View in EDS HTML Full Text PDF Full Text

'Is 'This' the City of Beauty?': Facilitating Critical Student Subjectivities through a Creative Place-Based Urban Geography Workshop in Florence, Italy

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Title: 'Is 'This' the City of Beauty?': Facilitating Critical Student Subjectivities through a Creative Place-Based Urban Geography Workshop in Florence, Italy
Language: English
Authors: Panos Bourlessas, Matteo Puttilli
Source: Journal of Geography in Higher Education. 2025 49(1):18-35.
Availability: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 18
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Human Geography, Urban Areas, Graduate Students, Masters Programs, Geography Instruction, Place Based Education, Alienation, Sense of Belonging, Tourism, Workshops, Films, Creative Thinking, Biographies, Critical Thinking, Affective Objectives, Attitude Change
Geographic Terms: Italy
DOI: 10.1080/03098265.2024.2403064
ISSN: 0309-8265
1466-1845
Abstract: The way that the relationship between university students and the city is conceptualised in geographic literature is strongly determined by the studentification debate, which risks subjectifying students in redundant and unilateral ways. This paper suggests that geographic education and its spatialities can inform this debate with an alternative subjectification, by emphasising the students' capacity to construct their own criticism on the urban phenomena that they experience. It draws empirically from a place-based workshop conducted within a master's programme at the University of Florence, which aimed at exploring the students' sense of place through creative methods. Life charts, mental maps, urban diaries and short films, analysed together with textual material, showcase the complexity of sense of place: for students, visuality and affect contribute significantly to their feeling of alienation and its expression, but at the same time become instrumental to negotiating it by seeking a sense of belonging in the touristified and spectacularized city. When approached as "revealed" and "claimed" space, the spatialities creatively produced through the films prove that geographic education is capable of fostering the shaping of students as critical subjectivities, thus restoring the problematic subjectification performed by the studentification debate.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: EJ1465888
Database: ERIC
Full text is not displayed to guests.
FullText Links:
  – Type: pdflink
    Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwE9DES0cPd8FM32t4B9iuOIAAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDB-poo3Mr85BDywoOAIBEICBm8Bhodj9li4VcjuRd2Bzc6aIsCNmTmEQsXU7zOM0KPNuRGtVKf3LMDX1a0z6KY7I3E_SrY3prxEp6U7HIMJb8dTMPm5BzLNq89BhHnz9yoFbjUCrptkrBtFGUguDBhWICWljnAN8yq6DXqo8pA2Z48sKrLcQGCYwQcEccX4VprJomC4Ynhj_NVigebfgTjSILDb_8cLlWTt9oF02
Text:
  Availability: 1
  Value: <anid>AN0183416445;jgh01mar.25;2025Mar05.05:29;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0183416445-1">'Is this the city of beauty?': facilitating critical student subjectivities through a creative place-based urban geography workshop in Florence, Italy </title> <p>The way that the relationship between university students and the city is conceptualised in geographic literature is strongly determined by the studentification debate, which risks subjectifying students in redundant and unilateral ways. This paper suggests that geographic education and its spatialities can inform this debate with an alternative subjectification, by emphasising the students' capacity to construct their own criticism on the urban phenomena that they experience. It draws empirically from a place-based workshop conducted within a master's programme at the University of Florence, which aimed at exploring the students' sense of place through creative methods. Life charts, mental maps, urban diaries and short films, analysed together with textual material, showcase the complexity of sense of place: for students, visuality and affect contribute significantly to their feeling of alienation and its expression, but at the same time become instrumental to negotiating it by seeking a sense of belonging in the touristified and spectacularized city. When approached as "revealed" and "claimed" space, the spatialities creatively produced through the films prove that geographic education is capable of fostering the shaping of students as critical subjectivities, thus restoring the problematic subjectification performed by the studentification debate.</p> <p>Keywords: Studentification; sense of place; subjectivity; urban workshop; Florence</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-2">Introduction</hd> <p>Urban geographers have extensively researched the myriad of relationships between universities and urban space. The prevalence of tertiary education and the related mechanisms in the economic regeneration of (post-industrial) cities (Fernández-Esquinas & Pinto, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref1">14</reflink>]), together with the subsequent expansion of university spatialities, have led to a "marked increase of student populations and sociospatial concentrations of students" throughout urban space (Smith, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref2">37</reflink>], 1795). Critical scholarship, specifically, is dominated by the studentification debate, which provides a critical analysis of the increasingly significant role of universities in urban transformations. Being a facet of gentrification, and extending the latter's meaning (Smith & Holt, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref3">38</reflink>]), "studentification" connotes a variety of phenomena that transform urban space. These may vary from the depopulation of specific neighbourhoods (Sage et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref4">35</reflink>]) to the commodification of housing and subsequent segregation patterns (Smith & Hubbard, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref5">39</reflink>]; Smith et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref6">40</reflink>]); and from the consumption of exclusionary urban lifestyles and spatialities (He, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref7">17</reflink>]; Smith & Holt, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref8">38</reflink>]) to the involvement of students' spatialities in the wider urban capitalist restructurings generated by public or/and private interests (Cenere et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref9">6</reflink>]).</p> <p>This paper departs from the critique that the studentification debate risks subjectifying university students in redundant and unilateral ways; that is to say, by substantially ignoring students' capacity to construct and voice their own critical knowledge of the urban phenomena that they experience. It then addresses the following questions: what is the critical urban knowledge that university students can construct? In what ways can we, as practitioners in higher geographic education, facilitate this construction? How can we, as geography scholars, eventually respond to the limited subjectification process advanced by the studentification scholarship?</p> <p>Geographic education and the geographies of education are currently subject to considerable diversification, regarding both the "hows" and the "wheres" of educational practices. Concerning the former, the educational practice has now opened up to creative methods so as to allow learners to engage with geographic knowledge in more active, complex, and complete ways. Concerning the latter, spaces outside of the university classroom are being increasingly recognized for their capacity to enrich geographical learning through place and field-based education. It is the intersection between these less conventional "hows" and "wheres" that we contend can provide convincing responses to the aforementioned questions.</p> <p>A limited number of scholars have discussed creative methods applicable to geographical learning outside of the classroom, sharing as their common ground the mobilisation of other-than-textual, multi-sensorial, and affective tools during geographic fieldtrips. Phillips ([<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref10">31</reflink>]), together with his students, has used playful and situationist tools in order to document the visual, tactile and sonic qualities of their urban environment, while Golubchikov's ([<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref11">16</reflink>]) application of experiential and affective learning principles onto an unfamiliar urban fieldtrip has proved useful in developing the students' professional and politically attentive sense of place. More recently, starting from the students' own photographs, Burlingame ([<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref12">4</reflink>]) has facilitated them to explore and narrate place by considering multiple affective dimensions, such as nostalgia, "home" and sense of self, and imaginative experiences. Similarly, Engelmann ([<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref13">13</reflink>]) arranged a workshop at a rugby field where they engaged with the practices and the sculptures of the Aerocene artistic project, aiming to understand the affective, material, and sensual aspects of atmospheres.</p> <p>In this paper we connect to the works above, and attempt to enlarge the scope of their fields, both empirically and theoretically, with a two-fold aim: first, to showcase how a place-based creative educational practice can facilitate the production of critical urban knowledge for the students; and second, to create a dialogue with the studentification literature in order to restore student subjectivities as potentially critical ones. Our attempt to inform student geographies and the studentification debate with insights from geographies of education and geographic education, from the point of view of subjectification, echoes calls to expand student geographies by conceptualising cohortness in terms of student subject formation (Brown & Kraftl, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref14">3</reflink>]). Moreover, we position this attempt in line with recent developments advanced in this Journal regarding: the centrality of students' experiences and their active participation in learning practices and the reestablishment of geography as a "doing" discipline (McPhee, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref15">27</reflink>]); the potential of creative methods to enable student-centred teaching (Mroczek-Zulicka & Mokras-Grobowska, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref16">28</reflink>]); the intersection between place-based approaches and the students' own narratives (Marcus, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref17">25</reflink>]); and the bridging between theory and practice in the teaching of urban geography (Holgersen, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref18">18</reflink>]).</p> <p>We draw our empirics from a site-specific four-day workshop that we conducted in May 2023 within the international Master's programme in geography at the University of Florence, in Florence, Italy. The workshop aimed to creatively explore the students' sense of place within the urban, specifically centred around their individual and collective experiences of Florence, a city which is undergoing significant transformations linked mostly to touristification – an estimated eight million tourist arrivals per year makes Florence an emblematic case of urban overtourism worldwide (Loda et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref19">23</reflink>]; Romano et al., [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref20">34</reflink>]). The phenomenon is strongly characterised by an expanding catering sector at the expense of a more variegated retailscape, a transformation that has resulted in a restructuring of the entire historical centre in favour of touristic consumption and commodification, and to the detriment of residents (Loda et al., [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref21">22</reflink>]), thus further intensifying the existing segregation between central and peripheral neighbourhoods. Additionally, short-term rental platforms contribute to the pervasiveness of touristic spatialities and respective practices, limiting the affordable and adequate residential space for the local population (Celata et al., [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref22">5</reflink>]).</p> <p>Against this background, the workshop's primary aim was to put students in active relation with the city and its ongoing transformations, and their direct experience and negotiation of them. Life-charts, mental maps and urban diaries have been the primary methods employed to first, explore the students' experience of Florence and, second, to provide the material for the workshop's final creative products, namely, short films in which students reconstructed and expressed their sense of place.</p> <p>An intertextual analysis of a selection of the films, combined with the students' reflexive essays on the films as well as interviews that we conducted with them, reveals the complexity of their sense of place, characterised by a perceived risk of alienation. Through their visual and textual products, the students brought forward the visual and affective dimensions of alienation, while, at the same time, they engaged creatively with these very dimensions in order to claim their sense of belonging in an increasingly commodified and aestheticised urban setting. By combining their own experiences with geographical concepts discussed in class, the students constructed a positioned, theoretically informed, and experience-based criticism "from below".</p> <p>The next section provides the paper's conceptual framework, suggesting that the studentification debate is the academic space in which student subjectivities are produced problematically, and arguing that a response might come from geography education and its spatialities, followed by a description of the workshop's organisation and methodology. Subsequently, the empirical material is analysed showcasing the visual and affective dimensions in the expression, reconstruction, and negotiation of students' sense of place. In the discussion before the conclusions, we reflect on the critical spatialities that emerge in the students' works, as well as on the workshop's educational potentialities.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-3">Studentification as subjectification? The limits of the geographic debate on students and the...</hd> <p>Recognizing the importance of the studentification debate, this paper draws inspiration from scholars who stress the limitations of the "studentification" concept, and call for expanding its scope in order to include aspects beyond strictly, and only gentrification (Nakazawa, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref23">29</reflink>], Zasina et al., [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref24">43</reflink>]). One of these limitations, we emphasise, is the subjectification of students. The term subjectification signifies the dynamic process between an (ideological) apparatus and the therein situated subjects; the former produces dominant representations of the subject, and the latter produces representations of themselves. Dominant and own representations are in continuous dialogue with each other (Probyn, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref25">33</reflink>]). Hereby, we suggest that academia be considered as an apparatus that, through the various practices of knowledge production, produces dominant representations of the subjects it deals with. Put differently, we consider academia an "identifiable, discrete and organised" territory (Pile, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref26">32</reflink>], p. 208) where subjects are produced.</p> <p>In the studentification debate we identify two dominant approaches through which students are represented, and thus subjectified. The first is "consumption-oriented": it focuses on the role of middle-class habitus and distinctive cultural capital, acquired through consumption and lifestyle, and presents students as "active" agents that potentially participate in exclusionary urban geographies (e.g. Chatterton, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref27">7</reflink>]; He, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref28">17</reflink>]; Holton, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref29">19</reflink>]; Smith & Holt, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref30">38</reflink>]). The second approach is "production-oriented": it focuses on wide processes of spatial production, such as the provision of student housing through real estate investments and represents students as "passive" agents that become instrumentalized in processes of residential segregation and demographic change (e.g. Sage et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref31">35</reflink>]; Smith & Hubbard, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref32">39</reflink>]; Smith et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref33">40</reflink>]).</p> <p>In the case of Italy, a third tendency appears relevant, which performs a paternalistic subjectification. This has emerged particularly in the last two years, in the face of a growing mobilisation of university students against the rising living costs in major Italian cities such as Milan, Rome, Bologna, and Florence. The mobilisation gained visibility with the installation of tents in urban public spaces and by denouncing the excessively high rents of the private housing market, criticising the inadequate availability of public and subsidised student housing. In response to the students' claim, a large part of the public and the political prism, including the government, reacted with condescension and compassion: the camping students were primarily portrayed as victims and became instrumentalized to cater to specific political interests. Consequently, students have barely ever been represented as subjects capable of expressing their own opinions about the problem or suggesting alternatives.</p> <p>This third, context-specific form of subjectivization allows us to stress a further limitation of the studentification debate: it might overlook geographical contexts in which students are neither "passive" nor "active" agents in the urban capitalist transformations but experience increasingly limited urban space due to the same transformations. The students' discourses and practices in these contexts reveal that they can be agents that claim their right to the (student) city. Together with colleagues that have highlighted the particularities of secondary Italian cities concerning studentification (Cenere et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref34">6</reflink>], for the case study of Turin), we suggest that the aforementioned reasoning further stresses the need to expand the reflection on spatial dynamics concerning the relationship between students and cities.</p> <p>Although geographers have recently criticised studentification research for its excessive focus on students' agency, which risks to obscure wider capitalist processes (Cenere et al., [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref35">6</reflink>]), we suspect that this focus is not excessive but conceptually too unilateral and methodologically too narrow, where: the potential positive aspects of the students' agency within the ongoing urban transformations remain overlooked; and the presented agency rarely includes the voices and practices of students themselves – let alone those coming directly from the spatialities of education.</p> <p>To restore student subjectivities in the literature, presenting them as "pivotal actors" instead of "passive bystanders" (Holton & Riley, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref36">20</reflink>], p. 62), means to restore the ways in which students are subjectified within the spatialities of teaching and research. Geography education, in terms of its spatialities, practices, and research, can contribute significantly to this project when put in dialogue with the studentification debates. To argue so, we align with scholars who illustrate the potential of geographic education to foster the shaping of student subjectivities in ways that can be restorative to the disciplinary subjectification discussed above. For example, Schlemper et al. ([<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref37">36</reflink>]) show how the inclusion of students' geographies into education, and the direct relation within a local context, can contribute to the development of a critical sense of self and place. Similarly, Elwood ([<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref38">12</reflink>]) stresses the importance of centering geographic pedagogic practice around students' experiences to promote critical thinking. Lupatini ([<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref39">24</reflink>]) argues that by including action research teaching, and by focusing teaching on critical thinking as well as the acquisition of knowledge, geography educators can promote a streamlined formation of students into citizens (also Biesta, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref40">1</reflink>]; Cheng & Holton, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref41">9</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-4">"I live in Florence": the logic and methods of the place-based urban workshop</hd> <p>The workshop "I live in Florence" was organised as a joint conclusion of two courses of the Master's degree in <emph>Geography, Spatial Management, Heritage for International Cooperation</emph> at the University of Florence: <emph>Social and Cultural Geography</emph>, which introduced and problematized the socio-cultural dimensions of space and place; and <emph>Urban Geography</emph>, which addressed the tangible ongoing transformations of contemporary cities. The program is strongly international, with sixteen different nationalities in the 2023 cohort, thirteen of which are non-EU. Twenty-five students (including Erasmus) participated in the workshop, echoing the educational challenges but also opportunities of the social, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the internationalisation of education (Fortuijn, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref42">15</reflink>]). On the one hand, not all students possessed the same familiarity or knowledge of the city, despite all residing in Florence for at least six months. On the other hand, this diversity enriched the group with varied positionalities, experiences and perspectives of a local context that was common to everyone. Pertaining to the workshop objectives, it enabled us to delve into how sense of place is shaped even among temporary residents, and how they perceive their connection to the city.</p> <p>The workshop took place over four full-day sessions (May 23, 24, 30, and 31, 2023) at the <emph>Casa del Popolo</emph> (in English "The people's home"; hereafter CdP) in San Niccolò, a self-managed recreational club located in the homonymous neighbourhood of central Florence. The choice of this venue was supported by previous research of the <emph>Laboratory of Social Geography</emph> of our University, which addressed neighbourhood associations as essential social infrastructures for grassroot socio-political organisation, and for promoting neighbourhood-based political and recreational activities (Loda et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref43">23</reflink>]). The importance of this space becomes particularly evident when its wider local context is considered: the CdP is the last remaining self-managed neighbourhood association in Florence's UNESCO area, where the spaces for non-commodified socialisation are being dramatically reduced.</p> <p>The decision to leave the university classroom and immerse the students within urban space was inspired by the idea that place-based education not only promotes the students' greater active engagement but also mobilises the local territory as an active component of the learning process, instead of merely a backdrop to passive teaching (Yemini et al., [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref44">42</reflink>]). The selection of the CdP was key to achieving the latter. Approaching learning contexts as relational (Bonastra & Jové, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref45">2</reflink>]), we selected the CdP precisely in order to favour the creation of a learning context that shapes relations at multiple levels.</p> <p>Firstly, the informal and non-academic character of the place allowed for the students to relate differently both with the entire group (including both learners and facilitators), and with the learning process, which acquired less rigid and more liberatory and playful qualities (see Phillips, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref46">31</reflink>]). Secondly, due to its political character and strategic position in the city, the CdP functioned as a learning context that shaped relations with the wider urban context: the volunteers described how the CdP is positioned within, and impacted by, the ongoing transformations of central Florence, as well as how the place seeks to resist. Constructing a situated critique of the urban condition, the volunteers' interventions revealed that the establishment of spaces for socialisation and community building is regarded as a pivotal axis of intervention aimed at revitalising Florence's historical centre, advancing its role as a space for community development.</p> <p>Facilitating the exploration and expression of the students' sense of place, life charts, mental maps, urban diaries, and short films were the major tools. Reconnecting to the works that discuss creative learning methods outside of the classroom, we would like to stress that the selection and combination of creative methods were instrumental to fostering critical thinking. While some of these works refer explicitly to the relationship between the employed methods and the development of critical thinking (Burlingame, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref47">4</reflink>]; Golubchikov, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref48">16</reflink>]), a lacuna can be identified regarding how this relationship is conceptualised and afterwards practised. To fill this lacuna, the workshop's methodological design drew inspiration from McIntosh's thesis, which brings reflexivity to centre stage, as key to reaching what he calls "critical creativity" in learning (McIntosh, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref49">26</reflink>]): the workshop paid careful attention to developing a reflexive basis on which students could explore and express their sense of place using creative tools.</p> <p>The first day was aimed at emphasising the students' different subjectivities, allowing for the group's diversity to emerge, and introducing the transversal idea and practice of reflexivity. Drawing life charts was the key method. Life charts are considered useful tools to bring to the forefront the role of memory in the formation of the self, and to facilitate the expression of different subjective narratives and their embodiments (Thomson & Holland, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref50">41</reflink>]). By drawing their own life charts, the students were asked to be auto-reflective, creating visual narratives of the events and turning points that they consider important in shaping their subjectivities. Furthermore, life charts allowed us to immediately introduce the temporal dimension into the spatial one and to emphasise that time and space are intertwined in the shaping of sense of place. Recognizing that "thinking about place stems from personal standpoints" (Marcus, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref51">25</reflink>], p. 75), life charts have visually established the students' personal standpoints and have moreover introduced reflexivity in embodied ways. The diversity of the visual products is representative of the diversity of the ways in which students have selected to put reflexivity into practice, to integrate the past into their positionings, and to narrate their individual subject formations (Figure 1).</p> <p>Graph: Figure 1. Examples of life charts. Upper chart: visualising time in subject formation. Lower chart: visualising events in subject formation. Authors' picture, courtesy of the creators.</p> <p>Afterwards, the life charts were used as elicitation material for the students to conduct peer-to-peer semi-structured interviews in couples, interrogating one another on their subject formations and thus revealing further nuances. Finally, each group presented their results to the class. The gradual opening up of the scale from the individual (designing personal life charts) to the dual (conducting peer-to-peer interviews), and eventually to the collective (presenting the results to the group) was important for us in order to emphasise the importance of both subjectivity and collectivity, and the interrelation of the two within the educational context.</p> <p>The second day aimed at engaging explicitly with the spatial dimension and the city of Florence through mental maps. Peer-to-peer interviews were repeated, this time using the mental maps as elicitation material after which the results were presented in couples. After the exhibition of the materials (Figure 2) and a round of reflections, the group revisited the mental maps collectively and approached them by intersecting different personal narratives of the same places. The day concluded with the introduction of the urban diary task, which functioned as the bridge between the workshop's two blocks.</p> <p>Graph: Figure 2. The exhibition of students' mental maps outside of the CdP. Authors' picture.</p> <p>During that week, each student kept personal diaries of Florence to document practices, discourses, emotions, performances, and movements in urban space. Besides pure documentation, given the intrinsically reflexive character of diaries (Dummer et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref52">11</reflink>]), the major aim of the tool was to continue developing the students' reflexive capacity, this time with particular attention to urban space. To facilitate a spatially sensitive focus in the diaries, the students' notes were structured in terms of places, routes, and relations.</p> <p>On the third day, the students were divided into groups of four to five persons, and extracts of the diaries were shared and discussed within each group. Mental maps were then reused to locate the extracts each group had selected and devised, depending on the potential of the extracts to narrate their own experiences of Florence. After having selected and located them on the maps definitively, each group created their own urban storytelling by combining and modifying these extracts.</p> <p>On the fourth and final day, the students were introduced to visual methodologies, specifically filming practices. With our facilitation, each group then elaborated on their extracts to compose storyboards and scripts for films, between three to five minutes long, that would narrate their sense of place (Table 1).</p> <p>Table 1. Titles and plot summaries of the short films created by the students.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><td>Group</td><td>Title</td><td>Plot summary</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>A way to the university</td><td>In their daily routines, five international students experience different mobility trajectories that all intersect at the university, which becomes the place of a shared sense of place and belonging for all.</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>A day in the life of an international student</td><td>In a video call, three students connect to the little daughter of one of them, who lives abroad. Florence is narrated virtually and the screen is the site where the conviviality of public and private spaces intersect with the emotional geographies of a distant mother-daughter relationship, constructing the sense of place.</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Home away from home</td><td>Three characters arrive in Florence to live as students. In a constant search for identification, they construct their sense of place in personal ways, either reconnecting to their communities of origin located in the city or appropriating the beauty of the urban environment.</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Sounds of Florence</td><td>A student and a worker experience alienation and anonymity in central Florence. A white mask covers the characters' faces every time they cross the overcrowded touristic parts. In their search for personal physical and symbolic place, they end up in a residual green space on the riverside, where eventually the masks are removed.</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Three Dimensional city</td><td>The experience of three characters moving to/in the touristic city is determined by a sense of anxiety, oppression and detachment. When the three finally meet in a non-commercialised location, they negotiate these senses together to construct a shared sense of belonging.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Table 1. Titles and plot summaries of the five films produced by the students.</p> <p>Groups had two weeks in order to film, edit, and submit their films, together with their scripts as well as individual reflexive essays (see Golubchikov, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref53">16</reflink>]) in which students were to comment on three aspects: the geographical concepts that derived from the two courses emerged in their films; the ways in which the workshop's methods contributed to creating the films and understanding their sense of place; and the aspects of Florence that are present in the film. The following section analyses the students' products, focusing precisely on visuality and affect.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-5">The visuality and affect of sense of place: students between alienation and belonging</hd> <p>The analysed visual and textual material describes how students' sense of place is strongly determined by a commonly perceived risk of alienation. Their sense of place was expressed in direct relation to ongoing urban transformations, such as touristification, which have been addressed in the <emph>Urban Geography</emph> course through empirical research conducted and presented by the professors. In their expression, students creatively mobilised geographical concepts introduced during the <emph>Social and Cultural Geography</emph> course. For the economy of the paper, analysis is limited to two of them as constitutive elements of sense of place, visuality and affect, mobilised creatively by the students to reconstruct a situated, experience-based criticism of the current urban condition as well as to articulate their own ways to negotiate this condition. Words and phrases in quotation marks come from the videos, reflexive notes, or the interviews.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-6">"Is this the city of beauty?": the visuality of sense of place</hd> <p>Like in the overly aestheticized and spectacularized city, the gaze plays a significant role in relating to the urban environment, portrayed also in the videos. Visuality is often used to comment critically on the outdistancing effect of the visual relationship established in central Florence: the subject needs to distance itself from the environment so that the beauty can be appreciated. In terms of alienation, in the students' accounts it seems that such a fetishization of the visual engagement, and of the visual pleasure as the predominant way in which Florence is lived and performed, gives more space to the subjectivity of the tourist and less space for other subjectivities to be identified within the city. The arguably exceptional aesthetic of Florence is therefore put into question in order to highlight its instrumentalization in transforming the centre city into a place of consumption, visually or otherwise. "Is <emph>this</emph> the city of beauty?" the main character of the <emph>Sounds of Florence</emph> film wonders while gazing at the artworks of the famous Piazza della Signoria, floating above the mass of tourists.</p> <p>The subject-city distance and the fetishization of visuality was criticised by the students for promoting a sense of superficiality. In their own words, Florence can be described as "Cinecittà, that is made out of cartons and there is no city behind what you see". Evidently, the ongoing aestheticization linked to the touristification of the city leads to "a sacrificial ritual of Florence's public space, [which] flattens out the three-dimensional living of the city: from an environment to be experienced with all the senses, to a framed picture to look at". Therefore, the city is deprived of the fully corporeal engagement with everyday life, becoming a space where touristic performances can be staged and watched —"the city as both the scenery and the screenplay".</p> <p>Nevertheless, at the same time the students proved to be responsive to the alienating effects of visuality by negotiating it creatively. In <emph>The Three-dimensional City</emph>, an alternative visual relation to the city is proposed, which advances the students' sense of belonging and their need to reconstruct it. Students transformed visuality into a dynamic perspective, so that the insideness/outsideness antithesis inherent to the perceived risk of alienation is expressed. The students stressed the transformative possibilities of visuality by illustrating how the change of perspective is essential to the "metamorphosis of both the observed and the observer". When perspective became central and instrumental to the visual narrative, the feelings of alienation were expressed. If the distance imposed by the touristification's ocularcentric aesthetic becomes a barrier to constructing a sense of place based on belonging, then students negotiated this distance by suggesting changes in perspective.</p> <p>For instance, an iconic touristic location, which represents precisely the panoramic gazing over the Florentine cityscape, becomes the starting point of the change of perspective suggested by students. From Piazzale Michelangelo, one sees the city from above; this is "the perfect, <emph>distant</emph> image of Florence [...] you don't see the persons who live in the city, they are invisible, distant". Indeed, the touristic gaze performed there transforms "the Tuscan capital into a miniature". As students cannot identify with the city through this faraway perspective, they suggested a purposeful move to modify the perspective: "The movement <emph>towards the city</emph> ... [it feels] like a giant entering the city, the sense of belonging has a different value". Capable of destabilising the "tourist gaze" through creativity (Phillips, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref54">31</reflink>], p. 624), the students did not negate the visual engagement with the city but instead suggested their own visual engagement that opens up possibilities for negotiating alienation and builds meaningful relationships with the city.</p> <p>"From the moment I do not see the city anymore, I am inside of it, I feel part of it – I am so much a part of it that I cannot see it anymore", one of the creators commented explaining the downward move from Piazzale Michelangelo. By suggesting their own visual relation to the city, the students presented their criticism of the perceived risk of alienation and sought to construct a sense of place based on belonging. They questioned and contrasted the dominant visual relationality as dictated by the city centre's aestheticization and spectacularisation. When the distant touristic perspective from far and above is replaced by a gradual perspective from below and from inside, students suggest a more complete integration of the self into the urban landscape (Figure 3). Below we see how this integration encompasses the affective dimensions of sense of place.</p> <p>Graph: Figure 3. A change of perspective: students immersed into the urban landscape on the Arno's riverside. Source: three-dimensional city, 2023.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-7">"I really need some space": the affect of sense of place</hd> <p>The students' critical visual commentary is telling of how the increasing aestheticization of Florence results in a perceived risk of alienation, and how this aestheticization imposes a specific visual relation to the urban environment. Yet, they also mobilised creative visual methods to be able to go beyond the visual and to propose that the alienation in the touristified and aestheticized city not only relates to a specific visual relation to the city, but also acquires remarkable material, multisensorial, and eventually affective characteristics.</p> <p>The massive presence and overconcentration of human bodies in the historical centre results in a perceived lack of physical space for many students. "At the Duomo," a student explained, "your mere presence becomes an obstacle to whoever wants to cross the area; each one becomes the obstacle for the other". Remarkably, many students described outdoor public space as indoor space, highlighting the claustrophobic qualities it can possess. As bodies overwhelm Florence's public space, they shape an affective experience that extends from the qualities of physical space to the construction and perception of personal space, unveiling the material dimensions of self-space identification.</p> <p>"It is difficult to walk in certain spaces without being affected by others' personal space," a student commented, while another one noted: "the apathy of seeing the Duomo surrounded by mind boggling masses results in a dissociation from the places that you inhabit". The corporeal experience of urban space appears essential to the identification of personal space within urban space. In order to achieve a sense of belonging, a student reflected,</p> <p>People need places to hang on to. For instance, if you hang on to the Duomo square and you feel that it is yours and you see thousands of people walking through every day, then people are like stepping on what you are hanging on to, and it is gone, it is gone.</p> <p>Nevertheless, activating their agency, the students creatively used the materialities of bodies and their excessive supply to showcase that the lack of physical space contributes to alienation. An illustrative example is found in <emph>The Sounds of Florence</emph> where a white mask is used as the central element that, by being added onto the students' bodies, allows them to express the impact of the exaggerated presence of bodies on them (Figure 4).</p> <p>Graph: Figure 4. The white mask surrounded by people in the central Piazza del Duomo. Source: sounds of Florence film, 2023.</p> <p>In the film, two characters – a student and a worker – put on a white mask every time they are about to cross the overwhelmingly crowded city centre. For them, the mask signifies the loss of connection with urban space, and the sense of anonymity that they might feel while experiencing it.</p> <p>Furthermore, the mask as an additive layer that deprives the students' faces of their unique, identifiable characteristics, becomes dirtier and dirtier while the protagonists cross urban space, thus symbolising the cumulative impact that lack of physical and personal space might have on perceived alienation. At the end of the video, and after both having stated "I really need some space", the two characters end up meeting at a green space on the riverside void of people, where they finally remove their masks, performing a state, space, and sense of belonging.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-8">Fostering critical student subjectivities through "revealed" and "claimed space"</hd> <p>In this part we finally revisit the students' visual products from an educational perspective to support the concept that geography education and its geographies can advance a different subjectification of university students within scholarship in student geographies. The aim is primarily to showcase that the workshop has facilitated the critical engagement with urban spatialities that hold an important social and political role in urban life and, secondly, to reflect on the methods and on their potentiality to foster critical student subjectivities. Regarding the former, the students' engagement with creative learning methods resulted in a two-fold critical typology of urban space that consists of what we can term as "revealed space" and "claimed space". "Revealed space" refers to that experiential urban space that is revealed and creatively reconstructed by the students, and which allows for a wider criticism of the local, and not only, urban condition. By emphasising how the touristifying, commodifying and aestheticising transformations have a multidimensional affective impact on urban sense of place, students offer a fresh and innovative perspective on how overtourism, and the related spectacularisation processes, conflict with the experiences of dwelling in the city.</p> <p>Indeed, revealed space brings forward the importance of space and of the multidimensional spatial perception in the construction of a sense of belonging: the lack of spaces to identify with leads to a collective sense of alienation that expands far beyond symbolic and physical exclusion to include often-ignored affective, emotional, and multi-sensorial dimensions. At the same time, students displayed how space can also offer multiple possibilities for promoting a sense of belonging.</p> <p>On the one hand, this can happen in non-commodified spaces, or those that are commonly perceived as ignored, abandoned or, that generally escape the dominant narratives of the city; there one can experiment and develop a personal multisensorial relationship with the city. On the other hand, especially for international students, the city might offer opportunities for contrasting the sense of being out of place, at least in the beginning of their stay, to gradually building a sense of belonging. An Erasmus student stated, for example, "although packed with people and thus a bit stressful, on Ponte Vecchio is where I might hear my language and feel more at home." For others who might not have similar familiarities to their context of origin, having a cappuccino at a fancy bar in the heart of the city might be important in constructing a sense of comfort, and the recognition of beauty – living in a city with such a celebrated and recognized aesthetical value might be of merit for some students, particularly international.</p> <p>"Claimed space" contends that the students, by expressing the feeling of being alienated and excluded from the city, are indirectly asserting their claim onto urban spaces of belonging, as their right to feel a part of the city itself. Significant is the fact that, in this claim, the historic centre is the focal point of students' attention in most of the reflections that have emerged from the workshop. In fact, although not all the students live in the historical centre, it appears to be the convergence point not only for their daily mobility (attending university courses located within the UNESCO area), but also as a symbolic centre through which their experience of the entire city is mediated. The sense of alienation arises from the frequenting of the historic centre and the competition with other social groups that use it. Additionally, it is seen as the focal point of a touristic, monoculture urban development model that heavily impacts not just the city's aesthetic environment but also its dwelling possibilities.</p> <p>An attentive reading of the students' critical interpretation of the urban experience allows for the recommendations of implementing wider interventions to address the most disruptive effects of tourism-induced urban change. When students report a lack of space for personal and collective identification, they also indicate paths to city officials, academia, and urban practitioners towards an urban space open to establishing a robust sense of place for those who might not be considered strictly as long-term residents, yet aspire to experience the city meaningfully, such as students. Interpreted as "claimed space," the urban spatialities constructed by the students, claim the symbolic and material centrality of the city by whoever identifies themselves with the city in essential, other than consumption-focused ways. The choice to use the "worker" and the "international student" as the main figures of the <emph>Sounds of Florence</emph> might be representative of such an essential identification.</p> <p>The students' critical-creative expression of sense of place confirms research that has shown how places that favour grassroot socialisation and are often ignored by the local administration in the Florentine city centre are important in promoting a sense of participation and belonging for residents (Chiesi & Costa, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref55">10</reflink>]; Loda, Puttilli & Tartaglia, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref56">23</reflink>]). Consequently, support for these places should be one of the main areas of intervention, alongside strong action-taking decisions in the housing and retail sectors, since they create possibilities for an alternative and socio-politically transformative urban dwelling, as well as potentially educationally transformative in our case: "a free place, where one breathes freedom despite being in a city where restrictions are very strong", a student described the CdP.</p> <p>In this regard, the University can also play a leading role. Indeed, the workshop proved to be an exemplary case study regarding the potentialities of place-based, creative, and active educational methods to foster critical student subjectivities. First, it demonstrated that it is key to exit the university classroom to construct a relational educational environment that can facilitate a positioned critical thinking. In fact, place-based approaches facilitate the construction of interpersonal relationships, which are fundamental to a learning process based on active engagement at both individual and collective levels. These extracts from two interviews are illustrative of precisely this:</p> <p>The bonds amongst my colleagues were much stronger [at the CdP] than at the university. There we already know what to expect: attending a class, grabbing a coffee before and after, hanging out in the courtyard, chatting about things... Instead, [at the CdP] we spent the whole day together, sharing some more intimate moments. Everything was natural, even sharing meals, which is not a small thing. I felt much more connected with some in two weeks than in the entire year.</p> <p>I don't know if it is the fact that we were all there having the same experience, all studying geography, all living in Florence, from different backgrounds, but the workshop brought the group together; we were all sharing an identity.</p> <p>In terms of methods, the creative engagement with geographic concepts outside of the classroom contributed to a different learning experience, in which students could express their subjectivities freely, contributing to knowledge production in their personal ways:</p> <p>Tools that are not as "cold" as a questionnaire you have to fill out but something you draw with your own pace as you wish, with the colours you want [...] it's a very soft approach that, to me, helps to open up because we all have very different lives and so there are things we have to share which we can do on a blank sheet. I didn't feel pressure.</p> <p>Last but not least, the efficiency of this methodological approach becomes evident in the students' spatial perception and sensitivity after the workshop: "I now have a reading of space that is more informed. I am now more conscious in asking: what is this place <emph>really</emph> about?"</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-9">Conclusions</hd> <p>Departing from the conceptualization that the studentification debate in geography runs the risk of subjectifying university students in limiting ways, this paper advances the idea that geography education, together with its geographies and practices, can become key to restoring the limited student subjectivities as potentially critical ones. Empirically it is founded on a place-based geography workshop conducted at a self-managed neighbourhood association in the historical centre of Florence, Italy, and that mobilised creative methods to explore and express the students' urban sense of place. Learners were involved in the production of life charts, mental maps, urban diaries, short films as well as other complementary textual material, in a process of active-learning centred on the student's subjectivities and reflexivity. The results highlight the importance of visuality and affect in the shaping of a sense of place, strongly defined by a perceived risk of alienation in the overtouristified and spectacularized city; yet at the same time, they unveil the students' capacity to engage creatively with visuality and affect to negotiate alienation by constructing a sense of belonging. Interpreting the urban spatialities constructed by the workshop participants in terms of "revealed" and "claimed space" becomes important to identifying students as potentially critical subjectivities.</p> <p>Throughout the workshop overall, the students proved to be capable of enriching our knowledge of the urban condition, challenging taken for granted notions that dictate how we experience cities and how cities are governed. When this critical knowledge is taken into consideration by local stakeholders and applied in urban policy making, it can create new and meaningful links between university students and the local communities (Chatterton, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref57">8</reflink>]; Paolo Russo & Sans, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref58">30</reflink>]; also; Hubbard, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref59">21</reflink>]). We believe that geography educators play a key role in facilitating these links in a three-fold way: by creating space for the students' experiences inside and outside of the classroom; by mobilising these experiences in order to theoretically construct informed urban knowledge from below, eventually bridging the theory-practice gap in education (Holgersen, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref60">18</reflink>]; Marcus, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref61">25</reflink>]; McPhee, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref62">27</reflink>]); and by taking advantage of the "third role" of universities (Chatterton, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref63">8</reflink>]) in order to bring this knowledge into policy making and to society more broadly.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-10">Acknowledgments</hd> <p>We would like to thank Prof. Mirella Loda, who has coordinated the course and co-organized the workshop together with the authors; the Casa del Popolo San Niccolò for their generous support and hospitality; all the students for their priceless participation and engagement during the activities; and finally Laila Zahidi for her support in proofreading the final manuscript.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-11">Authorship contribution statement</hd> <p>Panos Bourlessas: Conceptualization, data collection, analysis, methodology, workshop coordination and facilitation, writing, review and editing. Matteo Puttilli: Conceptualization, data collection, analysis, methodology, workshop coordination and facilitation, writing, review and editing. Both Authors declare that they have equally contributed to the writing of the entire paper.</p> <hd id="AN0183416445-12">Disclosure statement</hd> <p>No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).</p> <ref id="AN0183416445-13"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref40" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Biesta, G. (2012). Becoming public: Public pedagogy, citizenship and the public sphere. Social and Cultural Geography, 13 (7), 683 – 697. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2012.723736</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref45" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Bonastra, Q., & Jové, G. (2022). Rethinking learning contexts through the concept of atmosphere and through contemporary art. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 46 (3), 383 – 402. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.1902959</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib3" idref="ref14" type="bt">3</bibl> <bibtext> Brown, G., & Kraftl, P. (2019). Theorising cohortness: (Mis)fitting into student geographies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 44 (3), 616 – 632. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12302</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib4" idref="ref12" type="bt">4</bibl> <bibtext> Burlingame, K. (2023). Learning by feeling: excursions into the affective landscape. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 47 (5), 706 – 718. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.1977917</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib5" idref="ref22" type="bt">5</bibl> <bibtext> Celata, F., Capineri, C., & Romano, A. (2020). A room with a (re)view. Short-term rentals, digital reputation and the uneven spatiality of platform-mediated tourism. Geoforum, 112, 129 – 138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.04.007</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib6" idref="ref9" type="bt">6</bibl> <bibtext> Cenere, S., Mangione, E., Santangelo, M., & Servillo, L. (2023). Setting up a University City. Geographies of exclusion in North Turin. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 114 (5), 400 – 414. https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12550</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib7" idref="ref27" type="bt">7</bibl> <bibtext> Chatterton, P. (1999). University students and city centres – the formation of exclusive geographies: The case of Bristol, UK. Geoforum, 30 (2), 117 – 133. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0016-7185(98)00028-1</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib8" idref="ref57" type="bt">8</bibl> <bibtext> Chatterton, P. (2000). The cultural role of universities in the community: Revisiting the university—community debate. Environment & Planning A: Economy & Space, 32 (1), 165 – 181. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3243</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib9" idref="ref41" type="bt">9</bibl> <bibtext> Cheng, Y. E., & Holton, M. (2019). Geographies of citizenship in higher education: An introduction. Area, 51 (4), 613 – 617. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12527</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Chiesi, L., & Costa, P. (2022). Small green spaces in dense cities: An exploratory study of perception and use in Florence, Italy. Sustainability, 14 (7), 4105. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074105</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Dummer, T. J. B., Cook, I. G., Parker, S. L., Barrett, G. A., & Hull, A. P. (2008). Promoting and assessing 'deep learning' in geography fieldwork: An evaluation of reflective field diaries. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 32 (3), 459 – 479. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260701728484</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Elwood, S. A. (2004). Experiential learning, spatial practice, and critical urban geographies. The Journal of Geography, 103 (2), 55 – 63. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221340408978576</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Engelmann, S. H. (2024). Floating in space: Teaching atmosphere in human geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 48 (2), 245 – 265. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2023.2228541</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Fernández-Esquinas, M., & Pinto, H. (2014). The role of universities in urban regeneration: Reframing the analytical approach. European Planning Studies, 22 (7), 1462 – 1483. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2013.791967</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Fortuijn, J. D. (2002). Internationalising learning and teaching: A European experience. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 26 (3), 263 – 273. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309826022000019855</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Golubchikov, O. (2015). Negotiating critical geographies through a "feel-trip": experiential, affective and critical learning in engaged fieldwork. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 39 (1), 143 – 157. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2014.1003800</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> He, S. (2015). Consuming urban living in 'villages in the city': Studentification in Guangzhou, China. Urban Studies, 52 (15), 2849 – 2873. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098014543703</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Holgersen, S. (2021). How to incorporate theory in (urban) field trips: The built environment as concrete abstraction. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 45 (3), 361 – 379. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2020.1833317</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Holton, M. (2016). The geographies of UK university halls of residence: examining students' embodiment of social capital. Children's Geographies, 14 (1), 63 – 76. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2014.979134</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Holton, M., & Riley, M. (2013). Student geographies: Exploring the diverse geographies of students and higher education. Geography Compass, 7 (1), 61 – 74. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12013</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Hubbard, P. (2008). Regulating the social impacts of studentification: a Loughborough case study. Environment & Planning A: Economy & Space, 40 (2), 323 – 341. https://doi.org/10.1068/a396</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Loda, M., Bonati, S., & Puttilli, M. (2020). History to eat. The foodification of the historic centre of Florence. Cities, 103, 102746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102746</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Loda, M., Puttilli, M., & Tartaglia, M. (2022). Il centro storico di Firenze nel dopo Covid 19. Università degli Studi di Firenze.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Lupatini, M. (2019). Controversies on public space management projects in geography teaching to educate pupils as dynamic citizens. Area, 51 (4), 653 – 661. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12523</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Marcus, A. P. (2023). Using "autogeography," sense of place and place-based approaches in the pedagogy of geographic thought. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 47 (1), 71 – 84. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.1991290</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> McIntosh, P. (2010). Action research and reflective practice. Creative and visual methods to facilitate reflection and learning. Routledge.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> McPhee, S. R. (2022). Advocating for blended pedagogy as a shift to more holistic inclusive geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 46 (4), 495 – 506. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.1957802</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Mroczek-Żulicka, A., & Mokras-Grabowska, J. (2021). Creative approach to tourism through creative approach to didactics. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 45 (1), 20 – 46. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2020.1797652</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Nakazawa, T. (2017). Expanding the scope of studentification studies. Geography Compass, 11 (1), e12300. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12300</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Paolo Russo, A., & Sans, A. A. (2009). Student communities and landscapes of creativity: How Venice — 'the World's most Touristed City' — is changing. European Urban and Regional Studies, 16 (2), 161 – 175. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776409102189</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Phillips, R. (2015). Playful and multi-sensory fieldwork: seeing, hearing and touching New York. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 39 (4), 617 – 629. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2015.1084496</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Pile, S. (2008). Where is the subject? Geographical imaginations and spatializing subjectivity. Subjectivity, 23 (1), 206 – 218. https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2008.9</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Probyn, E. (2002). The spatial imperative of subjectivity. In K. Anderson, S. Pile, & M. Domosh (Eds.), Handbook of cultural geography (pp. 290 – 299). Sage.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Romano, A., Capineri, C., & Bonini, T. (2023). Interfacing the space of flows and the space of places in the platform society: ten years of Airbnb in Florence. Rivista geografica italiana, 2 (2), 61 – 81. https://doi.org/10.3280/rgioa2-2023oa15923</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Sage, J., Smith, D., & Hubbard, P. (2012). The rapidity of studentification and population change: There goes the (Student)hood. Population, Space and Place, 18 (5), 597 – 613. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.690</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Schlemper, M. B., Stewart, V. C., Shetty, S., & Czajkowski, K. (2018). Including students' geographies in geography education: Spatial narratives, citizen mapping, and social justice. Theory & Research in Social Education, 46 (4), 603 – 641. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2018.1427164</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Smith, D. P. (2009). 'Student geographies', urban restructuring, and the expansion of higher education. Environment & Planning A: Economy & Space, 41 (8), 1795 – 1804. https://doi.org/10.1068/a42257</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Smith, D. P., & Holt, L. (2007). Studentification and 'apprentice' gentrifiers within Britain's provincial towns and cities: Extending the meaning of gentrification. Environment & Planning A: Economy & Space, 39 (1), 142 – 161. https://d oi.org/ 10.1068/a38476</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Smith, D. P., & Hubbard, P. (2014). The segregation of educated youth and dynamic geographies of studentification. Area, 46 (1), 92 – 100. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12054</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Smith, D. P., Sage, J., & Balsdon, S. (2014). The geographies of studentification: 'here, there and everywhere'? Geography, 99 (3), 116 – 127. https://doi.org/10.1080/00167487.2014.12094405</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Thomson, R., & Holland, J. (2005). Thanks for the memory: memory books as a methodological resource in biographical research. Qualitative Research, 5 (2), 201 – 219. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794105050835</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Yemini, M., Engel, L., & Ben Simon, A. (2023). Place-based education – a systematic review of literature. Educational Review, 1 – 21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2023.2177260</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Zasina, J., Mangione, E., & Santangelo, M. (2023). Nuancing student geographies: studentscapes in post-industrial cities. Urban Geography, 44 (1), 105 – 127. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.1969142</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Panos Bourlessas and Matteo Puttilli</p> <p>Reported by Author; Author</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref1"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib37" firstref="ref2"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib38" firstref="ref3"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib35" firstref="ref4"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib39" firstref="ref5"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib40" firstref="ref6"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib31" firstref="ref10"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl9" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref11"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl10" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref13"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl11" bibid="bib27" firstref="ref15"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl12" bibid="bib28" firstref="ref16"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl13" bibid="bib25" firstref="ref17"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl14" bibid="bib18" firstref="ref18"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl15" bibid="bib23" firstref="ref19"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl16" bibid="bib34" firstref="ref20"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl17" bibid="bib22" firstref="ref21"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl18" bibid="bib29" firstref="ref23"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl19" bibid="bib43" firstref="ref24"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl20" bibid="bib33" firstref="ref25"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl21" bibid="bib32" firstref="ref26"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl22" bibid="bib19" firstref="ref29"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl23" bibid="bib20" firstref="ref36"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl24" bibid="bib36" firstref="ref37"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl25" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref38"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl26" bibid="bib24" firstref="ref39"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl27" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref42"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl28" bibid="bib42" firstref="ref44"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl29" bibid="bib26" firstref="ref49"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl30" bibid="bib41" firstref="ref50"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl31" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref52"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl32" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref55"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl33" bibid="bib30" firstref="ref58"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl34" bibid="bib21" firstref="ref59"></nolink>
Header DbId: eric
DbLabel: ERIC
An: EJ1465888
AccessLevel: 3
PubType: Academic Journal
PubTypeId: academicJournal
PreciseRelevancyScore: 0
IllustrationInfo
Items – Name: Title
  Label: Title
  Group: Ti
  Data: 'Is 'This' the City of Beauty?': Facilitating Critical Student Subjectivities through a Creative Place-Based Urban Geography Workshop in Florence, Italy
– Name: Language
  Label: Language
  Group: Lang
  Data: English
– Name: Author
  Label: Authors
  Group: Au
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Panos+Bourlessas%22">Panos Bourlessas</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Matteo+Puttilli%22">Matteo Puttilli</searchLink>
– Name: TitleSource
  Label: Source
  Group: Src
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Journal+of+Geography+in+Higher+Education%22"><i>Journal of Geography in Higher Education</i></searchLink>. 2025 49(1):18-35.
– Name: Avail
  Label: Availability
  Group: Avail
  Data: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
– Name: PeerReviewed
  Label: Peer Reviewed
  Group: SrcInfo
  Data: Y
– Name: Pages
  Label: Page Count
  Group: Src
  Data: 18
– Name: DatePubCY
  Label: Publication Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2025
– Name: TypeDocument
  Label: Document Type
  Group: TypDoc
  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Descriptive
– Name: Audience
  Label: Education Level
  Group: Audnce
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Higher+Education%22">Higher Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Postsecondary+Education%22">Postsecondary Education</searchLink>
– Name: Subject
  Label: Descriptors
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Human+Geography%22">Human Geography</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Urban+Areas%22">Urban Areas</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Graduate+Students%22">Graduate Students</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Masters+Programs%22">Masters Programs</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Geography+Instruction%22">Geography Instruction</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Place+Based+Education%22">Place Based Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Alienation%22">Alienation</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Sense+of+Belonging%22">Sense of Belonging</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Tourism%22">Tourism</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Workshops%22">Workshops</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Films%22">Films</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Creative+Thinking%22">Creative Thinking</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Biographies%22">Biographies</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Critical+Thinking%22">Critical Thinking</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Affective+Objectives%22">Affective Objectives</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Attitude+Change%22">Attitude Change</searchLink>
– Name: Subject
  Label: Geographic Terms
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Italy%22">Italy</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1080/03098265.2024.2403064
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 0309-8265<br />1466-1845
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: The way that the relationship between university students and the city is conceptualised in geographic literature is strongly determined by the studentification debate, which risks subjectifying students in redundant and unilateral ways. This paper suggests that geographic education and its spatialities can inform this debate with an alternative subjectification, by emphasising the students' capacity to construct their own criticism on the urban phenomena that they experience. It draws empirically from a place-based workshop conducted within a master's programme at the University of Florence, which aimed at exploring the students' sense of place through creative methods. Life charts, mental maps, urban diaries and short films, analysed together with textual material, showcase the complexity of sense of place: for students, visuality and affect contribute significantly to their feeling of alienation and its expression, but at the same time become instrumental to negotiating it by seeking a sense of belonging in the touristified and spectacularized city. When approached as "revealed" and "claimed" space, the spatialities creatively produced through the films prove that geographic education is capable of fostering the shaping of students as critical subjectivities, thus restoring the problematic subjectification performed by the studentification debate.
– Name: AbstractInfo
  Label: Abstractor
  Group: Ab
  Data: As Provided
– Name: DateEntry
  Label: Entry Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2025
– Name: AN
  Label: Accession Number
  Group: ID
  Data: EJ1465888
PLink https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1465888
RecordInfo BibRecord:
  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1080/03098265.2024.2403064
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 18
        StartPage: 18
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Foreign Countries
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Human Geography
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Urban Areas
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Graduate Students
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Masters Programs
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Geography Instruction
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Place Based Education
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Alienation
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Sense of Belonging
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Tourism
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Workshops
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Films
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Creative Thinking
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Biographies
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Critical Thinking
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Affective Objectives
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Attitude Change
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Italy
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: 'Is 'This' the City of Beauty?': Facilitating Critical Student Subjectivities through a Creative Place-Based Urban Geography Workshop in Florence, Italy
        Type: main
  BibRelationships:
    HasContributorRelationships:
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Panos Bourlessas
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Matteo Puttilli
    IsPartOfRelationships:
      – BibEntity:
          Dates:
            – D: 01
              M: 01
              Type: published
              Y: 2025
          Identifiers:
            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 0309-8265
            – Type: issn-electronic
              Value: 1466-1845
          Numbering:
            – Type: volume
              Value: 49
            – Type: issue
              Value: 1
          Titles:
            – TitleFull: Journal of Geography in Higher Education
              Type: main
ResultId 1