Using photographic essays as didactical tool

After having conducted many many years of urban fieldwork excursions to Berlin for our Master students in Urban and Cultural Geography, in which each student group needs to prepare a tour through one part of the city, based on a specific theoretical perspective, derived from the textbook written by Phil Hubbard withe simple title ‘City’, and in additions students write an individual photographic essay, on their own observations, my co-lecturer in this course, Dr. Rianne van Melik and me decided to investigate and evaluate how this didactical tool, of writing a photographic essay, actually made our students look at the city differently. The results of this research is now published in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education with the title: “Looking with intention”: using photographic essays as didactical tool to explore Berlin. (click on image to see full text)

In addition, a brief Dutch summary has appeared in the Dutch glossy magazine Geografie early 2020. Also one of the students, Karim Johannes Sahhar, involved in the 2018 excursion published a summary of his photographic essay [Berlin: a little nudge in the direction of the waste bin] in the same issue of Geografie. (click on image to see full text)