Contribution to "A Roundtable Workshopping the Ethics, Methods, and Joy of Counter-mapping"

On August 28, 2025, Vasiliki Makrygianni (remotely) joined the roundtable ‘Why Counter-map? How Counter-map?  A roundtable workshopping the Ethics, Methods, and Joy of Counter-mapping’ organized within the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) 2025 Annual Conference  (University of Birmingham & online) by Jennifer Corinne Veilleux and Clemens Driessen (Wageningen University).  The roundtable explored the ethics, methods, joy, experience, and potential of ‘counter-mapping’. Counter-maps and counter-mapping were discussed as a visual narrative form of expression to engage geographies dominated by hegemonic values and narratives, to include and make visible that there are multiple lived realities, values, and experience of that same space and time. In her talk, “Counter Geography of migratory routes in the eastern Aegean borderland,” Vasiliki focused on the challenges and potential of conducting research and countermapping migratory routes on an archipelago. She further described ways of exploring both formal and informal processes, mechanisms, technologies and temporalities that shape the research in the eastern Aegean borderland.