Making Smell Count: Invoking olfactory experience in urban wellbeing and spatial analysis.

Join us for lunch, learning, and conversation at the next installment of the HEROP Speaker Series on Friday, November 21st, at 12 PM CST. Lunch will be served from 12-12:30pm, so please join us in person a bit early to eat & mingle!

Qingqing Chen, PhD,
School of Integrated Sciences, James Madison University
Friday, November 21st @ 12PM,
via Zoom & In-Person in NHB 2049, Urbana, IL

In this talk, Dr. Chen will explore how smells can shape people’s perceptions of urban spaces, influencing how individuals relate to their urban environment physically and emotionally. Her research introduces “olfactory thinking”, which posits smell as an important aspect of urban wellbeing and sensory richness. Employing in-depth interviews with participants from nine counties and a bottom-up framework for capturing and classifying perceived urban smells based on text mining techniques from long-term geotagged Twitter data in New York City, this study demonstrates that combining quantitative analysis with qualitative insights can reveal “hidden” neighborhoods with clear spatial smell patterns and capture overlooked, elusive smells. Dr. Chen will also discuss how this research can open new possibilities for understanding urban spaces through an olfactory lens, contributing to broader multisensory urban experience research.

About the Speaker

Qingqing Chen, PhD

Qingqing Chen, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Applied GIS in the School of Integrated Sciences at James Madison University. Her research focuses on critically understanding how cities function by leveraging (geo)computational techniques and data informatics. She is particularly interested in urban geography, geographic data science, multisensory urban experience, and the use of social media and big data in urban analytics. Qingqing received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University at Buffalo and holds an M.Sc. in Physics from the National University of Singapore. Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as a Research Associate at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and as a Research Engineer at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre.

In-person or Virtual?

The in-person option is open the University of Illinois community (students, staff, and faculty). We will have lunch for all attendees who RSVP by Wednesday @10am before the event. To register for the in-person option, please access the following link: go.illinois.edu/HEROP-NOV21

A virtual option via Zoom is available for the public. To register for the Zoom option, please access the following link: go.illinois.edu/HEROP-ZOOM-NOV21

About the Series

The HEROP Speaker Series connects scholars, experts, and innovative thinkers to discuss different conceptual, methodological, and technological facets of public health to better understand the social determinants of health, and how place may influence outcomes. The Healthy Regions & Policies (HEROP) Lab integrates innovative GIScience, public health, and statistical approaches to explore, understand, and promote healthy places. We’re experts in the spatial & social determinants of health. We’re based out of the Dept of Geography & GIScience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.