Dr. Michiel van Meeteren

Universitair docent
Geography & Education

My main research interest is studying the past, present, and future of geographic thought and curricula. Geography is an interdisciplinary discipline bridging the social sciences, the natural sciences and the humanities by drawing focus on interactions of phenomena in space.
 
However, this role requires of geography to continually reinvent itself, by forging new collaborations, translating between disciplines and absorbing new knowledge. In order to do so effectively, I help build overview of geography’s past trajectories, Moreover, bridging disciplinary languages requires proficiency in translating and combining widely diverging epistemologies. Unifying diverse perspectives in the geographical perspective is another key goal of my research. Lastly, geography has much to offer to understand today’s and tomorrow’s problems. Climate change, technological development, inequality, urbanization, population movement, and economic crises are all profoundly geographical and hinge on human-environment relationships. However, in order for geography its contribution, it needs itself to overcome historically grown internal boundaries, not in the last place between human and physical geography.