Dr Cormac Walsh Research and Consulting
Spatial Planning on Land and Sea, Environmental Risk Management and Cross-Border Governance
On Wednesday, May 18th, I will chair a webinar, together with Heather Ritchie of Ulster University focused on MSP challenges and opportunities for local authorities on the island of Ireland. The webinar is hosted by the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD) and supported by the Maynooth University Social Science Institute (MUSSI).
Now that the contract is signed, I can announce that I am working on a desk-based study of Maritime Spatial Planning focussing on case studies of best / good practice where conflicts between offshore wind, fisheries and nature conservation interests have been resolved or ameliorated through MSP and related practices. This is a tall order of course, but I am confident existing good practices can point the way towards more inclusive and integrated forms of MSP where conflicts are resolved, mitigated and/or ameliorated through open dialogue, strategic planning and regulations sensitive to the particularities of individual places and their communities.
The study is commissioned by the The Greens / EFA in the European Parliament via the offices of Grace O’ Sullivan, MEP for Ireland South. It has already benefitted from expert input from MSPRN and MarSocSci colleagues across NW Europe.
Whitelee Windfarm, UK (c) Jim McDougall, creative commons license
In the course of 2020, I made the decision to shift my focus to independent research and consultancy work. I look back on a productive and very enjoyable career as a university-based researcher and lecturer with more than twenty publications in international peer-reviewed journals, too many conference papers and presentations to count as well as seminars and lecture courses in Dublin, Hamburg, Kilkenny and Maynooth. I have researched, taught and published on a wide range of topics from Brexit and cross-border cooperation landscape imaginaries and nature conservation at the Wadden Sea coast. Please find further details of my experience and qualifications here and previous and current projects here.
I look forward to new challenges and opportunities to work more intensively with practitioners and policy-makers on joint collaborative projects and as an external advisor, whether in northern Germany, Ireland, at the European level or further afield.
I am available for consultancy work across the following thematic areas:
– Coastal Management and Climate Adaptation
– Protected Area Management and Sustainable Regional Development
Following on from my applied research work with the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD) and conceptual work on soft spaces at HafenCity University in Hamburg, I became interested in the idea of the island of Ireland as a ‘soft space’. In a book chapter, I explored the ways in which the peace process enabled the articulation of new geographies for spatial planning and regional development on the island of Ireland. With the Brexit referendum these issues of course came to the fore as it became clear that the relational network of cross-border connectivities which had emerged over the previous two decades was at risk.
Spatial Strategies at the Land-Sea Interface: Rethinking Maritime Spatial Planning – Hamburg September 2019: A Workshop Report
A three-day workshop on spatial planning at the land-sea interface took place at Hamburg University, Institute for Geography from 11-13th September. The workshop took place under the umbrella of the Marine Spatial Planning Research Network and the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) Thematic Group on Transboundary Spaces, Planning Cultures and Policy Diffusion. It explicitly sought to the bring together these two academic communities engaged with spatial planning at sea and on land respectively. In this spirit, Prof. Simin Davoudi (Newcastle University, UK) provided the opening keynote, introducing the concept of spatial imaginaries as way of coming to grips with taken-for-granted geographies of the coast. This conceptual introduction was followed by three papers providing reflections on current practices in MSP research and policy in Poland, Denmark and the UK.