Place is an integral part of the very possibility of human life, not just a backdrop against which lives unfold. Understanding why places hold that role is a crucial task in our age. More than ever, we need to go back to the places where lives are shaped, and we must listen to them and learn to respond if we are to effectively face the challenges of our time.

Based in Tasmania, Australian philosopher Jeff Malpas, professor at the University of Tasmania and guest lecturer at Latrobe University, devoted his professional activity to the study of landscape and place. He was the founder – and until 2005, the director – of the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics, and he is the author or editor of numerous books and scholarly articles on topics in philosophy, art, architecture, and geography. Malpas will bring us his views on caring for place as proposed in his written work, two instances being Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography, Routledge (2018), and The Place of Landscape: Concepts, Contexts, Studies, MIT Press (2011).