Conferences & Events

When: Friday, 13 February 2026 from  12:30-14:00

Where: Lumen Building, Rooms Lumen 1/2, Wageningen University & Research

Edward Huijbens will present observations and ideas assembled during his three months sabbatical in autumn 2025. He undertook a journey using only public transport from Arnhem to Kathmandu and collected his insights into a book under the working title: An abundance of elsewheres. A convivial geography of the Alpine-Himalayan orogeny. In this session, he will share these and the details of his journey to open a conversation about how we are all part and parcel of Earth system dynamics extending even into the recesses of deep geologic time.

Everyone is welcome to come to the presentation.

The seminar Platformed Housing and Home brings together international scholars to explore how digital platforms are reshaping housing, labour, domestic life, and power relations. Over two days, the event examines the social, political, and economic consequences of platformisation across different urban and cultural contexts. Below you will find the full programme, including session details, keynote presentations, and practical information about the venue and travel.

Organiser: Maartje Roelofsen

For further information and registration: https://centreforspaceplacesociety.com/2026/02/03/seminar-platformed-housing-and-home-2/ 

Join colleagues from across Wageningen University & Research for a half-day gathering that showcases the breadth, depth, and societal relevance of tourism research at WUR — and marks the official launch of the Centre of Expertise for Transformative Mobilities.

From Antarctic governance to heritage justice, from community well-being to game-based and tour-based transformative approaches, this event highlights how WUR researchers are rethinking tourism in relation to environmental responsibility, social justice, and systemic change.

Through short panel sessions, discussion, and shared lunch, WUR Tourism Day creates space to connect across themes, meet early-career and senior scholars, and explore new collaborations around mobility, tourism, and transformation.

📍 Impulse Speaker’s Corner, Stippeneng

📅 24 April 2026

🕘 Coffee from 9:30 | Programme 10:00–14:30, with lunch

The second edition of the Tourism, Memory and Heritage conference explores what happens when tourism encounters contested pasts. Focusing on sites such as Holocaust memorials, former slave plantations, war landscapes, and museums holding colonial collections, the conference asks how guided tours and other visitor experiences shape the emotional and political dimensions of cultural memory. What stories are told, by whom, and to what ends? How do feelings such as grief, pride, shame, empathy, nostalgia, or anger circulate through these spaces? And what tensions arise when tourism intersects with ongoing debates about history, justice, and representation?

Hosted in the context of Emmanuel Adu-Ampong's ERC-funded project Frictions of Space: the generative tensions of tourism in slavery and colonial heritage tourism, this gathering centers on the emotional geographies of tour(ism) encounters. Contested heritage sites are not neutral backdrops; they are charged environments where different communities attach divergent meanings, memories, and expectations. Increasingly, these places are shaped through cultural productions such as guided tours, performances, exhibitions, memorial events, and public art. Such practices offer powerful narrative and sensory ways of (re)activating cultural memories and grappling with the contradictions linking past, present, and future.

The conference brings together scholars, practitioners, and societal actors in a transdisciplinary dialogue on the conceptual, empirical, practical, and policy dimensions of tourism’s role in cultural memory. Key themes include the emotional assemblages of visitor encounters, the embodied and interpretive work of tour guides, and the affective politics surrounding contested heritage.

The program begins with a Memory Walk in Amsterdam (1 June 2026), followed by two full conference days at Wageningen University & Research (2–3 June 2026).Frictions of space: the generative tensions of slavery and colonial heritage tourism

Feel free to direct any questions or queries to frictions@wur.nl  

Check out highlights from the 2023 inaugural edition of the conference