Today I started a new position at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) as Associate Professor of Outdoor Learning. I’m excited about the opportunities to reconnect with academic colleagues, engage with inquiring young minds, and embark on some new research projects. My email is mike.brown@aut.ac.nz
Living with the sea: Knowledge, awareness and action
In a somewhat belated post I’m pleased to advise that this edited book, which found it’s genesis in the 2016 Seascapes conference, has been published. My thanks to my co-editor Kimberley Peters and the contributors.
Description
The seas and oceans are currently taking centre stage in academic study and public consciousness. From the plastics littering our seas, to the role of climate change on ocean currents from unequal access of marine resources to the treacherous experiences of seafarers who keep our global economy afloat; now is a crucial time to examine how we live with the sea.
This ambitious book brings together an interdisciplinary and international cohort of contributors from within and beyond academia. It offers a range and diversity of insights unlike previous collections. An ‘oceanic turn’ is taking place, with a burgeoning of academic work that takes seriously the place of seas and oceans in understanding socio-cultural and political life, past and present. Yet, there is a significant gap concerning the ways in which we engage with seas and oceans, with a will to enliven action and evoke change. This book explores these challenges, offering insights from spatial planning, architectural design, geography, educational studies, anthropology and cultural studies. An examination through these lenses can help us to better understand human relationships with the seas and oceans, and promote an ethic of care for the future.
Seascapes symposium on ‘Big Red’
Yes this is work!!!
The Seascape Symposium, which I organised, was successfully held from the 16-19 February on Steinlager 2, a previous winner of the Whitbread Round the World Race, skippered by Sir Peter Blake. It focused on human-sea relationships with a focus on sharing knowledge that would enhance human capacity to take action for a sustainable future. The weather forecast was ‘interesting’ – with high winds promised on the tail end of Cyclone Winston.
The ‘contained’ nature of shipboard life brought everyone together and it was great to see a real community spirit emerge. I’m delighted that Dr Kimberley Peters (University of Liverpool) has agreed to to-edit a book with me which will be based on the papers presented at the symposium.
We left Viaduct Harbour, Auckland on the 16th February and had a brisk sail to Kawau Island where they settled in for the first paper presentation and discussion session. The following day involved a lively sail to the southern side of Waiheke Island (max speed 18 knots) and further paper presentations and discussions.
Thursday the 18th brought wet and windy weather and we continued with academic sessions and an early afternoon walk on Rotoroa Island (site of the former Salvation Army rehabilitation centre).
Luckily the weather cleared on the final day and we completed a circumnavigation of Waiheke, arriving back in downtown Auckland mid afternoon.
The symposium facilitated ongoing discussions over the four days and our knowledge of a sustainable future through human-sea relationship was enhanced. Several collaborative projects may develop through the networks that were established during the symposium. Attendees came from New Zealand, Australia and The United Kingdom and represented multiple academic disciplines: education, human geography, environmental studies, sociology, sport and leisure, outdoor education, and tourism.
See – we did work.
Media release for Seascapes
Barbara and Mike with their book Seascapes: Shaped by the Sea.
Book brings relationship with the sea to the fore
It’s been a big year for sailor and sea kayaker Mike Brown. The University of Waikato Sport and Leisure Studies Senior Lecturer recently completed a 20-day Atlantic crossing by yacht and has co-edited a book on the sea that has just been published.
The book Seascapes: Shaped by the Sea is an account of how the sea has shaped and influenced the lives of 12 people.
“The sea is integral to our lives,” says Dr Brown. “The book’s focus is on how the sea is experienced by people, reflecting their personal connections and how they’re defined as human beings, both individually and collectively.”
One of the chapters is by windsurfer and Professor of Sociology of Sport and Outdoor Education at Buckinghamshire New University Barbara Humberstone, the book’s co-editor. Professor Humberstone has been in New Zealand for a couple of months over the summer on study leave from the UK.
Professor Humberstone says having the sea around her as she was growing up had a powerful effect on her.
“When I wrote my chapter, I started to explore further and found a poem I wrote as a kid about going to the beach. It’s exciting seeing the influence the sea has had on me throughout my life.”
And while the sea is part of our cultural landscape, Dr Brown says it often isn’t thought of as something that constitutes our identity.
“By recording these personal accounts, we want to try and understand how the sea shapes us and in doing so, bring to the fore the importance of a personal relationship with it. If people don’t have an affection for the ocean, then they’re less likely to care for it.”
Dr Brown and Professor Humberstone’s academic paths had crossed at various conferences over the years where they discovered they shared a common interest of being on or in the water.
Knowing of Professor Humberstone’s windsurfing experience and research interests, Dr Brown broached the subject of editing a book with her. She was enthusiastic after seeing the initial rough outline and the project got underway in 2012.
Dr Brown’s own relationship with the sea began when he was young, spending time dinghy sailing and going on to become involved in sail training in the UK, and sailing in the south-west Pacific Ocean.
The book features contributions from academics who are actively engaged with the sea. Each author was approached because of a combination of scholarly expertise and their own experience with the sea. They come from a variety of fields such as geography, sociology and education. They are windsurfers, surf and sea kayakers, sailors, bodyboarders, swimmers and a commercial fishing boat monitor/observer.
Contributors to Seascapes are from New Zealand, Australia and the UK, with several having connections to the University of Waikato: Dr lisahunter, Dr Karen Barbour and bodyboarder and masters student Mihi Nemani, who is of Māori and Samoan descent. Mihi’s chapter highlights the hierarchies of surfing subculture, gender and race, describing how prejudice and bias don’t necessarily disappear at the water’s edge.
“All are people who know the sea and have that personal connection with it,” says Dr Brown. “The book’s publication is very timely as there is a new wave of geographers now looking at the sea and a rise of consciousness in this area.”
Shameless self promotion: Seascapes book
Seascapes: Shaped by the Sea, edited by yours truly and Barbara Humberstone is due to be published next month. Full details can be found at: http://ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=20218&edition_id=1209350913
Here are some early reviewers’ comments.
‘How do we engage with the sea? How does it permeate our lives and impact how we think and feel? Bringing together a rich collection of embodied, emotional and sensuous ethnographic narratives, this book is as close as you might get to being at sea from the comfort of your armchair. Thoroughly enjoyable and an important contribution to the literature.’
Kimberley Peters, Aberystwyth University, UK
‘A landmark book, Seascapes captures our intimacy with the ocean by exploring how we penetrate the natural world, and vice versa. The authors draw on multiple voices, theories and perspectives, and engage with the ocean in passionate and perceptive narratives that radically recast the sea as a dynamic, living, affective and sentient place.’
Douglas Booth, University of Otago, New Zealand
‘Brown and Humberstone’s volume, Seascapes, explores the imaginative, aesthetic and embodied experiences through which people engage with the sea. Through fascinating and diverse auto-ethnographic accounts of surfing, sailing, swimming and, above all, thinking and feeling with the sea, it illuminates the complexities of this vital human-non-human relationship.’
Veronica Strang, Durham University, UK
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