Panel Announcement: Mapping Regional Divides in Energy and Food Futures
Benelux Geography Conference 2026 — Leuven, 8–10 April 2026

This panel explores how visualising and interpreting spatial imaginaries can enhance our understanding of regionalism and the rejection of socio-ecological transitions. In an era of intensifying regional polarisation, geography’s capacity to make visible moral, material, and affective geographies is increasingly crucial. Communities’ responses to transitions in energy and food systems reveal contested visions of sustainability, sovereignty, and belonging. Mapping these imaginaries exposes the regional dynamics that underpin cohesion, exclusion, and resistance across the Benelux.

Focusing on food and energy transitions—from migrant farm labour to solar panel installations—this session examines how imaginaries of place delineate boundaries of belonging and exclusion. The emphasis is less on inclusion narratives and more on the mechanisms and meanings of rejection. Positioned between geographical visualisation and interpretative social analysis, the panel invites contributions that:

• Analyse transitions in food, energy, housing, or mobility as entry points to regional identity and exclusion;
• Investigate how communities perceive and resist transitions;
• Revisit Benelux as a socially constructed regional space;
• Propose innovative, reflexive, or diagrammatic mapping methods.

By doing so, the session aims to advance visualising and interpreting the emotional and discursive barriers shaping regional divides.

HOW TO APPLY: 

https://www.benelux-geo.eu/call-for-abstracts.html (Abstract Submission Form at the bottom of the page)

Deadline is 8 December 2025, Abstract must be 250 words or less.