The smell of spring
Spring is blossoming in the UK, with the sweet smell of cherry blossom and lavenders out on show. A wonderful sign and smell for some, whilst for others it means the start of puffy and streaming eyes from hayfever! It’s not just flowers and trees that shape the smell of our cities. The image above by Kate McLean highlights a variety of smells that can emanate within an urban environment and the intriguing smell maps that can be generated when these smellscapes are visualised. You can read more about Kate’s work in our member spotlight below.
This newsletter also highlights a few conferences that may be of interest to readers highlighted below too, and we are keen to build our iapsSEN digital library on Mendeley with references of related works by our members and key figures. Please do send in news of your latest publications as they are released. We would also like members to send in references to three of their related publications to help build our online library and reference list. Any other news is always welcome to be included in the newsletter, such as PhD viva successes, large project grants commencing, or calls for papers. We look forward to hearing your sensory environments news.
Conferences
Upcoming conferences
- ICBEN Congress on Noise as a Health Problem, 18th – 22nd June 2017, in Zurich, Switzerland.
- XIV Conference on Environmental Psychology, 21 – 24th June 2017, in Évora, Portugal.
- International Conference on Environmental Psychology, 30th August – 1stSeptember 2017, in A Coruña, Spain.
Recent related publications
- Cook, S., Shaw. J. & Simpson, P. (2016), Jography: Exploring Meanings, Experiences and Spatialities of Recreational Road-running Mobilities 11(5), 744-769
- Stigsdotter, U.K., Corazon, S.S., Sidenius, U., Refshauge, A.D. & Grahn, P. (2016). Forest design for mental health promotion – using perceived sensory dimensions to elicit restorative responses. Landscape and Urban Planning, 160, 1-15.
If you have recently published and would like this added to the iapsSEN library and communicated in the next letter, please email us.
Call for papers
Soundscape Assessment
Deadline: 24th November
Description: The journal Frontiers in Psychology has a call for papers for the research topic of Soundscape Assessment. Soundscape research concerns the study of how people perceive, experience, or understand acoustic environments as a whole (both indoors and outdoors). In recent years, publications in this area have blossomed with many holistic case studies exploring soundscapes within a particular environment. Soundscape design is growing in popularity with interested parties ranging from researchers, councils, artists, and activists. However, to evaluate soundscape designs, further understanding of the methodological issues involved in perceiving and assessing soundscapes is necessary. This Research Topic therefore focuses on soundscape assessments. We welcome contributions that further deepen our understanding of soundscapes in these areas. Articles published in this Research Topic will provide valuable contributions to the development of the International Standard on soundscape assessment, ISO 12913. For more information, please contact the guest editors for the journal Dr Östen Axelsson, Dr Catherine Guastavino, and Dr Sarah Payne, and visit the website.
Member Spotlight
Kate McLean is a British artist/designer and mapper of urban smellscapes who is a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. She is a PhD candidate at the Royal College of Art, UK researching how the vast, ephemeral and ‘eye-invisible’ human-sensed dataset of the urban smellscape might be detected, recorded and communicated.
The Smellmap Edinburgh image at the top of this newsletter was conceived and created as part of a series of individual sensory maps of Edinburgh; a deconstruction of the sensed city from a human perspective advocating for experiential learning through ontogenetic and performative mapping practices.
You can see more of Kate’s work at sensorymaps.com and follow her on twitter @katemclean
Please share your favourite photos and have them and you featured in future newsletters. Send your landscape oriented photos and information via email.
Contact iapsSEN
- Sarah Payne and Kevin Thwaites are the SEN convenors and can be contacted by email at SEN_convenors@iaps-association.org
- James Simpson is the iapsSEN librarian and can be contacted by email atSEN_dissemination@iaps-association.org
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