I was recently reading a piece in The Guardian (available here) which discussed how New Zealand had recently bestowed person status on Mt Taranaki.  This is not new to New Zealand, with person status bestowed already on the Te Urewera National Park (2013), granting it “all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person”. Granting legal person-hood, it is argued, not only recognises Maori beliefs about the mountain, but acts to facilitate a set of values and practices by …

Winter’s here in southeast Australia.  The Alpine National Park has its mantle of snow and the crowds in the valleys are heading through to the ski-fields of the Victorian Alps. But it’s still possible to take some time to ignore the through traffic – to walk and bike in the foothills.  At the base of Mt Bogong you’ll get to see Mountain Creek, experience the constant drip of dew off leaves in the forest, and enjoy the heavier winter atmosphere …

There’s been some (more) research highlighting the benefits of walking.  Walking while you’re engaging with landscapes and you get even more benefits! You can find a story on the research here.

I love the ways walking provides us with the opportunity to uncover history as we journey.  Markers of civilisations and markers of the more immediate past lives of people and their cultures are everywhere – we just need to know what we are looking for. You can see a great piece on markers in Paris here.

Here is a great piece on connections to place through neighbourhood life – the role of Lombardi’s pizza in New York.  Thanks to The Guardian for the piece! Access the piece here

In this post I’d like to discuss the importance of qualitative analysis in social understanding. I don’t want to go into any great depth, just introduce the contours of the argument as a way of highlighting benefits and the complexities. First off, what is qualitative analysis?  There a different definitions but they all tend to include the following: it is the in-depth understanding of human behaviour.  Qualitative analysis concerns itself with the breadth of human behaviour and is not just …

I had a really interesting discussion the other day with a colleague. We were coming back from a longish day in the field when our conversation turned to the ethics and balancing acts which form our professional ethics when working in the community engagement space.  Below are some of the points we thought important: We are dealing in social change – we facilitate alterations to the ways things are done, the ways communities are engaged and part of actions, and …

Koh Lanta in Thailand is known for spectacular sunsets over the Andaman sea.  There is a kind of hush which settles along the beach when the sun starts to set – and people pause to look, mostly with cameras of one form or another.

People told me about the ‘hush’ before I got anywhere near to the island. ‘The place is sooo laid back’, they said. ‘It’s really special. People just sit in cafes, restaurants, bars – wherever – and just stare out over the water. Don’t talk or, if they do, it’s like they’re whispering’. So, it was with somewhat raised expectations that I got out of the bus which had taken us to our accommodation on Koh Lanta, the Thai island with …

The world’s a truly amazing place. This is something that we need to keep reminding ourselves of. Yes there’s a lot of negative stuff and its east to feel disheartened  about various things, including the state of the political process in many countries that had, in the past, shined a light on democracy. But there is also a lot of things happening, randomly, which make us realise that things are much more negotiable especially at a local level.  I’ve worked …