Urban Morphology at the Sixteenth International Conference of Historical Geographers, London, 5-10 July 2015

摘要

2015 marked both the fortieth anniversary of this triennial conference and the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Journal of Historical Geography. The opening plenary (Alan Baker, Cambridge) was devoted to reviewing the progress of these 'meeting places' for historical geography across the decades. From an initial attendance of 40 in Kingston (Ontario) in 1975, the International Conference of Historical Geographers (ICHG) has grown to more than 700 delegates in London 2015. No doubt much of this exponential growth is due to the global connectivity of the digital world which we now inhabit, with the consequent ease by which individual scholars can 'plug in' to international gatherings of this kind. The same growth has happened to ISUF conferences of course. Indeed, the omniscience of multimedia in contemporary intellectual life provided the focus of the first British Academy Geography lecture at the ICHG, which should be required listening for any academic. Given by William Cronon (Wisconsin), it was on 'Who reads geography or history anymore? The challenge of audience in a digital age'. It can be downloaded as an audio file from the British Academy website.