Lawrence D. Berg

Professor

Geography
Currently on leave
Office: ART 368D
Phone: 250.807.9392
Email: lawrence.berg@ubc.ca

Graduate student supervisor



Research Summary

Critical studies of neoliberalism; geographies of academic knowledge production; place and the politics of identity; postcoloniality; white supremacy.

Courses & Teaching

GEOG128 Introduction to Human Geography; GEOG359 Culture, Space and Politics; GEOG 474 Qualitative Research Methods; GEOG 480 Advanced Seminar in Critical Geography; IGS - Society, Space and Identity; IGS; Professional Development Seminar; IGS - Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences; IGS – Urban Theory.

Websites

Institute for Community Engaged Research (ICER)

Degrees

DPhil, University of Waikato, Aotearoa/New Zealand
MA, University of Victoria, Canada
BA (with distinction), University of Victoria, Canada

Research Interests & Projects

My research concentrates on two primary themes: 1) Neoliberalism and Geographies of Academic Knowledge Production; and, 2) Place and the Politics of Identity, with particular reference to ongoing white supremacy.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Google Scholar

Selection of publications

Berg, L.D., Best, U., Gilmartin, M., and Gutzon-Larsen, H. (editors).  (2022).  Placing Critical Geographies: Historical Geographies of Critical Geography.  London & New York: Routledge.  320 pages plus front material and index.

Berg, L.D.  2022.  “Critical” In D. Demerritt and L. Lees (editors), The Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Geography,  Edward Elgar Publishers, Cheltenham, UK.

Berg, L.D., Best, U., Gilmartin, M., and Gutzon-Larsen, H.  2022.  “Introduction: Placing Critical Geographies.”  In Berg, L.D., Best, U., Gilmartin, M., and Gutzon-Larsen, H. (editors).  Placing Critical Geographies: Historical Geographies of Critical Geography.  London & New York: Routledge, pp. 1-9.

Lewis, S., and L.D. Berg.  2021. “White Supremacy, Surveillance, and Urban Indigenous Women in the Kelowna, BC, Housing Market,” in White Space: Race, Privilege, and Cultural Economies of the Okanagan Valley.  Aguiar, L.L.M., and D. Keyes (eds), Vancouver: UBC Press, pp 173-192.

Mansvelt, J. and Berg, L.D.  2021.  “Writing Qualitative Research: Constructing Meaningful Geographical Knowledges.”  Qualitative Research in Human Geography, I. Hay and M. Cope (eds), New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 376-397.

Berg, L.D.  2019.  “Academic knowledge production, neoliberalization and the falling rate of use values in the academy.”  Fennia: International Journal of Geography.  197(2): 177-78 & 181-182.

Berg, L.D., H. Gutzon Larsen, and E. Huijbens.  2016.  “Producing Anxiety in the Neoliberal University.” In Towards an Ethic of Wellness in Geography, L. Peake, B. Mullings and K. Parizeau, Guest Editors, special issue of The Canadian Geographer/Le geographe canadien.

Baeten, G, L.D. Berg and A. Lund Hansen.  2015.  “Neoliberalism and Post-Welfare Nordic States in Transition.”  In Neoliberalism and Postwelfare Nordic States in Transition, A. Lund Hansen, L. Berg and G. Baeten, Guest Editors, special issue of Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography 97(3): 209-214

Lund Hansen, A., Berg, L.D. and Baeten, G. (Guest Editors), 2015.  Neoliberalism and Post-Welfare Nordic States in Transition, special issue of Geografiska Annaler, Series B, 97(3): 209-274

Hole, R., Evans, M., Berg, L., Bottorf, J., Dingwall, C., Alexis, C., Nyberg, J., and Smith, M.L.  2015.  “Visibility and Voice: Aboriginal People Experience Culturally Safe and Unsafe Health Care.  Qualitative Health Research. 25(12): 1662-1674.

Berg, L.D., Gahman, L., and Nunn, N.J.  2014.  “Neoliberalism, Masculinities and Academic Knowledge Production: Towards a theory of academic masculinities” in Gorman-Murray, A and P. Hopkins, editors, Masculinities and Place, Farnham Uk and Burlington USA, Ashgate, pp. 57-74.

Evans, M., K. White, L.D. Berg, and the Okanagan Urban Aboriginal Health Research Collective.  2014.  “They think you are lying about your need: The impact of appearances on Aboriginal health and social service access.”  Canadian Journal of Native Studies. (Volume 33, issue 1, Forthcoming)

Berg, L.D. 2014.  “Rethinking the PhD in the age of neoliberalization” Geojournal 80(2): 219-224.

Berg, L.D.  2013.  Hegemonic geographies and their ‘others’: Towards an interlocking approach to emplacing geographical knowledges under academic capitalism”  Dialogues in Human Geography. 3(2): 200-204.

Berg, L.D. 2012.  “Knowledge enclosure, accumulation by dispossession, and the academic publishing industry.”  Political Geography. 31: 260-262.

Hole, R., L.D. Berg, J. Bottorff, M. Evans, J. Nyberg, C. Dingwall, C. Alexis, and R. Bunn.  2012.  “CHeck up on cultural safety: Aboriginal people’s perspectives about health care in a BC hospital.  International Journal of Qualitative Methods.  11(5): 709-710.

Evans, M., C. Anderson, D. Dietrich, C. Bourassa, T. Logan, L.D. Berg and B. DeVolder.  2012.  “Funding and ethics in Métis community based research: The complication of a contemporary context.”  International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies.  5(1): 54-66.

Berg, L.D. 2012.  “Geography — (neo)liberalism — white supremacy.”  Progress in Human Geography. 36(4): 508-517

Berg, L.D.  2011.  “Banal Names, Neoliberalism and Landscapes of Dispossession.” in The Politics of Spatial Inscription, special guest edited issue of ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, Reuben Rose-Redwood and Derek Alderman, eds, Volume 10(1), 13-22.

Berg, L.D. 2010.  “Critical Human Geography.”  Encyclopedia of Geography, B. Wharf, ed., Sage Publishers.

Berg, L.D. And J. Vuolteenaho, eds, 2009.  Critical Toponymies: The Contested Politics of Place Naming,  New York and London: Routledge.

Berg, L.D.  2009.  “Discourse Analysis” in The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, R. Kitchin and N. Thrift, eds.  Elsevier Publishing (in press).

Evans, M., R. Hole, L.D. Berg, P. Hutchinson, and D. Sookraj. 2009.  “Common Insights, Differing Methodologies: Towards a Fusion of Indigenous Methodologies, Participatory Action Research, and White Studies in an Urban Aboriginal Research Agenda.”  Qualitative Inquiry.  15(5): 893-910.

Gilmartin, M., and L.D. Berg. 2007. “Locating Postcolonialism”. AREA. 39(1): 120-124.

Berg, L.D. 2006. “Hierarchical Space: Geographers and Neoliberalism.” In special thematic section on Research Assessment and the Production of Geographical Knowledge, Progress in Human Geography. 30(6): 747-782.

Recent Invited Talks

“Planning for a new research centre – the Canadian context”.  Invited presentation to the steering committee of The Centre for Space, Place and Society, University of Wageningen & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands, 15 April, 2019.

“Producing Anxiety in the neoliberal academy”.  Invited presentation to the Centre for Space, Place & Society, University of Wageningen & Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands, 17 April, 2019.  Funded by the Cultural Geography Chair Group, WUR.

“Producing Anxiety in the neoliberal academy”.  Invited presentation to the Department of Geography Colloquium Series, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Co-sponsored by the University of Washington Diversity Committee.  12 April, 2019.

“Thinking Spatially: A historical geoautobiographical account of Antipodean Poststructuralist Political Economy.”  Invited presentation to the Nordic Geography Doctoral Network PhD short course, Lund University, 6 December, 2018.

“Positioning White Professors in the Neoliberal Academy”.  Invited presentation in the special session (in plenary): “Kinds, Sources and Scales of Controversy” in the SSHRC-Funded workshop: Controversy and Feminist Pedagogy: A Geography Workshop, 16-18 May, 2018, Tartu Institute, University of Toronto & York University.

“Team-Based Learning: An Introduction for Faculty Members”. Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University, Sweden, 30 March, 2017.

Evil Paradise: Neoliberalism and the Attack on Rights to the City”.  Invited presentation to the Department of Human Geography, Lund University, Sweden, 30 March, 2017.

“Producing Anxiety in the Neoliberal University.”  Invited presentation to the University of Oslo, 20th Aniversary Lectures, Department of Sociology & Human Geography, Oslo, Norway, 2 May, 2016.

Recent Conference Activities

“Debility in the Post-Welfare City: Surplus Populations, Surplus Capital, and Extractive Abandonment under the Danish ‘Ghetto Law’.”  Invited presentation to the special session on ‘New Urban Political Economies’, at the 10th Nordic Geographers Meetings, University of Copenhagen, June 24-27, 2024.  With Morgan Berg.

“Antiproductivism, autonomist refusal, & the disabled surplus class.”  Invited paper presented in the special session on “Expanding Geographies of Dis/ability and Un/Productivity”, at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Denver, USA, March 24, 2023. With Morgan Berg.

“Austerity, Extractive Abandonment, COVID-19, and ‘Deaths Pulled from the Future’ of Disabled People in British Columbia, Canada.”  Invited paper presented in the special session on ‘No austerity, new austerities, Nordic austerities? Comparative geographies of health and social care in pandemic times.’ The Ninth Nordic Geographers Meeting, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland, 19-22 June, 2022.  With Morgan Berg.

“An Introduction to Neoliberalism in the Academy”, Plenary Panel presentation in the ProtestPub of the New University Norway, Trondheim, Norway, 17 June, 2019 (An external event attached to the 8th Nordic Geographers Meetings, NTNU, Norway).

“New Frontiers of Urban Research: the Banalization of Violence in Neoliberal Urbanisms”.  Plenary presentation to the Closing Symposium of the Critical Urban Sustainability Hub, Danish Worker’s Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark, 24 May, 2019.

“Towards an Illiberal Critical Geography”, Plenary Panel presentation in the ICCG Assembly I: Rethinking International Critical Geography, 8th International Conference of Critical Geography, Athens, Greece, 19 April, 2019.

“Producing Anxiety in the Neoliberal University”.  Keynote address to the UNBC Graduate Student Research Conference, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, February 23, 2018.

“Producing Anxiety in the Neoliberal Universities of Northern Europe” Closing Keynote Address to the 7th Nordic Geographers Meeting, Stockholm University, Sweden, June 21, 2017.

“Producing Anxiety in the Neoliberal University” in the special session on “Continuing Conversations: Strategies for the Promotion of Positive Mental Health in the Academy”, at the Annual Conference of the American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, USA, March 31, 2016.

Selected Grants & Awards

Research Funding

Icelandic Research Fund.  “Universities and Democracy: A Critical Analysis of the Civic Role and Function of Universitiesin a Democracy”. ISK13,500,000.00  CI (with Anna Ólafsdóttir and SigurðurKristinsson [PIs], Edward Huijbens, Guðmundur H. Frímannsson, GuðrúnGeirsdóttir, Jón Torfi Jónasson, Valgerður S. Bjarnadóttir, Daniel Jacoby, JaniUrsin, Jussi Välimaa, and Peter Niessen [CIs]).

Swedish Foundation of International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (SEK149,999) Funding to support the development of the International Collaboration for the Critical Analysis of Neoliberalism,  Mar-Dec. 2017.  A. Lund Hansen and L. Berg, Co-PIs.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Aid to Scholarly Journals Grant (120,000.00), ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, February 2015 – January 2019. (PI)

UBC Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant Fund, “Auditing the Academy” $4,231.00, July 2014-June 2015 (with Edward Huijbens [Iceland] & Henrik Larsen [Denmark]).

Rannsóknasjóður Háskólans á Akureyri, University of Akureyri, Iceland, “Auditing the Academy”, 500,000.00 Icelandic Króna, March 2014-February 2015 (with Edward Huijbens [Iceland] and Henrik Larsen [Denmark]).

UBC, Okanagan Campus, Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, International Distinguished Visitor’s Fund Grant ($5,000.00),Urban Sustainability Forum, December 2013-December 2014 (PI).

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Aid to Scholarly Journals grant ($75,340.00)  ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, November 2011 – November 2014 (Principal Investigator).

Canadian Institutes for Health Research ($404,571.00)  “Establishing cultural safety and effecting organizational change for aboriginal healthcare in the urban centres of the Okanagan Valley.” (Co-Principal Investigator with Rachelle Hole, Mike Evans and Joan Bottorff). October 1, 2009 – September 30, 2012.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Community-University Research Alliance Grant ($1,000,000.00)  “Climate Justice in British Columbia”. (Co-Investigator) March 2009.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Aid to Scholarly Journals grant ($58,500.00)  ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, November 2008 – November 2011 (Principal Investigator).

Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research ($1,856,000.00) “Disabilities Health Research Network” (Principal Investigator). April 1, 2006 – March 31, 2010.

Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Urban Aboriginal Health Development Grant ($48,000.00)  “From planning to practice: Establishing cultural safety and effecting organizational change for aboriginal healthcare.” (Co-Principal Investigator with Rachelle Hole, Mike Evans and Joan Bottorff).  January 2007- January 2008.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Aid to Open-Access Journals Grant Fund ($13,600.00).  ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies (Principal Investigator).  October 2007 – October 2008.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Standard Grant ($25,769.00).  “Historical Geographies of Whiteness in the Okanagan Valley, 1890-1940”,  (Principal Investigator) April 2004 – March 2008.

Canada Foundation for Innovation Fund Grant ($70,863.00) “Infrastructure to support development of an Applied Social Science research program”  (Principal Investigator) June 2003 – June 2008.

Awards

Erasmus Visiting Professor (Mobility Exchange Award), Lund University, Sweden, 2017

Visiting Professor, Department of Cultural Geography, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, 2014.

Visiting Fellow, Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, University of Akureyri, Iceland, 2014.

Visiting Professor, Department of Human Geography, Lund University, Sweden, 2014.

UBC (Okanagan campus) Teaching Honour Roll, 2010-2011.

UBC (Okanagan campus) Teaching Honour Roll, 2009-2010.

Nominee: UBCO Provost’s Award for Public Education Through Media 2009 and 2010.

Member of the College of Reviewers, Canada Research Chairs Secretariat

Visiting Fellowship, National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, National University of Ireland, 2005.

Research Award, University of Groningen, Netherlands, 2006.

Canada Research Chair, 2003-2008 ($500,000.00).

Research Award, School of Global Studies, Massey University, Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1999.

Commonwealth Doctoral Scholarship, Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1992-1996.

Professional Services/Affiliations/Committees

Editorial Duties

Editorial Board Member, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies (2017-present)

Editor Emeritus: ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies (2017-present).Co-Founding editor: ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies (2001-2017) http://www.acme-journal.org/ (with Pamela Moss).

Editor-in-Chief: The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien (July 2002 – December 2005).

Co-Editor:  SITES: A Journal for South Pacific Cultural Studies (1998-2001)

Editorial Board member: The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien (2016-2019)

Editorial Board member: Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Genero (Latin American Journal of Geography and Gender) (2014- )

Editorial Board member: Fennia, An International Journal of Geography (2012- )

Editorial Board member: VERSITA Open-Access Science Publishers (Geography, 2012- )

Editorial Board member: The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien (2011-2015)

Editorial Board member: Praxis (e)Press (2003-2016)

Editorial Board Member: Centre for Social, Spatial & Economic Justice Press (2011- )

Editorial Board member: The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien (2009-2011)

Editorial Board Member: Historical Geography (2007- 2010)

Editorial Board Member: Gender, Place and Culture (2002-2006)

Editorial Board member: The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien (2006-2008)

Editorial Board member: Polimetrica Publishers (2006- )

Editorial Board member: SITES: A Journal for South Pacific Cultural Studies  (1997-1998)

Editorial Advisor: Hidden Geographies: Undergraduates Writing to Transgress (University of Toronto), (2008-2012)

Affiliations

Joint Faculties Representative, Senate, UBC, Okanagan Campus (2014-2017).

Progress Report Author, “Geographies of Identity”: Progress in Human Geography (2011-2013)

Nominating Committee Chair: James Blaut Award, Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, 2008 – 2016.

Judge: Ralph Brown Masters Student Paper Competition, Historical Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, 2008, 2009.

Judge: Andrew Hill Clark Doctoral Student Paper Competition, Historical Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, 2008, 2009.

Judge, Robin Armstrong Memorial Prize Committee, Canadian Association of Geographers, 2009.

Steering Committee Member: International Critical Geography Group (1997 – 2016)

Moderator, Critical Geography Forum Listserv (1998 – 2014) http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/crit-geog-forum.html

Member, Advisory Committee on Policy and Equity, Canada Research Chairs Secretariat, 2008.

Board Member: Qualitative Research Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers  (2006-07, 2010-2011)

Board Member: Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers (2006-2016)

Advisory Committee Member: Centre for Inclusion and Citizenship, University of British Columbia (2009-2011)

Co-Leader: Disability Health Research Network, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (British Columbia), (2005-2010)

Member: Canadian Association of Geographers

Member: Canadian Women and Geography Study Group, Canadian Association of Geographers

Member: Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity and Race Study Group, Canadian Association of Geographers

Member: Institute of British Geographers

Member: Association of American Geographers

 

Apologies, but no results were found.