Ullrich Kockel to deliver Keynote Address at International Conference, Paris

On Thursday, 21 November, Ullrich Kockel, Professor of Creative Ethnology at UHI Institute for Northern Studies, will deliver the conférence plénière (keynote address) at the international conference on “Reading Kenneth White: Anthropoetry/anthropoiesis, experiencing the earth and the living”, at the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie in Paris.

On Thursday, 21 November, Ullrich Kockel, Professor of Creative Ethnology at UHI Institute for Northern Studies, will deliver the conférence plénière (keynote address) at the international conference on “Reading Kenneth White: Anthropoetry/anthropoiesis, experiencing the earth and the living”, at the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie in Paris. The programme features contributions from Canada, France, Poland and Scotland, discussing the work of the Scottish writer and former Professor of 20th Century Poetics at the Sorbonne, Kenneth White.

In his keynote, entitled “From Geopoetics to Creative Ethnology: Peregrinations Across the Fundamental Field”, Kockel explores White’s concept of geopoetics, a controversial idea based fundamentally on ‘place’. Drawing on examples from his fieldwork across northern Europe, he teases out some parallels and conjunctions between geopoetics and a creative ethnology seeking to rehabilitate tradition as a future-oriented practice fostering land-based learning and a re-grounding of culture in place.