In her PhD project, "Explore Your Everyday Geography in Class!", Anna studies how everyday geographical experiences of students that are brought into the classroom can be connected to disciplinary geographical knowledge in a powerful way. When students are encouraged to explore their everyday geographies using geographical thought, they generate a better and deeper understanding of their own environment which, as a consequence, becomes (more) meaningful to them. Moreover, they acquire new disciplinary geographical knowledge which fosters a deeper understanding of places and perspectives outside of their personal geographies. The perspectives of the young people form, as much as possible, the starting point for this PhD project. In other words the focus is on doing research with young people instead of on them.

Currently, Anna is working on a large-scale, multidisciplinary scoping review of young people's everyday experiences, using AI-supported methods. This scoping review forms the basis for the rest of her PhD-project, in particular for an educational design that focuses on how to integrate students' everyday geographies into geography lessons. Creative participatory methods, which allow young people to take as much ownership of this educational design research as possible, are central in the creation of this educational design

• Anna Smits
• dr. Gijs van Campenhout
• dr. Gery Nijenhuis