Articles from:March 2024

  • PHOTO GALLERY: Community gathers for Brock’s inaugural World Water Day Celebration

    Friday, March 22, 2024 | By

    FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2024 | by  | Reposted from The Brock News

    Brock students Damian Haitas and Isaiah Boekestyn discuss a standing poster display.

    Geography and Education student Damian Haitas (left) and Isaiah Boekestyn, a Kinesiology major and Geography minor, discussed the GEOG/TOUR 4P83 Photovoice display at the first annual World Water Day Celebration.

    The Rankin Family Pavilion Atrium saw a flood of interested students, staff, faculty members and community visitors on Friday, March 22 at Brock’s World Water Day Celebration.

    Hosted by Brock’s Water Resilience Lab and Department of Geography and Tourism Studies, the inaugural event featured a research showcase, educational exhibits, artistic displays, interactive stations — including a bottled water versus tap water taste-testing station courtesy of Niagara Region ­— and community organization booths with job and volunteer opportunities as well as valuable information about the many ways that water affects the Niagara region.

    View the photo gallery here

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  • Community invited to Brock’s World Water Day celebration

    Monday, March 18, 2024 | By

    THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024 | by  | From The Brock News

    Three women pose for a photo in front of tall yellow plants.

    Associate Professor Julia Baird (left), PhD in Sustainability Science student Hannah Marlen Lübker and Academic Advisor Samantha Morris have organized Brock’s first ever community event to celebrate World Water Day.

    Water — and all that it means to the world — will be celebrated at an upcoming community event hosted by Brock University.

    Brock’s Water Resilience Lab and Department of Geography and Tourism Studies will host the inaugural World Water Day Celebration on Friday, March 22 to showcase the many ways people study, appreciate and engage with water at the University and across the Niagara region.

    The free public event, funded in part by the Council for Research in the Social Sciences, brings to life a long-term goal of Julia Baird, Canada Research Chair in Human Dimensions of Water Resources and Water Resilience.

    “Water touches so many aspects of our lives — what we learn and the research that happens at Brock, as well as issues of water management, water conservation and the well-being of our community and ecosystems in the broader Niagara community,” says the Associate Professor in the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre and the Department of Geography and Tourism Studies.

    Baird has worked closely with Samantha Morris, Academic Advisor and Communications Co-ordinator in Geography and Tourism Studies, and graduate student volunteer Hannah Marlen Lübker to bring together the community to share the myriad of ways that water is important.

    The World Water Day Celebration will open at 10 a.m. in the Rankin Family Pavilion on Brock’s main campus. Students can learn about the many water-related courses on offer and the community can discover some of the dynamic water research being undertaken at Brock.

    Between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., attendees can peruse water-themed informational and research posters from graduate and undergraduate students, an array of artistic submissions, featured course highlights or displays that combine all of these features, such as a PhotoVoice exhibit from one of Baird’s courses and the VISA 2P90 exhibit currently on display in the Matheson Learning Commons and Thistle display cases on  “Women, Water, and Words: An Exploration of Visual Culture in Niagara.”

    The James A. Gibson Library has also curated a featured collection of print and e-books entitled “Exploring Deep Waters” to highlight ways to learn more about water.

    From 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., interactive booths will open featuring Brock researchers and community groups and organizations, including the following:

    • Niagara Region
    • Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority
    • Niagara Parks Commission
    • Niagara Geopark
    • Soaring Eagles Indigenous Elementary School
    • Brock’s Department of Geography and Tourism Studies
    • Water Resilience Lab

    Researchers will share their projects and community organizations will highlight their work as well as volunteer and student job opportunities that may be available. Visitors present during the interactive portion of the day can enter a prize draw, which includes a $50 gift card for Someday Books. The draw will take place at 1:30 p.m.

    All members of the Brock and wider communities are invited to drop in and enjoy this all-encompassing tribute to water.

    Reposted from The Brock News

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  • For the love of Pi

    Thursday, March 14, 2024 | By

    THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2024 | by Colleen Patterson

    A woman hands a university student a mini box of pie while two other students are already eating pies nearby.

    As people around the world celebrated Pi Day on Thursday, March 14 (or 3/14) with a slice of pie — sweet, savoury or even pizza — Brock’s Map, Data and GIS Library (MDGL) provided a variety of fruit-filled mini pies and demonstrated its map services to 50 Brock community members. Mathematicians mark the day in recognition of pi, the irrational number 3.14159…, which is part of many formulas used in physics, astronomy, engineering and other fields. It is also used to calculate the circumference and area of a circle. From left are fourth-year Geography student Emily Owen, third-year Biology and Geography student Alyssa McInally, Brock’s Map Library Associate and Geospatial Data Co-ordinator Sharon Janzen and fourth-year Geography student Julia Gardner.

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  • New summer course to explore anime tourism

    Thursday, March 07, 2024 | By

    By | Reposted from the Brock News

    Colourful signs and billboards in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan, show anime characters.

    Learn about how anime fans who flock to locations in Japan to celebrate their favourite films and characters are shaping a new form of tourism in TOUR 2P98 this summer.

    A new Brock course taking place this summer will dive into the phenomenon of tourism driven by anime fandom.

    “Anime Tourism,” offered asynchronously online by the Department of Geography and Tourism Studies as TOUR 2P98 in the Summer 2024 session, is open to students with five or more credits. No knowledge of Japanese language is required. Registration for the Spring and Summer Terms is now open.

    The course will examine anime culture, the development of anime tourism destinations and the impact of anime tourism. It will also explore the geography, history, culture and mythology of Japan.

    bronze statue of three Attack on Titan anime characters in Hita, Japan

    Professor of Geography and Tourism Studies Atsuko Hashimoto photographed this statue of characters from Attack on Titan in Hita, Japan.

    “I am interested in how anime tourism is contributing to the development or rejuvenation of communities,” says Professor of Geography and Tourism Studies Atsuko Hashimoto, who also plans to offer the course in the Fall/Winter session. “There are certain anime films which have specific towns or specific locations — the shrine, the forest or the part of the townscape — that are so precisely drawn that many people can actually identify the location and want to visit it.”

    Her research explores the trend of anime fans seeking out the physical locations of animated settings and travelling there to mimic favourite characters and take photos for social media, which she compares to similar pastimes like geocaching.

    Hashimoto says that when fans decide to travel to locations from their favourite anime, there can be both positive and negative social and economic effects, and the course will explore all of these dimensions.

    As an example, she points out that while much of the current anime tourism phenomenon is driven by Japanese fans, international visitors descending on a location that is unprepared to receive them with accommodation or translators can create problems.

    However, the economic benefits of anime tourism are motivating many local governments to devote resources — from new special divisions of government to YouTube channels showcasing towns — to attracting filmmakers and creating even more interest in their locations.

    “We can already see how the Japanese Government, local tourism marketing offices, businesses and even local people are taking advantage of this anime tourism phenomenon, even trying to be featured in anime films,” she says.

    Hashimoto says she is looking forward to discussing favourite anime examples with students and exploring how fans can help build a sustainable and responsible tourist industry around anime.

    Together with Professor of Geography and Tourism Studies David Telfer, Hashimoto recently presented a paper on anime tourism entitled “Fictive Places in the Real World: Anime Film Tourism and Regional Development in Japan” at the International Conference on Literary and Film Tourism in Barcelona, Spain. She will soon speak at an event hosted by the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto on the cultural significance of anime as a lead-in to a screening of the 2022 film Suzume (Suzume no Tojimari).

    Story reposted from the Brock News

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