Source: Deborah Che, 785-532-6727, dche@k-state.edu
Prepared by: Beth Bohn, 785-532-6415, bbohn@k-state.edu
Monday, April 14, 2008
RURAL GEOGRAPHY EXPERT PAUL CLOKE TO PRESENT ADVANCE DISTINGUISHED LECTURE AT K-STATE
MANHATTAN -- Rural geography will be the topic of an ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture at Kansas State University.
Paul Cloke, professor of geography at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, will present "Rural Turns? The Search for New 'Rurals' in Geography" at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, in the K-State Student Union's Big 12 Room.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by K-State's ADVANCE program, the department of geography and Gamma Theta Epsilon, the international geographical honor society. The ADVANCE program is working to attract, retain, support and advance women in the disciplines of science, engineering and mathematics.
Cloke's research seeks to ground social theory in a ranges of places, practices and performances, thus developing geographical interpretations which are relevant to everyday politics and sensibilities.
His current research is focused in five areas: ethical consumption, including examining political strategies used by campaigning organizations and policymakers to encourage the adoption of ethical consumption behavior by ordinary consumers; homelessness, which involves exploring the various and complex experiences of, and responses to street homelessness in the United Kingdom; nature-places, which includes the re-exploration of rurality in terms of co-constructions of nature-society, rather than simply via social constructions; tourism, where he is looking at the development of nature-society and ethical themes in New Zealand tourism; and spiritual landscapes, which involves developing work on the staging of religious experience and the performativity of spiritual events.
Cloke has worked previously in the geography departments at the University of Wales in Lampeter and the University of Bristol. He joined the University of Exeter in 2006. He also is an adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He is the founder-editor of the Journal of Rural Studies, an international and multidisciplinary journal that began publication in 1985. His work also has appeared in numerous other prestigious journals. He was elected as an Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences in 2002 and was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2005.