GG Mentor : Joelle from Germany and Korea

 

Hi everyone :)

Very happy to have the opportunity to meet you all via GG Friends and I am excited to exchange all kinds of experiences, thoughts and information with you!

 My name is Joelle Lux, a PhD student in geography education, currently living in Seoul. I am born in 1991 and spent the biggest part of my life in the small (but pretty) city of Aachen in Germany.

Maybe let’s start with a short introduction to this hometown of mine :)

Aachen is an interesting city geographically, since it is right at the border to the Netherlands and Belgium. Actually, there is a part of the city that directly connects to the Netherlands – one part of the street is still in Germany (Vaalserquartier) and one part is already Dutch (Vaals), and all you notice about the border is the sign that says “Welcome to the Netherlands/ Germany”. There is also a place called “Dreiländereck” (three-country-corner) that connects all three countries. It is located in the middle of a forest and a popular hiking spot.

So even though Aachen is rather small, it has an international vibe. This is also thanks to the big university, RWTH, which has a good portion of international students, mostly in engineering. It also offers geography studies, which is where I studied my Bachelors’. :)

 

Here are some impressions of the city:

This is the cathedral in the city center (to be honest, the city is so small, basically everything is in the center), built around the year 800. It is also very nice from the inside:

The interior design has a multitude of influences and saw some change throughout its history, but to narrow it down, one can say that it has most history with the Roman Empire.

Flea market in front of the cathedral

The city hall and the central marketplace

One of the most …interesting buildings in the city: the university hospital (not kidding)

 

About the more current geographical-political events in Aachen: In the past years, the city has tried to make more steps towards sustainability, and there are a lot of initiatives contributing. For example, there is the NGO RegionaleResilienz Aachen e.V. (https://resilienz-aachen.de/), which promotes projects around sustainable mobility, closed economic cycles/ post-growth-economy, urban greening, ecological agriculture and education. If you want to know more about them, feel free to ask!But there is more, such as the“Runder Tisch Klimanotstand”, that comes together to discuss actions in light of the climate crisis, or a new joint initiative (https://aachen-mach-weiter.de/), that takes a very positive approach to changing Aachen’s mobility concept.Since 2020 the city has a mayor from the ecological Party, and she is also heavily supporting making the city more sustainable and resilient. Amongst other means, by encouraging sustainability research at the university.

 Of course it is not all smooth sailing. University research, for example, is still heavily influenced by the industry (sometimes secretly in the background). I recently read an article about some professors receiving heavy amounts of money from companies and concealing it by founding their own one-person-companies as an agent in the middle, and of course those are not the companies that promote sustainable technologies. The ties to the fossil fuel industries are also still strong, it is still a big branch of employment in Germany and the coal-exit is pushed further into the future… Since I was in high school, there wasa lot of controversy about the lignite mining in the area around Aachen that destroyed a very old forest ecosystem and forced people to resettle. GG Friend Olivia from Germany has also written about this issue. If you have questions about these topics, I can try to answer them :) I am also very interested about climate change measures and energy production shifts in other countries – could you tell me whether it is highly discussed in your current country or city and what measures are taken in that context?

Now what can I tell you about myself? I became a geographer for two main reasons: My geography teacher at school put a lot of emphasis on teaching us how different social and ecological challenges are globally interconnected, how countries exploit other countries, how actions steered from one part of the world can have devastating effects on people and nature in other parts of the world. That made a big impact on me and I wanted to somehow contribute to making a change, and since I am honestly not much of a politician (very anxious to talk in front of crowds), it had to be geography. Though I’m still searching for ways to facilitate sustainability outside of my own range, but we’ll see!

 Secondly, I love field work so much. I am a fan of plants, rock formations, plants and birds. And of course, of meeting people from all over the world. The best part of being a geographer in my eyes is going out into the world to explore it. There is so much to see and learn. I was lucky to meet very cool people so far, who taught a lot about their countries’ nature, customs and geographical issues. Looking forward to continue this with GG Friends :) 

On a glacier hike in Iceland, 2020 – slightly scary, very interesting

Kyrgyzstan flora and fauna excursion 2021 – an incredibly beautiful experience

Looking out for birds in Kyrgyzstan, close to Issyk Kul. Hm birb, where u?

Currently, I am still working on my PhD thesis together with my professor at University of Cologne. The topic is whether popular digital strategy games, such as Civilization or Cities: Skylines, can help learn about complex geographical topics such as climate change or sustainable city development. So far, the more complex games amongst the selection have shown potentials to foster systemic thinking and even some subject knowledge about human-environment-systems. I think skills like these are critical when it comes to proposing solutions for today’s challenges, but of course games are also simplified. Happy to talk more about the research if you want to! Which geography topics are you passionate about?

 

Korea has become my homebase in 2022, since love brought me here. I am very impressed by the country’s rich culture and history, and I met a lot of nice people so far. The GGS are the first fellow geographers I am meeting in Korea, so I am not yet very familiar with geography around here – could you tell me more about geographical issues in Korea, and who is doing measures about them? For example, which environment/ climate activist groups and initiatives exist here? Which are the endangered species and are there conservationist measures?

 

Thank you very much and looking forward to meeting you!