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IAG Conference Wollongong 2011
'Geography on the edge'
University of Wollongong
July 3 - 6, 2011
The deadline for submission of abstracts has now passed. It is no longer possible to submit abstracts for this conference.
Online registration is open via the 'Register Here' button at the bottom of the page
The School of Earth & Environmental Sciences invites you to attend the 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers Conference in Wollongong. This is the first time since 1975 our annual conference will be held in Wollongong, in the Illawarra region – an hour and half from Sydney on the NSW south coast. We are working hard to ensure that all delegates enjoy their experience in this place, and have the chance to encounter its dynamic natural and cultural landscapes.
Wollongong is a medium-sized centre, dominated historically by the coal and steel industries but increasingly seeing itself as a university town, with high levels of multicultural diversity. Its decentralized and linear suburban pattern – stretched along 60 kilometres of coastline – challenges traditional concentric ring understandings of cities. To the north is a string of ex-coal mining villages hemmed in between idyllic beaches and dramatic escarpment; near the city centre and university are medium-density in-filled suburbs, and to the south are the Port Kembla steelworks, the Nan Tien Buddhist Temple (Australia’s largest) and lower-density suburbs – noted sites of immigration of diverse cultural groups since the 1950s.
The conference will be held in the beautiful bushland setting of the University of Wollongong campus. Good accommodation, dining, beaches and entertainment are all available in central Wollongong (about 3km away), linked by our city’s system of free public shuttle buses.
Our conference theme ‘Geography on the edge’ reflects our location at the dramatic perimeter of a continent, but also our desire to organise an integrated conference that connects and generates conversations across parts of the discipline. It will be a wonderful opportunity for all of us to meet, explore cutting-edge research in Geography, and reflect on the significance of geographical research beyond the academy. We are poised at the tip of momentous change globally, a shift which is as much about social and economic transformation as it is about environmental change. What contributions can, and should, we as geographers in Australia and beyond, be making to these transformations? The organizing committee look forward to welcoming you to Wollongong in July 2011.
