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Mobilities research

The mobilities research group is a network of researchers from across the university interested in all aspects of mobility: movements of people, objects and ideas, the meanings attached to these movements and the ways in which they shape society. The intention is that the group orients around active research, research dissemination and research development.

The group aims to:

  • establish connections between people with common or overlapping research interests
  • support ongoing research
  • develop new research and collaborations
  • provide a forum for discussion

Supporting ongoing research

The group has members from a range of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, and as such provides a dynamic forum for research exchange, discussion and theory-building. It is in this diversity that robust and innovative ideas about mobilities arise. Practical support in ongoing research involves reading and critically engaging with each others' work. This involves theoretical and empirical assistance and suggestion. It is intended that the group is of particular use to early career researchers. Another function is to alert group members to sources of funding or collaboration with individuals/bodies inside and outside of academia during existing research projects.

Developing new research and collaborations

The group provides the opportunity for sharing ideas and data with a view to collaborative writing and publication. It encourages researchers to develop new research in both academic and non-academic settings. The group will work up grant applications and share expertise and contacts in order to maximise the potential impact of research into mobilities.

Forum for discussion

Through organised meetings and electronical networks, the group provides a supportive forum for discussing current concerns in mobilities studies as well as developing specific research bids.

Current research interests include:

Current projects

  • RCUK Energy Programme funded project: Disruption: Unlocking low carbon travel (Lesley Murray, Karolina Doughty)
  • RCUK Energy Programme funded project: Understanding how commuters and communities engage with electrically-assisted cycling (Frauke Behrandt, Arts and Media)
  • Sharing space: collaborative transdisciplinary project that looks at 'shared space' scheme in New Road involving researchers and students in Arts and Architecture and Applied Social Science (Sue Robertson and Luis, Arts and Architecture, Lesley Murray, School of Applied Social Science)
  • Links with health and migration research group at University of Sussex – special issue Ethnic and Racial Studies on Healthcare and Immigration – Understanding the Connections Volume 35, Issue 1, 2012 (Nichola Khan)
  • Community gardening, creativity and everyday culture: food growing and embedded researchers in community transformation and connections, AHRC, Feb 12-Jan 13 (Andrew Church, School of Environment and Technology)
  • Indicators of cultural ecosystem services, United Nations Environment Programme – World Conservation Monitoring Centre – National Ecosystem Assessment phase 2, 2012-13 (Andrew Church, School of Environment and Technology)
  • Geography of Inland Fisheries and Sustainability, EU Interreg IV A 2Seas, 2012-2015 (Andrew Church, School of Environment and Technology)
  • Commonwealth Secretariat September 2012-April 2013, Train The Trainer Program on Customer Service Delivery for the Namibia Tourism Board (Marina Novelli, School of Sport and Service Management)
  • CDE/EU April-July 2013, Competitive enhancement support for the viability and sustainability of the hotel enterprises as well as dependent industries and communities – Study on Tourism Seasonality and Energy Efficiency (Marina Novelli, School of Sport and Service Management)
  • Mobility Research Seminar, May 2013, Methodological and empirical analysis of urban mobility: case studies from Latin America and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Roser Manzanera Ruiz, Department of Sociology and Carmen Lizarraga, Department of Applied Economics, University of Granada and Jorge Chica-Olmo, Department of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business, University of Granada
  • Murray, L. 2013. Independence and children. Global challenges in transport, Oxford Leadership Programme, Continuing professional development (CPD) course on Health, Wellbeing and Urban Mobility, Transport Studies Unit, Oxford University, 4 December 2013

Conference presentations

  • Nordic Geographers Meeting, Reykjavik, Iceland, June 2013. 1) session Feeling in Common: Making and Enacting Convivial Spaces (session organizers: Leila Dawney, School of Environment and Technology and Karolina Doughty, School of Applied Social Science) 2) Paper: Discourses of mobility (Karolina Doughty and Lesley Murray) 3) Paper: 'Placing murals in Belfast: community, negotiation and change' (Lesley Murray) 4) Poster presentation Disruption: unlocking low carbon mobilities (Lesley Murray)

  • 4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, July 2013. 1) session Sound and emotion (session organizers: Karolina Doughty, University of Brighton and Maja Lagerqvist, Stockholm University) 2) Paper Re-Imaging and Re-Imagining: Murals and Emotions in a City Divided (Lesley Murray) 3) Paper Sensing inner city ‘shared’ spaces (Lesley Murray, School of Applied Social Science, Sue Robertson, School of Architecture and Design, Birute Raglyte (student), School of Architecture and Design, Emily Bowles (student), School of Architecture and Design

Publications in progress

Behrendt, F. ‘Mobile Media as Edge Species: Exploring a GPS Sound Walk’ (forthcoming) In: Calhoun, Craig and Sennett, Richard (eds) Edges (Practicing Culture series). Routledge

Behrendt, F. Walking Cities in Sound. (forthcoming) In: Gopinath, Sumanth; Stanyek, Jason (eds) Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies. Oxford University Press.

Behrendt, F. Sound Art on the Move. (forthcoming) In: Stjerna , Åsa; Engström, Andreas (eds) Ljudkonst (Sound Art). Stockholm: Raster. (Translated into Swedish).

Behrendt, F. ‘GPS Sound Walks, Ecotones and Edge Species’ (forthcoming June 2013) in Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology.

Church, A., Ravenscroft, N. & Gilchrist, P. (in press) Property ownership, resource use and the ‘gift of nature’ Environment and Planning D

Dawney, L. “Temporality, technologies and techniques of the self: Long-distance walking as secular pilgrimage” forthcoming in G. Lean (ed) Travel and Transformation Aldershot: Ashgate

Dawney, L. “Landscape, affect and the embodied imagination” for a special edition of Cultural Politics on affective landscapes (under review)

Doughty, K. Walking together: the embodied and mobile production of therapeutic landscapes, Health & Place (under review)

Doughty, K. 'Restorative rhythms: the rural walkscape through a geography of rhythms' Social & Cultural Geography (in preparation)

Khan, N. (early online view) ‘A Moving Heart: Querying a Singular Problem of ‘Immobility’ in Afghan Migration to the UK.’ Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness.

Khan, N. (in press). ‘From refugees to the world stage: sport, civilisation and modernity in Out of the Ashes and a UK Afghan diaspora.’ South Asian Popular Culture. Special issue, sport and diaspora.

Khan, N. (in preparation) ‘The taste of freedom: commensality, liminality and return amongst Afghan transnational migrants in the UK and Pakistan.'

Murray, L. and Mand, K (forthcoming) Travelling near and far: placing children's mobile emotions. Emotion, Space and Society

Murray, L. and Upstone, S. (Eds.) Representations of mobilities: transdisciplinary encounters. London: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming)

Novelli, M., Morgan, N. Ivanov, K. and Mitchell, G. Travel Philanthropy and Sustainable Development, Annals of Tourism Research (under review).