Drones and Geography: Moving Beyond Military Applications

Drones and Geography: Moving Beyond Military Applications

Neil Waghorn (Aberystwyth University) and Anna Jackman (University of Exeter)

Drones are no longer the reserve of the military, steadily being adopted and integrated across the civilian, commercial and academic sectors. Despite this proliferation of drones, the majority of academic (and geographic) work on drones remains focused on their military applications. Whilst noting the sustained importance of this work, this session aims to help redress the dearth of research in this area through bringing together papers from across geography (and beyond), stimulating a critical interrogation of the functioning and implications of the civilian, commercial and academic adoption of drones. We therefore welcome a diverse range of conceptual, empiric, or methodological papers from geography and related fields, seeking to contribute to this dialogue. Contributions could explore, for example: the drone as a research object, as a research tool, or as a vehicle through which to unpack and explore themes such as visibility, privacy, power, mobility and space.