In April, 2023 I joined the European Commission's Marine Spatial Planning Community of Practice for the Mediterranean (MED-MSP-CoP) Pool of experts. This is a new initiative bringing together a range of professionals in MSP to discover synergies and build research communities. Marine Spatial Planning is strongly mediated by geo-spatial data, mapping and modelling technologies, yet it is wholly focussing on social aspects of land-sea interactions, making sense of how humans engage with, and are active in coastal and marine regions. My contribution to this is a focus on participatory stakeholder engagement, for the only way that for example Marine Protected Areas can actually thrive, is if people, communities, local and national governments work together to change attitudes and behaviours towards protecting the marine environment. More information about MED-MSP-CoP coming soon...
This year I will be presenting at MARE People and the Sea conference at University of Amsterdam http://www.marecentre.nl. This work, developed with Dr. Greta Adamo and marine scientist Dr. Marta Pascual is titled "Technological mediation of existential threats from the deep: a postphenomenological account of marine and coastal knowledge production and its potential impacts on ocean policy.”
We will also be presenting a paper (myself and Dr. Adamo) The omnipresent role of technology in social-ecological systems: ontological discussion and updated integrated framework at the conference RCIS2023 Research Challenges in Information Sciences at Ionian University, Corfu, Greece May 23-26. This is an extension of our RCIS2022 contribution, Conceptual Integration for Social-Ecological Systems: An Ontological Approach. (see publications page).