Friday, January 31, 2014

Renaming streets to honour Robbie Williams


Another permanent legacy of next month’s celebrations will be the naming of three streets in honour of the music star at a new housing development led by Sanctuary Group in Middleport and developed by Seddon Construction.
Later this year you’ll be able to visit Angels Way, walk down Candy Lane or take a stroll down Supreme Street.
Finally, on the day of the pop star’s birthday (Feb 13), schools across the city will be marking it with a ‘Robbie Day’ – the details of which have yet to be finalised but are certain to include musical and arts-based activities for children of all ages.


Read more: http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Robbie-Williams-Stoke-Trent-honours-pop-superstar/story-20493506-detail/story.html#ixzz2rzNibUdO





Thursday, January 30, 2014

Offsite Brand Naming Strategist

Creative Circle > JobDescription



OFFSITE Brand Naming Strategist

Job Details

PositionOFFSITE Brand Naming Strategist
LocationOther Areas
StartsTomorrow
Duration4-5 hours
StatusFreelance
RateUp to $39/hr
A strategic agency needs a Brand Naming Strategist to ideate names against a new digital innovation platform for a toy client.

You must have brand naming experience preferably from a agency.

This is an offsite freelance role kicking off tomorrow and will be 4-5 hours of work.



Submit resume (and samples if applicable) to: sf40@jobalert.creativecircle.com

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Statistical Problems and Solutions in Onomastic Research: Exemplified by a Comparison of Given Name Distributions in Germany throughout the 20th Century

Statistical Problems and Solutions in Onomastic Research: Exemplified by a Comparison of Given Name Distributions in Germany throughout the 20th Century

Mining spatial association rules in census data


Rule Discovery and Probabilistic Modeling for Onomastic Data

Rule Discovery and Probabilistic Modeling for Onomastic Data - Springer



Abstract

The naming of natural features, such as hills, lakes, springs, meadows etc., provides a wealth of linguistic information; the study of the names and naming systems is called onomastics. We consider a data set containing all names and locations of about 58,000 lakes in Finland. Using computational techniques, we address two major onomastic themes. First, we address the existence of local dependencies or repulsion between occurrences of names. For this, we derive a simple form of spatial association rules. The results partially validate and partially contradict results obtained by traditional onomastic techniques. Second, we consider the existence of relatively homogeneous spatial regions with respect to the distributions of place names. Using mixture modeling, we conduct a global analysis of the data set. The clusterings of regions are spatially connected, and correspond quite well with the results obtained by other techniques; there are, however, interesting differences with previous hypotheses.

Spatial data mining as an onomastic tool


Quel traitement lexicographique de l’onomastique commerciale? Pour une distinction Nom de marque/Nom de produit

Quel traitement lexicographique de l’onomastique commerciale? Pour une distinction Nom de marque/Nom de produit - CORELA - Université de Poitiers




Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The American Name Society Annual Conference in 2015

http://www.wtsn.binghamton.edu/ans/ANS%20first%20cfp2015%20San%20Francisco.pdf

1st Official Call for Papers

The American Name Society (ANS), the oldest scholarly society devoted to the study of
names in the United States, is now inviting proposals for papers for its next annual conference. The 2014 proceedings will be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in San Francisco, California. Papers in any area of onomastic research are welcome.



Proposals should include a précis of up to 500 words as well as a 100-word abstract for publication in the LSA and ANS programs. The deadline for receipt of proposals is July 1, 2014. However, presenters who may need additional time to secure international payments and travel visas to the United States are urged to submit their proposal as soon as possible.

Please send proposals by e-mail attachment in a .doc or .docx format to Dr. I.M. Nick at
mavi.yaz@web.de. For organizational purposes, please include “ANS Proposal” in the
subject line. All proposals will be subject to blind review. Official notification of proposal
acceptances will be sent on or before August 31, 2014. All authors whose papers have
been accepted must be a current member of the ANS and register for both the ANS and
the LSA. Please feel free to contact Dr. I. M. Nick at the above address if you should have
any questions.


For information about the American Name Society see www.wtsn.binghamton.edu/ANS/
For information concerning the Linguistic Society of America see www.lsadc.org

Deadline for proposals: July 1, 2014! 

Hurry up!!!

Monday, January 20, 2014

Italian Names in Sweden

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:684061 


published by Prof. Mats Wahlberg (Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Languages, Department of Scandinavian Languages, Scandinavian Onomastics)


from http://sverigesradio.se/sida/


in Nomina: Studi di onomastica in onore di Maria Giovanna Arcamone announced in Onomastikblog by GfN in German and by your obedient servant here in English. 





open in pdf: http://www.edizioniets.com/Priv_File_Libro/2271.pdf

or http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:684061/FULLTEXT01.pdf 


To be cited as follows:


Wahlberg, M. (2013)
Italian names in Sweden.
In: Donatella Bremer, Davide De Camilli, Bruno Porcelli (ed.), Nomina: Studi di onomastica in onore di Maria Giovanna Arcamone (pp. 569-578). Pisa: Edizioni ETS

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Apostrophe catastrophe as Cambridge City Council bans punctuation from new street names

Apostrophe catastrophe as Cambridge City Council bans punctuation from new street names | Cambridge City News, Cambridge Local News Stories & Latest Headlines

Written byCHRIS HAVERGAL
16/01/14 Scene Setter Scholars Walk Chesterton16/01/14 Scene Setter Scholars Walk Chesterton . Picture: David Johnson16/01/14 Scene Setter Scholars Walk Chesterton16/01/14 Scene Setter Scholars Walk Chesterton . Picture: David Johnson
Grammar gurus have given council chiefs a caning for banning apostrophes from Cambridge street names – amid fears they would be too confusing.
Guildhall bosses’ decision to outlaw all punctuation from new road names has been branded “deplorable” and condemned as “pandering to the lowest denominator”, especially in a city renowned for learning.
Officers said they were following national guidance which warned apostrophes could lead to mistakes, particularly for emergency services.
The city council’s street naming policy says a road called St Paul’s Court would appear in all documentation and nameplates as “St Pauls Court”.
But Kathy Salaman, director of the Longstanton-based Good Grammar Company, said it was a “dreadful” idea.
She said: “I know some people think apostrophes are superfluous but we really need them and I think it’s the first step on a slippery slope.
“If councils are getting rid of them, what kind of message does that give out to students at schools?
“Dropping apostrophes is pandering to the lowest denominator and while eradicating them anywhere is dreadful, it is particularly bad to do it in Cambridge.”
Apostrophes can play a key role in conveying the history of a place – for example, the name Queens’ College commemorates its founding by the wife of King Henry VI and then its refounding by King Edward IV’s consort, in contrast to nearby Queen’s Road.
East Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire ban apostrophes too – but they are allowed in south Cambridgeshire.
Cllr John Hipkin, who represents Castle and was formerly head of English at Meridian School in Royston, said: “Punctuation serves a valuable purpose – it helps to convey meaning more precisely and anything which erodes the precision of the English language is to be deplored.
“This is a regrettable erosion of the quality of the English language and such a departure in a city as highly educated as Cambridge is even more regrettable.”
The city council’s policy also bans street names which would be “difficult to pronounce or awkward to spell”, as well as names that “could give offence” or would “encourage defacing of nameplates”.
East Cambridgeshire District Council has gone further, stating: “Names capable of deliberate misinterpretation such as Hoare Lane should be avoided.”
Nick Milne, the city council officer responsible for street naming, said a consultation on the issue had provoked only one objection.
He said the policy brought the council into line with the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), where all new street names are registered.
Mr Milne said: “We follow guidance from the NLPG and it was decided potential confusion over incorrectly punctuated street names meant we wouldn’t use punctuation any more.
“Our understanding was that many data users including the emergency services make no reference at all as to whether an apostrophe is used or not.”
Existing street names are not affected by the policy.


Read more: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Apostrophe-catastrophe-as-Cambridge-City-Council-bans-punctuation-from-new-street-names-20140117060000.htm##ixzz2qn3x1EOX

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Names from Naples 1810-1820

Baby Names from Yesteryear: Names from Naples 1810-1820: A bit like me, the British were obsessed with Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Grand Tour was considered to be an ...

Monday, January 13, 2014

Anthroponyms in the Ukrainian-Polish cross-language communication: Ukrainian-Polish dictionary of personal names

В Ужгороді вийшла книжка про переклад українських імен польською мовою @ Закарпаття онлайн

The new book on how the Ukrainian personal names are to be transcribed into Polish language.


Typological onomastics / Типологічна ономастика

Five volumes of the "Typological onomastics" has been scheduled and two of them already published in Odessa by the best Ukrainian onomatologists!


1. The first book is dedicated to the "Lexic and semantic specifics of the onomastic space" (2012)

http://www.eastview.com/russian/books/product.asp?sku=5108149B&f_locale=_CYR&Terrorism

http://www.exlibrus.de/?q=ru/shop/book/view/52759


The book discusses in detail the problems of onomastic lexicology, nomination on the material of more than seventy languages. This research holds much significance for Slavic, Romance, German Studies, as well as for all linguists, scientists who deal with issues of comparative and typological linguistics.

2. The second volume concerns the "Onomastic derivation from the typological perspective" (2013).

http://www.exlibrus.de/?q=ru/shop/book/view/60901

http://www.exlibrus.de/?q=en/shop/book/view/60901


Besides the investigation of the traditional derivational and structural organisation of the toponyms, the second volume devotes much attention to the creative onomastic derivations: types of reversions, inversions, blending name-formation, onomastic substantivisation, etc.

I can't wait for the next 3 volumes))). 

Местните имена в Кюстендилско / Regional names in Kustendilsko


The new Bulgarian onomastic dictionary has been published by Ivan Umlenski and Georgi Kovachev. This voluminous research of collected and explained nearly 28.000 local names from Kyustendil, of which about 4000 are included in this first volume. Characteristics of the names are to be discussed, as well as their structure and grammatical features. The 1. vol. contains maps of the dialects in Kyustendil. These regional names comprise information not only about language, but about history, archeology, population movement, its material and spiritual culture. Many of them are related to different legends.

http://www.baspress.com/book.php?l=b&id=54

http://www.kubon-sagner.com/opac.html?record=7922692


Sunday, January 12, 2014

Toponymist (Hebrew) Job

http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?Job_DID=J3F6LD6SZ4QXPB92QG2&siteid=cbindeed&ipath=EXINDsep_google_feed%2cEXGOO

Toponymist (Hebrew) (Job Number:601726)



Description:

POSITION SUMMARY(program supporting/general position overview):

The Mission Support Group of Leidos has a career opportunity for a Toponymist (Hebrew) shall analyze and conflate information associated with feature data listed in the Geographic Names Database (GNDB) while working closely with Intelligence Community (IC) geographic names experts. Selected candidate will use agency guidance and policies to respond to questions concerning the proper and correct usage of names, various Romanization systems, and the treatment of descriptive information on standard products. These services will use the Geographic Names Processing Systems (GNPS), charts, imagery and geospatial tools to refine names information for use in all types of products and to respond to use question via the Ad Hoc Query process. In addition, the candidate will prepare files and maps for work, accurately entering data to maintain and update the GNDB, including batching the completed work into the GNDB. The accuracy and reliability of the selected candidate’s work is essential to the missions of these users.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Selected candidate will scan and geo-reference hardcopy maps, research, and order geospatial data sources and commercial imagery to use as reference sources. Georeferenced maps and imagery must be conflated with the GNDB. Selected candidate will interpret and apply national and international policies governing the treatment of and general guidelines emanating from the US Board on Geographic Names (US BGN), the Department of State (DoS), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and other related organizations.

Qualifications

: TYPICAL EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

MINIMUM REQUIRED

Job Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts/Sciences (or related field) and/or equivalent formal military training and 4+ years of related experience. Qualified candidates will possess an ILR Skill Level Two certification for reading (DLPT5 2/2) in the Hebrew language and have 0-3 years’ work experience. Active TS SCI clearance is required.

ADDITIONAL DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

Qualified candidates should also have experience using ArcGIS or GeoMedia Pro; creating shapefiles, geo-databases; utilizing native maps, secondary source maps, and historic maps for extraction and comparison; mapping imagery for stereo and mono extraction at various resolutions; and, expertise in research and information gathering. Specific experience processing geographic names following agency policies and procedures is highly desired. Ideal candidate must be a self-starter and capable of working independently with minimal supervision and guidance. Candidate must be able to multitask and deliver quality products within specified timelines. Candidate should work well as part of a team effort.

Leidos Overview:Leidos is an applied solutions company focused on markets that are seeing converging business and technological trends, and address basic, enduring human needs: defense and national security, health and life sciences, and energy, engineering and infrastructure. The Company's approximately 20,000 employees serve customers in the U.S. Department of Defense, the intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, other U.S. Government civil agencies and commercial health and engineering markets.




Job Posting: Dec 9, 2013, 10:40:50 AM
Primary Location: United States-VA-SPRINGFIELD

Clearance Level Must Currently Possess: Top Secret/SCI

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: Top Secret/SCI

Potential for Teleworking: No

Travel: None

Shift: Day Job

Schedule: Full-time

Company Overview

Our Mission

Everything we do is built on a commitment to do the right thing for our customers, our people, and our community. Our mission and our values guide the way we do business.

VALUES, BELIEFS & EXPECTATIONS

The foundation of the Leidos culture are our Values, Beliefs and Expectations by which we select, recognize and reward employees. They create the environment that drives us toward our mission.

INSPIRED to make a difference

We are committed to solving the world’s toughest problems. We achieve this by connecting our employees’ knowledge and our superior technologies across Leidos in pursuit of answers. We know that by embracing the differences of all employees we will unlock the creativity and innovation that makes a difference.

PASSIONATE about customer success

We are determined to understand and respond to our customers’ needs as if they were our own. This plus our dedication to deliver superior results ensures that we will create solutions that lead our markets.

UNITED as a team

We are bound together by our conviction that ethics and integrity are core to how we operate. We engage with others from a basis of trust because we believe that everyone is doing his or her best and wants to do the right thing. Therefore, we collaborate and share to create value for our employees, our shareholders and our communities.

Onomastic Job: French Toponymist / Geospatial Linguist





About the Organization


MultiLingual Solutions, Inc. (MLS)
is a woman-owned, 8(a) certified, small business that offers a comprehensive suite of foreign language services to corporate, government and nonprofit clients throughout the world. MLS delivers practical, cost-effective and real-world solutions to its clients' needs, always remaining flexible and responsive to the changing requirements of our customers. After years of steady growth and active involvement in training and supporting our Armed Forces and Intelligence Community, MLS is confident in our ability to solve mission-critical problems quickly and cost effectively. http://www.mlsolutions.com/

Utilizing its global network of professional linguists, MLS can assist in meeting a variety of communications objectives through use of both new and traditional media. Our services include:

• Professional placement of linguistic personnel;
• Multilingual transcription and reporting;
• Customized foreign language and cultural instruction;
• Document translation in over 100 languages;
• Interpretation for business meetings, onsite consulting, legal proceedings and conference;
• Multilingual desktop publishing;
• Telephone interpretation;
• Multilingual voiceovers and subtitling;
• Development of software and Web-based training products in clients language of choice; and
• Web site localization.

To complement our linguistic resources, MLS provides audiovisual, graphic design, technical programming and desktop publishing services in manifold languages to create a wide array of materials using the most advanced production tools. Such end-to-end translation and design solutions are carefully customized to match all client specifications.  

CategoryLinguistics  

Full-Time/Part-TimeFull-Time  

Exempt/Non-ExemptNon-Exempt  

LocationSt. Louis  

Number of Openings1  

Open Date9/30/2013  

Reports toEPASS Program Manager  

Description
Essential Duties and Responsibilities: Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this position.
  • Analyze and combine information associated with feature data while working closely with customer geographic names experts.
  • Follow customer guidance and policies to respond to questions concerning the proper names and correct usage of names, various Romanization systems, and the treatment of descriptive information on customer products.
  • Prepare files and maps for work, accurately entering data to maintain and update the associated records.
  • Scan geo-reference, research, and order map sources and commercial imagery that will be used as reference sources as well as verify the proper spelling of names and other metadata.
  • Interpret and apply policies governing the treatment of names as well as general guidelines emanating from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (U.S. BGN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other related organizations.
     

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Listas completas de nomes registados em 2013

Nomes e mais nomes: Listas completas de nomes registados em 2013: Como prometido, já estão disponíveis as listas completas de nomes masculinos e nomes femininos registados em 2013 em Portugal, e estarão ...

English Male Names from 1724

Baby Names from Yesteryear: English Male Names from 1724: Another one of these post I'm afraid. I decided to step back eighty years or so and look at the English male names used then. They...

Friday, January 10, 2014

NamSor Applied Onomastics to help Lithuania become a talent magnet in BioTech

NamSor Applied Onomastics to help Lithuania become a talent magnet in BioTech | NameSorts

Recognizing names and their origin in global scientific and technology databases allows research institutes and high-tech companies identify where the ‘brain juice‘ flows internationally. What are the main talent magnets (universities, companies) in a particular field? How best can a growing biotechnology industrial cluster retain local talent, as well as attract international professors?
Professor Daumantas Matulis, Head of Department of Biothermodynamics and Drug Design at the Institute of Biotechnology (Vilnius University) said ‘NamSor did a pilot project for us and helped us better understand the depth and breadth of Lithuanian talent deployed internationally, in the field of BioTech and Medical Research.’
Kotryna Stankute, Acting Director at Global Lithuania Leaders (GLL), network of international Lithuania-affiliated professionals, said it is crucially important to each country to be aware about their talent pool based out of the country. A strategy of networking with the world-wide Lithuanian professionals’ Diaspora and their engagement can turn brain drain to brain exchange.
Elian Carsenat, founder of NamSor, said ‘We data mined millions of research articles from PubMed Central® (PMC) to recognize Lithuanian names (or names related to Lithuania). By a happy accident, we also discovered that there exist cultural biases in medical research : a scientist of a given culture or origin is more likely to be interested in a particular topic; some scientific communities are more or less likely to be cited by another community. Such cultural biases could even impact the overall bibliometric ranking of a country’s scientific research. We turned this serendipity into a paper, which will share at the International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS 2014, Glasgow, August).’

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Naming Specialist at Landor Associates for New York

http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH08/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=YRBRANDS&cws=13&rid=4052&source=Indeed 

Naming Specialist

Location: New York, NY
Job Code: 4052
# of openings: 1


Description

The New York office of Landor Associates http://landor.com/ is looking for a Naming & Writing Specialist to collaborate with the verbal branding team to provide creative expertise and excellence leading to successful verbal branding solutions that strategically identify, address, and solve a client’s business problems. In this position, the successful candidate will:
  • Lead creation and brainstorming activities as well as constantly innovating naming and verbal identity practices.
  • Generate impactful, innovative, breakthrough on-strategy names, brand lines, brand drivers, and other verbal branding deliverables.
  • Be proficient and comfortable writing for a range of audiences in different categories
  • Assist clients with selection of the verbal branding deliverables that deliver against their business needs and strategies.
  • Manage brand names through trademark, URL, and other legal screening processes, or give guidance to clients per project scope.
  • Develop and deliver client presentations, assist with initial contact with prospective clients at senior levels and then analyze and understand their verbal branding needs.
  • Present Landor's capabilities in a professional and articulate manner and play a significant role in crafting and delivering new business pitches with the senior leadership team.
The ideal candidate will have a Bachelors Degree in English, Linguistics, Liberal Arts, or related studies and excellent creative writing skills and compelling presentation skills. Mac and/or PC proficiency; PowerPoint proficiency is a plus.


Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Postdoc in Italian Onomastics

Multilingual Anthroponymy: History of Language and Identities as seen through data from ASAVDA-Archivio Storico Antroponimico dell'Antroponimia Valdostana

I've found the announcement about Fellowship posted by Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research 

Info in English doesn't explain  a lot... I suggest there is more in Italian but I can't find where... One thing is clear: one post-doc is to be hired to research on proper names on the basis of ASAVDA-Archivio Storico Antroponimico dell'Antroponimia Valdostana.



The project is guided by Prof.

Gianmario Raimondi

http://www.univda.it/raimondigianmario


http://www.unichao.eu/dd/index.cfm/docenti-facolta/gianmario-raimondi.html

His project has been presented by him in Raimondi G., 2010, Un progetto sui nomi di persona: l'Archivio Storico Antroponimico della Valle d'Aosta (ASAVDA), «Nouvelles du Centre d'Études FrancoprovençalesRené Willien», 62: 49-63. (Download in PDF  http://www.centre-etudes-francoprovencales.eu/cef/bollettini/nouvelles-centre-62-2010-941.pdf?r=0.431353691584 )



http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/jobs/fgDetails/63484



“Multilingual Anthroponymy”: Scientific sorting of the computerized ASAVDA archive, also in view of the publication, with particular regard to the lemmatization of anthroponyms and to the consultation of the Italian and French bibliographical reference for the sector; collaboration to the editing of lexical items for “DSEAV-Historical-Etymological Dictionary of the Aosta Valley Anthroponymy; writing of a methodological or in-depth paper for the collective volume to be published together with the DSEAV.



"APV-Atlas des Patois Valdôtains": Scientific sorting of the computerized APV archive; collaboration to the editing of geo-linguistic items for the first volume “Le lait et les activités laitières”(2014)




Fellowship's Details
Career StageExperienced researcher or 4-10 yrs (Post-Doc)
Research ProfileNot defined
Employment contract with full social securityyes
Total amount per fellowship per year19367
Currencyeuro
Covers salaryyes
Covers travel and subsistenceno
Covers research costsyes
Maximum duration of fellowship12


It's a pity that I don't speak Italian(((( It would be interesting to research on ot!

English Male Names From 1802

Baby Names from Yesteryear: English Male Names From 1802: I love a good early 19th century source full to the brink with great names. The Poll for Knights of the Shire to Represent the County ...

Monday, January 6, 2014

Disambiguation of proper names in text

Disambiguation of proper names in text


The Analysis and Acquisition of Proper Names for the Understanding of Free Text

JSTOR: Computers and the Humanities, Vol. 26, No. 5/6 (Dec., 1992), pp. 441-456

Abstract

Abstract  Proper Names (PNs) present a problem for the automatic processing and understanding of naturally occurring text. Due to their poor coverage in existing lexical resources and the continual appearance of new names, they represent a large body of unknown lexical data. Moreover, the complexity of the constructions in which they can appear and their own internal structure make them difficult to process, even if they are initially known. Yet the successful analysis of names is often crucial to the full understanding of a text. This paper proposes a solution to the problem and describes a natural language processing (NLP) system, FUMES, which makes use of the internal structure of names and the descriptive information that regularly accompanies them to produce lexical and knowledge base entries for unknown PNs. We present some preliminary results showing the viability of this approach for the identification of proper names.

Automatic acquisition of proper noun meanings

Automatic acquisition of proper noun meanings - Springer

Abstract

This paper describes a Natural Language Processing (NLP) Program called FUNES which can learn the meaning of proper nouns (PNs) it encounters in its processing of news text. FUNES reads short newspaper stories and produces a case-frame based output which represents the events described. It is tolerant of unknown words occurring in its input and is able to build definitions for unknown PNs it encounters. The paper shows that PNs are almost always defined within the text where they occur. This means that to completely understand a text containing such definitions we must understand the definitions. The various ways that PNs can be defined are described and we show how FUNES utilises these definitions to update its lexicon. This approach offers a solution to the problem of poor proper noun coverage in Machine Readable Dictionaries.

Between Places and Spaces: Landscapes of Liminality

5 - 6 June 2014 | Trinity Long Room Hub



A cross disciplinary conference organised by the School of English (TCD).
'Place is security, space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other.'
- Yi Fu Tuan, Space and Place, 1977.
Within the context of Human Geography, seminal thinkers such as Yi-Fu Tuan have provocatively interrogated the age-old and intricately tangled question of man's relationship to his environment, Far from static, it is infinitely complex and wrought with contradiction. In an increasingly urbanised world, we grow ever more wary of any space outside of man's domain. Such space seems chaotic, threatening, and unpredictable - and yet at the same time, darkly seductive. Similarly, our so-called 'places' refuse to sit comfortably in a modern world, 'united' by global capitalism and communication technology, but also fractured by political and cultural conflicts.The recent 'spatial turn' in literary and cultural studies marks an attempt to comprehend the ways in which we conceive of and construct the places and spaces we occupy. It illustrates a complex picture of the changes and consistencies of our experience of space over time, and the relationship between individuals and society at large. 


This two-day cross-disciplinary conference aims to bring together a wide variety of perspectives from within the humanities, in order to explore man's composite and mutating relationship to spaces and places. We are interested in the literal and the metaphoric, the real and imaginary facets of space and place. The conference will probe what it means to be 'liminal', examining those areas and moments in which one is caught between the intimate and the exposed, the familiar and the frightening - between place and space. 


Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
  • Theories/differences of place/space
  • Theories of liminality (What does it mean to be 'liminal'?)
  • Real and/or imaginary places/spaces
  • The relationship between place/space and literary form
  • Writing space and gender
  • The politics of space
  • Phenomenological, Marxist, post-colonial and/or feminist theorisations of the spatial
  • Spatial form (in literature/film, etc.)
  • Human geography
  • Haunted spaces
  • Psychological spaces
  • Virtual spaces
  • Spatial memory
  • Class/race/sexuality as defined/mediated through space/place
  • Jungles/islands/forests/cities/the wilderness
  • Outer space
  • Internal/external controversies
  • Insular/exposed spaces
  • Space and subjectivity
  • Boundaries
  • Public/private spaces
  • Self/other spatial relations
  • Individual/social spaces
We are also eager to put together a panel on Dublin City as a space/place, and so we welcome any proposals that are specifically catered to this.
If you are interested in presenting a 20-minute paper, please forward your abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with a brief biography, to spacesbetweenplaces@gmail.com
The deadline for submissions is 31st January 2014.