OpenSpace Research Centre

Description

OpenSpace, founded in 2009, promotes research into geographical and environmental questions. Members are motivated by the broad challenges that face the world, including: how can we live together better; how can we inherit the past responsibly; how might we bequeath better futures to others?

The Centre’s approach to these questions is distinguished by a commitment to open geographical and environmental problems in an inter-disciplinary and collaborative context. OpenSpace advances research that aims to be empirically rich, theoretically embedded, conceptually innovative, methodologically rigorous, and socially relevant (see Research Themes).

Members’ focus is on the spatial, temporal, and social processes that determine outcomes to geographical and environmental problems. The Centre develops these issues by exploring their cultures, materialities, and practices; by attending to questions of justice, power, and responsibility; by extending the application of geographical and environmental thinking (see Research Projects).

The Centre’s aim is to stimulate ongoing and sustained conversations across a range of research topics with an emphasis on the exchange of ideas. These collective practices have nurtured theoretical and applied collaborations and research projects, nationally and internationally. OpenSpace champions innovative approaches to knowledge dissemination and transfer, especially around engagement with new and diverse publics.

OpenSpace operates through collaborative and experimental partnerships amongst core researchers drawn from across the Open University. The Centre has a strong external orientation with a wide international network of individuals and institutions both within and beyond the academy (see External Partnerships and the Open Learn Geography Matters collection). The Centre’s vibrant research culture is underpinned by a range of events including a seminar series, the annual Doreen Massey lecture, opportunities to workshop research in progress, reading and writing groups, and a variety of project-specific events.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2009

Contact details

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Categorisation

Type

Project Tags

University affiliation(s)

The Open University
Walton Hall
Kents Hill
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA