The city of Navotas in the Philippines located north of Manila | Photo: Rapti Sirwardane-de Zoysa

29.08.2018 | From September 5 to 6, 2018 the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), represented by Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Dr. Rapti Siriwardane, the artec Sustainability Research Center (University of Bremen), represented by Prof. Dr. Michael Flitner and Dr. Johannes Herbeck, and the Center for Urban and Regional Studies from the Universitas Indonesia, represented by Dr. Hendricus Simarmata and Irene Sondang, will be hosting a roundtable symposium on “Translating Sea-Level Change in Urban Life: Policies, Practices, and their Intersections in Island Southeast Asia” in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Held at the Universitas Indonesia’s Salemba campus at the heart of Jakarta, “Translating Sea-Level Change in Urban Life” aims to bring together researchers from the social sciences, the humanities and area studies with practitioners and policy-makers that work across a diverse range of themes relating to the lived and experiential aspects of (relative) sea-level change in Southeast Asia.

Drawing inspiration from the recent ‘mobility’ and ‘translational’ turns across the social sciences and the humanities, the event seeks to discuss how sea-level change dynamics in island and archipelagic megacities and other urban settings can be empirically studied and re-theorized beyond their mainstream articulations as sources of risk and ‘riskscapes.’

The event is targeted at international researchers and scholars that work at the science- policy interface spanning a range of disciplines that include geography, sociology, anthropology, political science and environmental history.

The symposium will be organized in the form of a roundtable dialogue with respect to submitted papers (first drafts), and their corresponding presentations. Particular emphasis will be placed on refining arguments and texts in preparation for the edited volume/special issue.

The keynote address on September 5 (9:00-10:30 am) will be given by Dr. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies, Yale-NUS College (USA/Singapore). His talk is titled “Feeling Sea Level Rise: Narrative, Perception, and Action” and is followed by an open discussion.

For a detailed programme and symposium abstracts please follow this link.

EMERSA Symp Poster

Photo exhibition “Living with  Sea Level Change in Urban Southeast Asia”

The symposium will be preceded by a public photo exhibition on the topic of “Living with  Sea Level Change in Urban Southeast Asia”  held at the Ke:kini Gallery in Jakarta with an opening address by Dr. H.A. Simarmata, Secretary-General, Center for Urban and Regional Studies, UI (in Indonesian & English), followed by brief introductions from the EMERSA project PIs, Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge and Prof. Dr. Michael Flitner.

The exhibition showcases photographic material submitted by symposium participants – both on land and at sea. Many of the photographs were taken during fieldwork over the past few years, and feature spaces and communities from across the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, New Caledonia, and the South China Sea.

An online gallery of the images can be viewed here: www.emersa.org/galery/

The event is open to the public. All symposium participants and organisers are welcome to invite their own guests.

Photo exhibition “Living with  Sea Level Change in Urban Southeast Asia”  | September 4, 2018 from  6:30 to 8:00 pm | Ke:kini Gallery, ground floor, Jalan Cikini Raya No. 45, Cikini, Menteng (Jakarta)

EMERSA Exhibition open invite