Ex-Geog is a 3rd year course in Geography and Environment at the University of Southampton with an intertwining focus on theory and methodology. As outlined by the aural geographers Michael Gallagher and Jonathan Prior (2013), experimental geographies are ‘explicit in re-envisioning the geographer not merely as a (critical) bystander, but as an active and creative producer of space’. Further, as the visual geographer Trevor Paglen (2009) outlines, ‘experimental geography [is a] practices that recognizes that cultural production and the production of space cannot be separated from each another, and that cultural and intellectual production is a spatial practice’. In short, this course is not about analyzing other people’s creative outputs as much as creating your own. Further, the methods that we will use in the course will be more-than-textual and, arguably, have a wider range of practical application after graduation.

In the spirit of multi-sited, multi-modal creative engagement, you will have the ability to submit course material in a range of critical and creative formats including video, audio and photography. This course will engage, as Harriet Hawkins (2013) has called for, ‘changing epistemological assumptions regarding places, and the associated methodological demands for multi-sensuous and affective explorations’. Prerequisite for the course is a desire for participation, for there can be no passive spectators in experimental geographies. It is in the process of making work together that we learn what it means to do socially engaged creative research.