Last spring, I was invited to respond to an article in Dialogues in Human Geography, a relatively new journal, which has the aim of stimulating conversation across the discipline. The article, by Kitchin, Linehan, O’Callaghan and Lawton, concerned their experiences with their public blog, IrelandAfterNAMA (IAN), and the issues of public geography that this experience raised for them. Since I was at the time teaching a professional development seminar devoted to PhD students as potential entrants to the academic labor market, including issues of social media, branding, engagement, etc, I thought it would be a good idea to write the response jointly with the students.

Our response “Whose Geography? Which Publics? is now available online. There are also responses by several other people, and then Kitchin et al. have the final word.

All in all I think this was a very positive experience, especially for our PhD students. We…