of bio-cultural heritage
• Navigating Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships with Cultural Heritage Organisations
• Charting a future for departmental map collections
• The implications of the historical geographies of Christian mission for geographies of contemporary faith-based social action
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography
• Historical Geographies of the Caribbean
• Curating disciplinary heritage – collecting, storing and sharing geography’s educational pasts
• Writing Lives, Writing the Earth
• Cultural geographies – Annual plenary lecture 2024

Detailed session abstracts can be found here.

2019 Annual International Conference 

Sponsored sessions

• A Non-Representational Historical Geography? Archives, Affects and Atmospheres (1)
• A Non-Representational Historical Geography? Archives, Affects and Atmospheres (2)
• Author meets critics: Elaine Stratford’s Home, Nature, and the Feminine Ideal
• Building with Water: Historical Geographies of Water Technologies
• Conveying Geographical Collaborations: Display, Curate and Create (1)
• Conveying Geographical Collaborations: Display, Curate and Create (2)
• Geographies of the Missing and Lost: Famous Cases and New Developments (1) Air and Sea
• Geographies of the Missing and Lost: Famous Cases and New Developments (2) Land
• Historical Geography, Religion, Faith, Spirituality and Morality (1)
• Historical Geography, Religion, Faith, Spirituality and Morality (2)
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (1)
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (2)
• Property, Protest and Public Space: Geographies and Histories

2018 Annual International Conference

Sponsored sessions 

• On being at sea: historically experiencing movement across the waves
• Historical-Cultural Geographies of Exhibition and Display (1)
• Historical-Cultural Geographies of Exhibition and Display (2)
• Historical-Cultural Geographies of Exhibition and Display (3)
• Landscape of tourism, travel or exploration? Perspectives from historical and tourism geography
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (1)
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (2)
• Landscapes of “Detectorists”
• Global Histories and Geographies

2017 Annual International Conference

Sponsored sessions

• Anti-Colonialism and the Spaces of Political Negotiation (1)
• Anti-Colonialism and the Spaces of Political Negotiation (2)
• Decolonising Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Empire, Colonial-Post Colonial Images, in the Modern Divide
• Networks of Knowledge: Communicating Geographical Knowledge in the Long Nineteenth Century (1)
• Networks of Knowledge: Communicating Geographical Knowledge in the Long Nineteenth Century (2)
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (1): Historic Environments
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (2): Performed Historical Spaces
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (3): Spaces of Knowledge Making
• Problematizing Colonial Modernity: Geographies of Universalism and Pluriversalism (1): Classes, Genders and Universals
• Problematizing Colonial Modernity: Geographies of Universalism and Pluriversalism (2): Which Decolonial Geographies?
• Ruling the Land: Empires of Survey and their (Post-)Colonial Geographies
• Valuing Heritage in the Postcolonial City (1): Event Spaces
• Valuing Heritage in the Postcolonial City (2): Diplomatic Spaces

2016 Annual International Conference

Sponsored sessions

• Deaf Spaces, Old and New: Community, Heritage Sector, and Academic Approaches to Deaf Heritage Spaces
• Geographies of Anti-colonialism (1): Theorising Anti-colonialisms
• Geographies of Anti-colonialism (2): Histories of Anti-colonialism
• Geographies of Anti-colonialism (3): Practising Anti-Colonialism
• Geographies of Outer Space
• Geography and Decolonization, c.1945-c.1980 (1)
• Geography and Decolonization, c.1945-c.1980 (2)
• Historical Geographies of Peace and Non-Violence
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (1)
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (2)
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography (3)
• Where Next? Historical Geographies of the Future (1)
• Where Next? Historical Geographies of the Future (2)

2015 Annual International Conference

Sponsored sessions

• Curating environmental transformation: remembering, memorialising and recording environmental change
• New and Emerging Research in Historical Geography
• Historical and cultural geographies of story and storytelling (1): Story, memory, performance and place
• Historical and cultural geographies of story and storytelling (2): Storytelling, communities and change
• Geographies of Amateur Creativities: Spaces, Practices and Experiences (1)
• Geographies of Amateur Creativities: Spaces, Practices and Experiences (2)
• Historical Geographies of Anarchism: situating struggles, studying environments (1) Cities, technics and environments: Anarchist visions of Anthropocene
• Historical Geographies of Anarchism: situating struggles, studying environments (2) Transnational Anarchism and Anarchist Geographers: situating theories, networks and struggles
• Historical Geographies of Anarchism: situating struggles, studying environments (3) Places, states and politics: situating critical traditions and present challenges

2014 Annual International Conference

Sponsored and co-sponsored sessions

• Author meets critics – Stuart Elden’s The Birth of Territory
• Commemorating and Remembering the First World War at its Centenary (1): Spaces of Remembrance
• Commemorating and Remembering the First World War at its Centenary (2): Re-Thinking the Front Line
• Commemorating and Remembering the First World War at its Centenary (3): Conflicts of identity
• Commemorating and Remembering the First World War at its Centenary (4): Imperial War Museum ‘behind the scenes’
• Geographies of (post)colonial exile
• Geographies of Anti-/fascism in Eras of Austerity: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives
• Geographies of the Ancient City: Lessons to Learn from Diachronic Comparisons (2 sessions)
• Historical geographies of co-operative praxis
• Military mobilities (3 sessions)
• Narrating Ruin, Ruining Narrative: Co-producing sites, materials and stories (2 sessions)
• New and emerging research in postgraduate historical geography (3 sessions)
• Subaltern Studies, space and the geographical imagination (1): planetary geographies and urban imaginations
• Subaltern Studies, space and the geographical imagination (2): archive, theory, practice
• The outcomes of Collaboration: Co-producing Museum Geographies

2013 Annual International Conference

Sponsored and co-sponsored sessions

• Arctic geographical traditions? Practices, politics and institutions
• Connection, engagement and negotiation—when geographers and museums collaborate
• Discovering Britain: walking through environmental change
• Historical geographies of global knowledge, c. 1780–1914: collecting and display
• Historical geographies of global knowledge, c. 1780–1914: creation and practice
• Historical geographies of internationalism, 1900s–1970s: negotiating the international, the imperial and the colonial
• New and emerging research in historical geography
• Participation in science: locating participatory science; between enthusiasm, engagement, education & crowdsourcing
• Participation in science: more-than-human participation
• Participation in science: participatory science in museums
• Radical geography in the interwar period: disciplinary trajectories and hidden histories
• The future of heritage as climates change: loss, adaptation and creativity—the heritage of climate-society relationships: past, present and future
• The future of heritage as climates change: loss, adaptation and creativity—exploring heritage-climate-society relations
• The making of the English working class at fifty: space, agency and history from below

2012 Annual International Conference

Sponsored and co-sponsored sessions

• Creating geographical legacies: the Red Road legacy project
• Decolonisation, professionals and the geographies of expertise
• The geography of enthusiasm: exploration and fieldwork
• Historical and cultural narratives of climate security
• Historical geographies of creative economies
• Hope in a securities world: geographies and histories of occupation
• New and emerging research in historical geography

 2011 Annual International Conference

Sponsored and co-sponsored sessions

• Art, science and geographical imaginaries: critical methodologies
• Art, science and geographical imaginaries: practice and publics
• Art, science and geographical imaginaries: questioning knowledge
• Art, science and geographical imaginaries: spaces and sites
• Emerging research in historical geography
• Geographical publishing and print culture. ‘Popular’ publishing and the geographical imagination
• Geographical publishing and print culture. From manuscript to print: publishers as intermediaries
• Geographies of collections: archival insights
• Geographies of collections: museums, mobility, and meaning
• Geographies of collections: peoples, places, and possessions
• Meteorological imaginations
• New imperial geographies? Anti-colonialism to de-colonisation
• New imperial geographies? Peoples and encounters
• New imperial geographies? Places, regions and spaces
• Rescucitating necrogeography: necrospatiality
• Resuscitating necrogeography: necrophenomena
• Resuscitating necrogeography: necroploticis