This talk sets introduces Martin’s culturally focused work on the coast. It was presented at Workshop 3 of the The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and AHRC Humanities Research Networking and Exchange Scheme; ‘“Between the Tides”. Comparative arts and humanities approaches to living with(in) intertidal landscapes in UK & the Netherlands. Learning from those who live and work with complexity, change and fragility’ on 23rd Oct 2103 in Windmill Hill City Farm, Bristol UK. The project is led by Dr Owain Jones of CCRI with Dr. Bettina van Hoven Department of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen.

1. Coastal Images – Images of Coast:
A Personal Story of Coast as a Research Object
Martin Döring (University of Hamburg and Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht)

2. Where it all started:
• I studied Romance languages and Art
History at the University of Hamburg
and at the Université 3 de Paris.
• Emphasis on linguistics and critical
discourse analysis which I finished
with MA-thesis on pamphlets on
comets stemming from the 16th
century.
Comet of 1618
• Started working on the research
project Coastal Images – Images of
Coast (1996-1998) financed by the
GKSS- Research Centre.
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3. The project Coastal Images:
• Interdisciplinary project in
cooperation with the Institute for
Coastal Research at the GKSSResearch Centre (today HelmholtzZentrum Geesthacht).
• Basic idea: Bring together scientists
from the social sciences and the
humanities to explore whether the
topic of coast has been adressed.
• Managed to gather a small Germanbased coastal research group which
met annually.
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4. The project Coastal Images:
• My own work was on coast in the
writings of Maupassant, Flaubert and
Pierre Loti:
coast as a site where changes in
the narrative take place;
coastal typologies which represent
the charateristics of protagonists.
• Advertisements with coast as scenery:
mainly insurances and banks which
suggest safety;
companies which secure energy
supply.
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5. The project Contested Natures in North Frisia ( 1999-2002)
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6. The project Contested Natures in North Frisia:
• Investigation of the debates and conflicts revolving around the
implementation of a national park in North Frisia.
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7. Contested Natures in North Frisia:
• My own work was on how the conflicts
were represented in the local media
and how ‘the locals’ framed the
heated debates:
Coastal/Frisian identity was at
stake: “We are not the Indians of
Germany” -> “God created the sea,
the Frisians the coast”.
legitimating the protection of
nature in economic terms proved
to be wrong;
tourism as a conflict taming
procedure did not work.
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8. Emplacing Climte Change (20122015):
• Aim: to investigate how people
perceive and assess the threat of
climate change.
• Emphasis on how inhabitants of
holms, islands and one coastal
area perceive their coastal
environment.
• Mix of methods starting with
document analysis, participant
observation, interviews and
interviews on the go (walking
interviews).
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9. Thank you very much for your attention!
© Döring – FSP BIOGUM
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