WHAT IS THEME YEAR?

The Theme Year is the scientific focus of EGEA in any given calendar year. It serves as inspiration for events and congresses and allows EGEA to focus on one topic for the whole year. EGEAns can organise events, (e-)lectures, scientific conferences and many more activities that relate to the Theme Year. All of these efforts allow EGEA to focus its resources on one aspect of Geography and create an impact outside the lecture halls. 

The topic of the Theme Year is elected by EGEAs General Assembly in advance to allow future event and congress organisers enough time to include the topic into their concepts. Active participation with the Theme Year is completely voluntary for all EGEAns and Entities.

The Theme Year is the scientific focus of EGEA in any given calendar year. It serves as inspiration for events and congresses and allows EGEA to focus on one topic for the whole year. EGEAns can organise events, (e-)lectures, scientific conferences and many more activities that relate to the Theme Year. All of these efforts allow EGEA to focus its resources on one aspect of Geography and create an impact outside the lecture halls. 

The topic of the Theme Year is elected by EGEAs General Assembly in advance to allow future event and congress organisers enough time to include the topic into their concepts. Active participation with the Theme Year is completely voluntary for all EGEAns and Entities.

What you and your entity can do:

Your entity can play an important role when it comes to understanding and implementing the future of agriculture in your area. Here are some ideas of what your entity could do, but feel free to be as creative as you want.

You could…

  • Discuss the role that agriculture has in your life, your area, your country… with people inside and outside your entity.
  • Look into current trends and issues in agriculture to better understand the context of its development. (One example of this could be trying to understand the farmer protests that are widespread across many European countries in early 2024. What are the underlying issues? What is the context for the protests? What are the demands?).
  • Use your social media to raise awareness about the importance of agriculture in general. You can also set it into your local context, maybe your area is specialised in one aspect of agriculture. Maybe there is a current topic of high importance/relevance.
  • Organise an excursion to a local farm for people inside and outside of your entity.
  • Organise lectures or panel discussions about the future of agriculture in your area or your country with professors, farmers, politicians, experts, other stakeholders and other relevant people.
  • Learn / do workshops about small agricultural projects that people can do themselves, like growing your own tomatoes or composting your own soil to grow some food for personal use.
  • Integrate the topic into EGEA events that you organise through workshops, lectures, excursions or in any other way that makes sense for your event or exchange

Whatever you, remember to have fun and if you post something on social media tag @egea.europe and use the #EGEAthemeyear