Place Attachment

Conveners

Patrick Devine-Wright

University of Exeter

Maria Lewicka

University of Warsaw

Aims

  • to promote high quality scholarship on the subject of place attachment and identity, encompassing theory, method and practical application
  • to provide a forum for building a global community of researchers on place that spans disciplinary boundaries (psychology, human geography, anthropology, economics, architecture, urban design, land-use planning, leisure studies, sociology etc.)
  • to promote PhD research on place attachment and provide a forum for PhD students to network and collaborate

Key topics

  • Spaces of places vs. spaces of flows in the globalized world
  • Mobility and people-place relationships
  • Role of place in pro-environmental behaviors
  • Role of place in autobiographical and collective memories
  • Measurement of people-place relationships
  • Place identity as a social psychological construct
  • Role of physical dimensions of place in place attachment
  • Phenomenological and positivistic approaches to people-place relationships.
  • Non-places: nature and evolution of meaning

The type of work we are expecting to generate

  • Collaborative research
  • Cross-country comparisons
  • Joints publications
  • Conferences
  • Contribution to the theory of place and people-place relationships