MARE - Centre for Maritime Research

Save the Date and spread the word:

The 10th biannual MARE People & the Sea conference will take place from the 24th until the 28th of June 2019.
Location: Roeterseiland complex, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

We are looking forward to seeing all of you in Amsterdam and together make it into a great MARE Jubilee!

In the meantime keep up to date through Facebook and www.marecentre.nl

www.marecentre.com

You can find the pictures of the MARE Conference 2017
People & the Sea IX: Dealing with Maritime Mobilities at

Mare2017 – Wouter van der Wolk – Photography

Blog report from the Mole: MARE conference Day 2

On Day 2 social scientists and interdisciplinary marine scholars, practitioners, and graduate students swam between panel “streams” on myriad topics. Tasked with being the undercover “mole” at this year’s conference, I went deep undercover and sat in on a full days of sessions, tweeting insights out to the world under the MARECentre name in an act of deep espionage. But now that I have “unmasked” I can share my highlights of the day.

The began with a presentation by an ambitious graduate student and it was great to hear more seasoned scholars encouraging this budding researcher at a session on gender and fisheries. Themes of intersectionality, or multiple identities, emerged as we learned about the experiences of migrant women working in fish processing. In this session, I was also reminded of the power and importance of longitudinal work through a study on children from age eight to young adulthood and how place attachment manifested in their childhood experiences and life course.

The theme of life course and the dimension of youth in communities and in the fishing industry continued in later sessions. Presenters discussed new patterns and challenges of fisheries recruitment and participation on both sides of the North Atlantic. The commodification of fisheries and change in access has transformed family relations, incentivized the “retirement account” mindset for fishermen and making it difficult for children in fishing families to take on fishing businesses, even if there was interest. As spoken about in this year’s keynote, increasing mobility, globalization, and neoliberalism have come to be serious drivers with which coastal communities must contend, and as maritime scholars we can make connections to other post-industrial communities to broaden the contributions of our work.

The interdisciplinarity of MARE was also displayed by talks from psychologists, performing arts scholars, ecologists, all of whom presented in sessions alongside MARE’s more typical disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, and political science. After a day rich in presentations and the flowing discussions that bubbled up over coffee breaks and lunch, we celebrated our scholarly community at the conference dinner. Having been the third MARE conference I have attended, I must admit that this bi-annual event has come to feel like a family reunion of sorts, where we are linked by the sea and our interest in questioning the global, regional, and local trends than come to influence our research.

Did you already know there was one more than one mole blogging during the MARE conference? Who are the moles?

Blog report from the Mole: MARE conference Day 1

Today around 250 people attended the opening of the 9th MARE conference in the intimate setting of the Singel church in the heart of Amsterdam. Those who arrived well on time enjoyed the luxury of having a first cup of coffee outside in the sun, and used the opportunity to meet and greet friends and colleagues from near and far.

After a musical introduction we were immersed into the mobilities theme - referring to the movements and flows that characterize maritime activities - by a timely opening speech by Prof. Arthur Mol and a thought provoking keynote lecture by Prof. Edward Allison.

The diversity of maritime mobilities is extremely wide, ranging from fish stocks to shipping lanes, from plastic soup to elastic maps, and from pipelines to fish aggregating devices. Everything seems to be mobile and fluid! The character of these mobilities can be structured or very unstructured. They bring along governance challenges that provide us, marine social scientists, with urgent research questions.

These mobilities do not only mobilize us into research projects; we were also mobilized on a boat cruise through the Amsterdam canals this morning. It made us reflect, socialize, connect and reconnect with colleagues. For the Dutch among us it offered a special opportunity to step into the role of a tourist in our own country (or home country).

It will be inspiring to continue to discuss the issues raised by Mol and Allison. Where are the maritime economies heading? Are these roads desirable? What should be done if we are on the wrong track? What is our role as social scientists? The presentations that I managed to attend during the afternoon (on marine spatial planning in the US) connected well to these questions. With their balanced presentation of innovative methods, empirical insights and theoretical reflections, they set a high standard for the days to come.

Did you already figure out who is the mole?

People & the Sea IX: Dealing with Maritime Mobilities

The MARE Policy Day takes place in room C1.03 on Roeterseiland

Trailer for A turning tide in the life of man The film retraces the origin of the global problems the small fishermen are facing today, the complexity of such political decisions and the consequences for the…

During the lunch breaks of the MARE conference 2017, there will be a poster and pictures exhibition (De Brug) and film screenings (C1.03). To get inspired for this exhibition sessions, you can watch the trailer of 'A Turning Tide in the Life of Man'. Over 8 years, a small fisherman puts himself, as 'David against Goliath', in the heart of the new reform of the Common Fisheries in Brussels, to try to understand and change the system that took everything from him. This feature-length documentary is made by Loic Jourdain, with help from Alyne Delayne. Enjoy!

Trailer for A turning tide in the life of man The film retraces the origin of the global problems the small fishermen are facing today, the complexity of such political decisions and the consequences for the…

Stakeholder participation in marine management:
connecting practice with theory

The programme book of the MARE conference 2017 (including all panel sessions and abstracts) is online!

MARE Conference 2017 We are delighted to share that we received over 400 abstracts for the MARE Conference 2017 People & the Sea IX: Dealing with Maritime Mobilities. Due to the large amount of submissions, the deadline will not be extended. During the next weeks the abstracts/panels will be evaluated. We expect to anno...

During the MARE conference blog posts will be published. Who is writing these blog posts will for now be a secret. The writer will give some hints in the blogs regarding the identity of the mole blogger. Stay tuned and start guessing. Who is the mole?