ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out the idea of immersive geographies, which captures both immersion and a sense of depth and immersive geographies as open and connected to radical new connections and ways of being. Schools are sites of immersive learning; they are institutional spaces dedicated to educating young people in formal and informal ways, which intersect. Schools are specific spaces in which young people come together not just occasionally and fleetingly but repeatedly and enduringly. These repeated meetings facilitate shared collective histories. Every time they come together the connection and the practice is a performance; it is provisional, and new realities can be created, every day. New connections are forged beyond frames of reference of (dis)ability, class, gender/sex, sexuality, race and ethnicity, religion, via empathy and recognition. These transformations can have implications beyond the immediate space/time of the school, via young people’s embodied subjectivities as they move through future space/times and via countertopographies. Immersive geographies are countertopographical projects that seek out alternative ways of being and connecting, and by tracing the origins of the emergence of these, immersive geographies suggest ways that more empowering social relationships can be fostered.
