Events
The calendar below shows an overview of events and conferences that we have organized or participated in.
The MobileWorlds Workshops have taken place throughout 2024, in both Bergen and Porto. They are interactive workshops in which we explore how arts, and drawing maps, can help various individuals – children as well as adults – to connect to third cultures within them and surrounding them, and the potential this might have for creating new points for encounter with ‘others’ – other people, other ideas, other practices, concerning sustainable mobility and beyond. We have customized workshops per audience group (e.g. all-ages, families, planners, academics/conference). You can find out how to do your own Workshop here.
The Mobile Worlds workshops take a hands-on, creative approach to explore mobility practices through the lens of culture – based on a set of norms and values that we identify with, for instance based on nationality, region, or subgroup (e.g. environmentalist, academic, skater, etc.). They begin with an introspective, individual part (which can remain private), and then move on to group creations and discussions about various cultures coming together within individuals and between individuals and groups. The workshop uses drawing, collage, plasticine-shaping, and other such methods to stimulate out-of-the-box engagement with the topic. The workshops are adjusted for diverse audiences.
The Festival took place in September and October 2025 in Bergen, Online, and in Porto. The Festival is a platform for bringing together a broad MobileWorlds community, connecting arts and planning perspectives for a broad audience, showing the potential of what the MobileWorlds project has only begun to explore. Details on the Festival specifically are found here and tools for organizing your own MobileWorlds Festival can be found here.
The key events of the MobileWorlds project have now ended. You can find details about the past activities by browsing the past events below.
- This event has passed.
RGS Online – MobileWorlds will have a double special session and one presentation
This year at the Royal Geographical Society’s annual conference, MobileWorlds organized a double special session entitled “Third Cultures of Mobility: Exploring and stimulating alternative mobility futures and research methodologies“. The sessions also included a presentation by Kim, entitled “Mobilities in Times of Crisis: Seeking Third Cultures of Mobility Through Creative Participatory Methods”, and a presentation by Wendy, entitled “Talking the Talk, Walking the Walk: Auto-ethnographic Reflections on Multicultural Terms of Mobility.” Other presentations will be held by Peter Norton, Stefanos Tsigdinos, António Ferreira, Enrica Papa, Hannah Hook, Joyce David, Dario Stolze, Thomas Klinger, and Sonja Haustein.
Below you can find the summary of the theme of the sessions and the program of short presentations that are included in each session. The sessions are organised in such a way that they should allow plenty of room for discussion of the sessions’ theme. Further details to be found via the conference’s own program (see the links for session 1 and session 2).
RGS Online Special Session: Third Cultures of Mobility: Exploring and stimulating alternative mobility futures and research methodologies
Organisers: Kim Carlotta von Schönfeld and Wendy Tan
According to David Graeber, “the ultimate truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently” (Graeber, 2024). (Hyper)-Mobilities and other mechanisms of globalization, however, seem to imply that it has become increasingly difficult to perceive ways to make things differently, despite (or because of?) intensive contact among countless cultures around the globe. The question then is, how can creative and diverse alternatives for mobilities be stimulated in this context? This session explores possibilities in this regard, with some more classical, some more radical presentations of non-mainstream (usually non-car-based) mobility cultures, and methods of how these can be explored. The session discussion explores in depth how the proposals presented can be connected, for instance through the conceputalisation of “Third cultures of mobility”. The latter refer to cultural interweavings that emerge when various cultures interact in significant ways. What might “Third Cultures of Mobility” look like, and how might they contribute to more or less openness to change in regards to the futures of mobilities (or immobilities)? Within the context of turbulent global times, and polycrises to which some contemporary mobility practices contribute to a very high extent (through CO2 emissions, as well as by other dynamics, such as lack of local engagement and superficialisation of human relations), other contemporary mobility practices provide important solutions (e.g. minimising mobility, or shaping or enacting it differently, using it to deepen both local engagement and human relations, and questioning the need for streamlined, speed-based mobility). After all, perhaps it is not only how much we move, but (also) about how we move.
Not only cultural creativity, but also questions of communication/vocabularies, and methodological creativity when studying and/or encouraging cultural diversity can be key when exploring “Third Cultures of Mobility”. Arts-based workshops and mobile interviewing have been used to trigger cultural reflection and interaction (see e.g. https://mobileworlds.online), but many other creative methods and methodologies have been emerging.
This set of two special sessions provides a platform for discussion creative ways of dealing with cultural diversity and diverse methodologies in mobilities research, including but not limited to:
- culturally diverse practices and/or planning for future mobilities
- cultural diversity in (im-)mobility planning and/or practices
- alternative methodologies for studying (im-)mobility planning and/or practices
- theoretical reflections on cultural diversity and “thinking otherwise” (preferably withan angle towards mobilities research)
- cross-cultural communication / vocabularies of mobility
The sessions consist of short presentations, leaving a larger amount of time for discussion at the end, to connect the topics covered in view of “Third Cultures of Mobility” and creative ways forward for mobilities research and practice. Both sessions include a combination of more conceptual and more methodological ambitions, empirical findings and proposals for application.
Reference: Graeber, David. The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World… Essays. Allen Lane, 2024.
Session 1
Cyborgs, dilemmas and hyper-mobile futures: towards a radical conceptualization
António Ferreira, University of Porto, Portugal
Mobilities in Times of Crisis: Seeking Third Cultures of Mobility Through Creative Participatory Methods
Kim Carlotta von Schönfeld, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway
Exploring (Im)Mobility Profiles for Just Futures: A Participatory Approach to Rethinking Mobility Systems
Enrica Papa, Westminser University, UK
Exploring pre-adolescents’ visions of urban streetscapes through participatory planning
Hannah Hook, Joyce David, Ghent University, Belgium
Session 2
Mobility Cultures: Conceptual, empirical and transformative approaches – findings of a literature review
Dario Stolze, Thomas Klinger, Sonja Haustein, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, and ILS Institute, Germany
“Privatised” mobility futures. Mobility as a commodity or as a common? Thoughts and insights from Greece
Stefanos Tsigdinos, NTUA, Greece
Recovering Walkability
Peter Norton, University of Virginia, USA
Talking the Talk, Walking the Walk: Auto-ethnographic Reflections on Multicultural Terms of Mobility
Wendy Tan, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway