The new COSMOBILITIES NEWSLETTER No 2/2009 is out now. Inside this issue you will find:

Cosmobilities News
-Mobility and Inequality out now
-Mailing list welcomes 300th member

New Publications
-Mobility in Daily Life by Malene Freudendal-Pedersen
-Public Transport and its Users by Martin Schiefelbusch and Hans-Liudger Dienel

Portrait
-Mobility research at the University of Gothenburg

Critical Mobilities

Organiser:      Professor Ole B. Jensen, AAU, e-mail: obje@aod.aau.dk
Lecturers:  Professor Tim Richardson, AAU, Professor Ole B Jensen, AAU, Dr. Anne Jensen, NERI, University of Århus, Sven Kesselring, Technical University of Munich
ECTS: 5
Time:  22-24 September, 2009
Place: Aalborg University 
Deadline:  August 1 2009
 
Online registration:  http://phd.plan.aau.dk/phd-courses/4129537

 
Description
Mobilities: An exciting research field which seeks to understand the significance of emerging forms of mobilities, and to analyse the diverse meanings and practices of mobilities. Challenging opportunities for research are opened up, as new questions emerge about how the option for mobility affects social life, and poses difficult issues for those charged with governing the conditions for mobility. This course brings together Ph.D. researchers who are engaging with these issues in diverse ways, to generate a critical debate about the conceptual and practical challenges of researching mobilities.
 
The course draws together critical perspectives from spatial theory, sociology, political science, and geography, and builds a dialogue to explore the interface between critical theoretical perspectives and their application in empirical research...

CALL FOR PAPERS - Diaspora Cities: Urban Mobility and Dwelling

CALL FOR PAPERS
Diaspora Cities: Urban Mobility and Dwelling
Wednesday 16th September 2009
Organised by the Department of Geography and City Centre,
Queen Mary, University of London
 
This one-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the critical relationships between cities and diasporas. Drawing on historical and contemporary research, this conference will address the ways in which the city, as a place of departure, travel, sojourn and resettlement, is a site of diasporic mobility and dwelling.  Through its focus on urban diasporas and the importance of the city in fostering diasporic identities, imaginations and networks, the conference will extend debates about migration and diaspora; transnational and postcolonial urbanism; cosmopolitan cities; and urban memory.
 
The conference is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and convened by the Diaspora Cities research project team based at QMUL (Alison Blunt, Jayani Bonnerjee, Noah Hysler-Rubin and Shompa Lahiri).
 
Abstracts are invited from researchers working on the relationships between cities and diasporas with reference to particular cities and to wider conceptual themes.  Conference themes are likely to include:
. Diasporic memories, imaginings and experiences of the city
. Tales of urban mobility and dwelling in life stories, cultural practices, text and images
. The emotional,...

WORLD CONGRESS ON MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES (WOCMES)

Barcelona, 19-24 July 2010 - http://wocmes.iemed.org/en/home/

Panel on the Political Economy of New Tourism Mobilities in the MENA Region

Organisers:

Dr. Ala Al-Hamarneh – University of Mainz– Germany
a.al-hamarneh@geo.uni-mainz.de

Professor Kevin Hannam – University of Sunderland– UK
Kevin.hannam@sunderland.ac.uk

Dr Marcus Stephenson – Middlesex University Dubai - UAE
m.stephenson@mdx.ac

Call for Papers
The journal Mobilities states that contemporary “mobilities encompasse both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public space, and the travel of material things within everyday life. Recent developments in transportation and communications infrastructures, along with new social and cultural practices of mobility have elicited a number of new research initiatives for understanding the connections between these diverse mobilities.”

In the last ten years new trends and dynamics of tourism mobilities in the MENA region have been noticed: the boom of intra-regional tourisms, the dramatic increase in intra-regional FDI in tourism servic...

Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome

Open Call for Applications (Deadline: 30 June 2009)

Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome is an interdisciplinary project on the symmetries and asymmetries between contemporary tourism and migration, encompassing research, theory, practice, workshops, seminars, conferences and art exhibitions in Italy, Lithuania, Romania and Germany in 2009 and 2010.

The Tourist Syndrome Summer Camp, 3 - 11 September 2009

An integral part of the two-year project Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome is the upcoming Tourist Syndrome Summer Camp held in Palanga (Lithuania), a renowned seaside resort on the Baltic Sea coast, from 3 to 11 September 2009.
The Tourist Syndrome Summer Camp invites artists, architects, cultural producers, theorists, and academics to an interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange on new forms of mobility today, with a special focus on the relationship between tourism and migration. The eight-day summer camp will offer a diverse programme of workshops, lectures and presentations, and will be open to a maximum of fifty participants to be selected through this Open Call.
The summer camp programme includes three main workshops held by international artists, practitioners and academics Cesare Pietroiusti (Rome/Venice), Krystian Woznicki (Berlin) and Michael Zinganel (Vienna/Graz), and an intense program of presentations, screenings and events by artists already involved in the pro...

Leisure Traffic in Urban Areas (only in German)

Published in November 2009 by Swiss Association of Transportation Engineers (SVI)

Main Authors:

Timo Ohnmacht, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland
Konrad Götz, the Institute for Social-Ecological Research, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Ueli Haefeli, Interface-Politikstudien Lucerne, Switzerland.

This book published by the Swiss Association of Transportation Engineers (SVI) focuses on leisure travel in urban areas by applying the approach of mobility styles in leisure time. Leisure traffic is the most important segment of traffic, showing the highest share of road transport. Moreover, it contributes to high emissions and it is related to high energy consumption. Within research, leisure traffic is perceived as the most difficult segment to be influenced at all. A very detailed understanding of its complex structures is crucial in order to suggest approaches to a sustainable urban traffic system. The main goals of the book are: To quantify the key figures in leisure travel and in people’s behaviour in urban areas during their leisure time in order to estimate the significance of leisure travel within urban areas and to develop leisure mobility styles to develop measure for sustainable travel behaviour.

Four main leisure mobility styles were identified in the multivariate analysis: the culturally engaged (car and multimodal-leaning, 33 %), the active sportsman/wom...

Subject-Oriented Approaches to Transport

Edited by Christian Holz-Rau and Joachim Scheiner

The history of transport planning is mainly a history of numbers and statistical parameters. The human being plays a prominent role in transport planning in terms of his or her role
as a transport mode user, as a macro-economic aggregate of various benefit components in appraisal methods, or as a disturbance variable in traffic flows. In terms of being subjects
with individual needs, wishes and daily requirements however, human beings appeared quite late in transport planning.

This book aims to make a case for the recently emerging ‘subjective perspectives’ in transport studies and transport planning. The seven contributions are based on concepts as different as lifestyle, milieu, emotion, and accessibility preferences. Methodologies adopted include agent-based micro-simulation, quantitative empirical analysis, and qualitative in-depth interviews.

The book may be useful for all those interested in recent developments in transport, as well as accessibility and mobility studies, including planners, geographers, sociologists,
psychologists and economists.

Contents:

Christian Holz-Rau, Joachim Scheiner
About this book

Christian Holz-Rau, Joachim Scheiner
The ‘subject’ in transport studies: thoughts on a neglected subject

Konrad Götz
The interdependence of ‘subjec...

The Anxieties of Mobility
Migration and tourism in the Indonesian borderlands

Johan A. Lindquist

Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009, 193pp.
ISBN 978-0-8248-3201-8 (hard cover)
ISBN 978-0-8248-3315-2 (paperback)

Since the late 1960s the Indonesian island of Batam has been transformed from a sleepy fishing village to a booming frontier town, where foreign investment, mostly from neighboring Singapore, converges with inexpensive land and labor. Export processing zones such as Batam are both celebrated and vilified in contemporary debates on economic globalization. "The Anxieties of Mobility" moves beyond these dichotomies to explore the experiences of migrants and tourists who pass through Batam. Johan Lindquist s extensive fieldwork allows him to portray globalization in terms of relationships that bind individuals together over long distances rather than as a series of impersonal economic transactions. He offers a unique ethnographic perspective, drawing together the worlds of factory workers and prostitutes, migrants and tourists, and creating a compelling account of everyday life in a borderland characterized by dramatic capitalist expansion.The book uses three Indonesian concepts (merantau, malu, liar) to shed light on the mobility of migrants and tourists on Batam. The first refers to a person s relationship with home while in the process of migration. The second signifies the shame or embarrassment felt when on...

The Faculty of humanities and social sciences at the University of Neuchâtel is offering a

Visiting professorship in gender studies with a focus on migration and/or mobility studies

Eligible candidates must have an outstanding international reputation in this field of specialization. The position runs for three months (beginning September 15, 2010, or to be negotiated) and is located at the MAPS (Maison d’analyse des processus sociaux or Center for the Understanding of Social Processes, www.unine.ch/maps).

The visiting professor will be responsible for teaching approximately 72 hours in English (and French, if fluent) at the MAPS as well as within the universities composing the Swiss national gender studies network (Network Gender Studies CH).

For details, please consult our website (http://www2.unine.ch/lettres/page2849.html) or send an e-mail to Prof. Janine Dahinden (janine.dahinden@unine.ch).

Candidates - professors or persons holding a equivalent academic position outside of Switzerland - with a disciplinary background in the social sciences, specialized in gender aspects of migration/ mobility and experienced in working in interdisciplinary contexts are asked to send applications via e-mail to professor Janine Dahinden , Maison d’analyse des processus sociaux (MAPS), ...

New publication:

The Passenger’s Perspective in Planning and Customer Care

Edited by Martin Schiefelbusch and Hans-Liudger Dienel, both at the nexus Institute for Cooperation Management and Interdisciplinary Research, Germany,

Public transport is essential to the quality of life of its passengers, both as a means to move around and also to achieve a sustainable environment. However, the passenger’s position as a customer is weakened by the dominance of monopolies, regulation and political influence in our public transport systems.

This book is one of the first to examine strategies for the representation of user interests in public transport from a variety of perspectives. The authors review approaches to integrating the passengers’ views in the planning process and to protecting their interests in operations and customer care across a range of European countries, including Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The book presents the conclusions of this research and good practice, and will provide useful guidance for policy makers, stakeholder organizations and planners, and transport researchers.

details:

April 2009, 330 pages

Hardback 978-0-7546-7447-4 £65.00

http://www.ashgate.com/transportandusers

New publication:

Between Freedom and Unfreedom

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen, Roskilde University, Denmark and Danish Architecture Centre, The Sustainable Cities Unit, Denmark

Why do we choose specific modes of transport and what are the perceived rationalities for our choice? How are different theoretical concepts within mobility research actually perceived and lived in

everyday life? At this book’s core is a conceptual and empirical contribution to critical mobility research. It focuses on the tension between freedom and unfreedom, articulated through the dichotomy

between individuality and community, as well as critical perspectives on the multitude of unintended consequences of mobility. In a range of everyday life narratives, this tension is analyzed through the

concept of ‘structural stories’. In teasing out the ambivalences of late modern everyday life, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen exposes how mobility both generates and helps to overcome and live with these

ambivalences.

Contents: Preface; Introduction; Mobility’s anchorage in late modern everyday life; Structural stories; Freedom; Time and space; Conclusions; Postscript: ambivalences, sustainability and Utopias;

Bibliography; Index

New publication:

Edited by Timo Ohnmacht , Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland, Hanja Maksim , Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne, Switzerland and Manfred Max Bergman , University of Basle, Switzerland

This book opens up the debate on the interrelations between space and mobilities with regard to different dimensions of social inequality. Based on the premise that the dynamics caused by modernization, globalization, migration and social change affect the structuring of the social fabric, the focus of the book is to illuminate these processes of social and spatial re-structurings. A leading team of contributors from the Cosmobilities network highlight different aspects of inequality in relation to mobilities, such as gender, supplying transport infrastructure, job-related relocations, multi-locality, social network geography, and socio-spatial development.

Contents: Foreword; Introduction: mobilities and inequality, Timo Ohnmacht, Hanja Maksim and Manfred Max Bergman ; Part I Theory, Concepts, and Findings on Mobilities and Inequality: Mobilities and inequality – making connections, Timo Ohnmacht, Hanja Maksim and Manfred Max Bergman ; Unequal mobilities, Katharina Manderscheid; Life-course inequalities in the globalisation process, Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Sandra Buchholz and Dirk Hofäcker; Metaphors of mobility – inequa...

New publication:

After The Car
Kingsley Dennis & John Urry

A provocative exploration of a possible future without the car, from two leading sociologists.
* Examines the impact of global warming, global population increases and the peaking of oil supplies, among other things, on the future of how we travel.
* Argues that there will come a time in the future where, by necessity, the present car system will be re-designed and re-engineered .
* After The Car will interest sociologists, policy makers, industry, as well as the general reader. It will be of interest to every car user .

It is difficult to imagine a world without the car, and yet that is exactly what Dennis and Urry set out to do in this provocative new book. They argue that the days of the car are numbered: powerful forces around the world are undermining the car system and will usher in a new transport system sometime in the next few decades. Specifically, the book examines how several major processes are shaping the future of how we travel, including:
* Global warming and its many global consequences
* Peaking of oil supplies
* Increased digitisation of many aspects of economic and social life
* Massive global population increases

The authors look at changes in technology, policy, economy and society, and make a convincing argument for a future where, by necessity, the present car system will be re-designed and re-engineered.

7th International Symposium on Tourism and Sustainability

Travel & Tourism in the Age of Climate Change
Robust Findings, Key Uncertainties

8th-10th July 2009
http://www.brighton.ac.uk/ssm/research/symposia/2009/index.php?PageId=750

Invited guest speakers:

Geoffry Lipman, UNWTO Assistant Secretary-General
Mark Lynas, award-winning freelance writer on climate change

At a time of increasing mobility, ease of travel and the emergence of new destinations, tourism is both a victim of, and contributor to climate change. However, this symbiotic relationship remains shrouded in fuzzy data, myths and mystery. Given that the industry servicing ‘people on the move’ is central to most economies and cultures, the option to ‘give up’ tourism is simply not tenable. Responsive actions must be identified to enable travel and tourism to deliver the peak experiences that tourists seek, but with a lower carbon footprint.

Industry perspectives, full papers, presentations, work in progress, and posters are invited under the following themes:

1. Climate change at the moment of financial crisis

2. Innovative approaches in adaptation and mitigation processes and protocols

3. Reducing ‘Hotspot’ Vulnerability (i.e. destinations affected by and /or dependent on tourism)

4. Emerging generating and receiving countries

Call for Papers

6th International Conference on Mobile Technology, Applications and Systems

(ACM Mobility Conference 2009)
2-4 September 2009
Nice, France
http://www.acmmobility2009.org/

This conference aims to promote the understanding and interaction among players, and focus on the key areas in the value-chain necessary for the delivery of total mobile solutions. The conference is seen as an ideal vehicle for bringing together researchers, scientists, engineers, academicians and students all around the world to share the latest updates on new mobile technologies that would shape the next generation of mobile systems and technology platforms.

Registration rates are kept at the lowest to make it affordable for all participants.

Paper Submission Deadline: 30 May 2009
Notification of Acceptance of Paper: 30 June 2009

For more information, please visit http://www.acmmobility2009.org

Climate change, urban mobility and Cleantech

MONDAY, MAY 18 "NEW MARKETS AND NEW ECONOMICS"
5 p.m. to 8 p.m., at Ecole Télécom ParisTech- Thévenin Amphitheatre, 46 rue Barrault 75013 Paris - Metro Corvisart or Place d’Italie

A NEW PROGRAM BY THE CITY ON THE MOVE INSTITUTE

Public hearings with US experts led by a panel of European specialists to provide a different perspective on the debate about mobility and energy issues within the context of climate change

What solutions are Europe and the United States devising to deal with climate change?
Different reports and surveys attribute one third of France ’s greenhouse gas emissions to the transportation sector. Considered as the entities that regulate or organize much of this sector and mobility as a whole, cities are being called upon by international bodies and Governments to take action to reduce such emissions. Their responses differ from country to country and continent to continent.

In Europe : a single approach and a primary focus on restriction
The goal of most of the solutions being considered in Europe is to cut forms of transportation that use high-emission fossil fuels. Cities are encouraged to implement public policies designed to reduce commuting distances and to restrict physical access to city centers and dense urban areas, in particular through tolls and congestion charging. Cities are also looking to introduce CO...

M/C Journal 12(1) "Still" http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/showToc/current

Bringing together academics from geography, fine arts, media, politics and international studies, cultural studies and communication, this collection provides a timely intervention into contemporary understandings of global flows, speed, movement and animation.

Contents:

Paul Harrison "Remaining Still"
Andrew Murphie "Be Still, Be Good, Be Cool: The Ambivalent Powers of Stillness in an Overactive World"
Peter Adey "Holding Still: The Private Life of an Air Raid" 
Debbie Lisle "The Potential Mobilities of Photography"
JD Dewsbury "Still: No Man s Land or Never Suspend the Question"
Sebastian Abrahamsson "Between Motion and Rest: Encountering Bodies in/on Display"
Emma Cocker "From Passivity to Potentiality: The Communitas of Stillness"
Nicholas Gill "Longing for Stillness: The Forced Movement of Asylum Seekers"
Sarah Sharma "The Great American Staycation and the Risk of Stillness"
Greg Noble, Megan Watkins "On the Arts of Stillness: For a Pedagogy of Composure"
Nour Dados "Anything Goes, Nothing Sticks: Radical Stillness and Archival Impulse"
Natalia Radywyl "A Moment s Daydreaming"
Ross Harley "Light-Air-Portals: Visual Notes on Differential Mobility"

Routes, roads and landscapes

Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway
24-25 September 2009

The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, in collaboration with the University of Oslo and Norwegian Institute of Transport Economics, invites scholars and students to an international conference on routes,  roads and landscapes 24-25 September 2009. We investigate the ways in which various kinds of routes have shaped modern conceptions of the landscape, and we inquire into the role of the route itself, both as an aesthetic object and as a setting for aesthetic practices. Confirmed keynote speakers are Gernot Böhme, Tim Cresswell, Finola o Kane, David Nye, Alessandra Ponte and Charles Withers.

Deadline for submission of abstracts 15th May 2009. More information on www.routes.no<http://www.routes.no/>

Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions

Gayle Letherby and Gillilan Reynolds

Ashgate, ISBN: 978-0-7546-7034-6
This title is also available as an eBook, ISBN 978-0-7546-9272-0

It is increasingly acknowledged that an analysis of emotions is necessary to fully understand the social world, and recent research on transport, travel and mobilities has begun to consider the gendered nature of public and personal life in relation to this sphere.

The focus of this multidisciplinary and auto/biographical volume is the emotional relationship that individuals and groups have with different means of travel. Attention is given to a variety of travel experiences, including travelling in trains, planes, cars, buses and ships, as well as biking, cycling, running and walking, from the perspective of travellers and those who earn their living in assisting these experiences of others. Imaginary travel and the relationships between art and travel are also considered.

Adopting innovative approaches to experiential material ranging from personal memories to empirical research, Gendered Journeys, Mobile Emotions opens up and illuminates an interdisciplinary debate about the gendered, emotive and emotional nature of travellin

Transport for a Global Economy
Challenges & Opportunities in the Downturn
Leipzig Congress Centre
26-29 May 2009

Preliminary Programme

With the growth of international trade and the globalisation of manufacturing, the international transport system has come under increasing strain to cope with additional demand. These days however, the world is struggling with a deep and drastic economic crisis.

In this respect, the theme of the second International Transport Forum gives us a good opportunity to explore the impacts of globalisation on the transport sector and at the same time assess the new challenges posed by the current global economic crisis and identify solutions to the problems which the sector is confronted with.

The Forum has already become a unique platform for discussing the major issues related with international transport. Having the Presidency of the second annual meeting, Turkey is confident that the Forum 2009 will provide strong outcomes for maintaining international transport activities fast, efficient and secure enough to keep up with the dynamism of the global economy.

We are preparing the second International Transport Forum at an exceptionally difficult time for the global economy. Transport actors too are feeling the effects of the global downturn, with dramatic declines in sales and activity. More ...

Travel and Tourism ResearchAssociation 2009

April 22-24 2009
Rotterdam and Breda, The Netherlands

The European Chapter of the Travel and Tourism Research Association invites you to participate in its 2009 annual conference on Transport and Tourism: challenges, issues and conflicts, organized by InHolland University of Applied Sciences and NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences. The sub-themes are: global transport developments, transport and logistics at destinations, ICT in tourism and transport, ethical issues and sustainable development. Of course papers on other issues in tourism research are most welcome as well. This three-day conference in the Netherlands will be held at venues in Rotterdam and Breda from April 22 to April 24, 2009.

see http://www.ttra-europeconference.com

Colloque MSFS 2009

Luxembourg, 26-28 Mars 2009

Le groupe de travail « Mobilités Spatiales et Fluidité Sociale » de l’Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française (AISLF), a le plaisir de vous informer de la tenue de son 9e colloque, organisé cette année par le CEPS/INSTEAD, qui se tiendra à Luxembourg les 26, 27 et 28 mars 2009.
Ce colloque, envisagé comme une rencontre interdisciplinaire visant à faire dialoguer sociologues, géographes, démographes, psychologues, économistes, aménageurs, ainsi que divers acteurs territoriaux, porte sur la thématique suivante :
« Les interactions entre mobilités quotidienne et résidentielle à l épreuve des nouvelles pratiques sociales ».
Les informations concernant le colloque ainsi que le formulaire d’inscription sont disponibles sur le site du colloque
http://msfs2009.ceps.lu

Les inscriptions sont ouvertes jusqu’au 20 mars 2009.

Seventh International Conference on the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M)

Lucerne, Switzerland
November 5-8, 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS
- Energy and Innovation -


The International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M) invites proposals for papers to be presented at its Seventh International Conference to be held at the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz (Swiss Museum of Transport), Lucerne, Switzerland from November 5th till the 8th, 2009.

The conference is organised by historians from different universities as well as by the Swiss Museum of Transport. Switzerland s most visited museum celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2009 and is being rebuilt and expanded for this occasion at the time. This year the conference theme is Energy and Innovation . The CfP asks for papers in this thematic field but it is at the same time open to all subjects in the history of transport, traffic, and mobility. The language of the conference is English.

Traffic is motion and therefore energy is imperative. It doesn t matter what, how or where to one moves - performance, or the conversion of energy into motion, is always preconditioned. The m...

Internationale Fachtagung zur Ethnographie von Arbeitskulturen vom 26.3.-28.3.09 an der LMU Munchen

Mobilität und Mobilisierung. Arbeit im soziokulturellen, ökonomischen und politischen Wandel

Veranstalter: Institut für Volkskunde/ Europäische Ethnologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Zusammenarbeit mit der Kommission „Arbeitskulturen" der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde

Konzept und Organisation: Prof. Dr. Irene Götz/ Barbara Lemberger M.A.

Ort: Senatssaal der LMU, Geschwister Scholl Platz 1, 80539 München

see http://www.volkskunde.uni-muenchen.de/veranstaltungen/tagungen/arbeitskulturen/index.html

PROGRAMM

12.30 Uhr: Öffnung des Tagungsbüros

13.30 Uhr-14.00 Uhr

Grußwort Prof. Dr. Jens-Uwe Hartmann (Prodekans der Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften der LMU München)

Thematische Einführung: Prof. Dr. Irene Götz, Barbara Lemberger, M.A. (IfVk/EE, LMU München)

14-15 Uhr

Eröffnungsvortrag: Prof. Dr. Franz Schultheis (Soziologisches Seminar, Universität St. Gallen) Wandel der Arbeitswelt: gesellschaftliche Dynamiken in subjektiver Erfahrung der Betroffenen

15-15.30 Uhr Pause

15.30-20.30 Uhr: Transnationalisierte Arbeitswelt – Konzepte und Fall...

Call for papers

RC21 sessions of the ISA world congress of sociology

Gothenburg, Sweden,

July 11-17 2010

The sessions include a small cosmobilities session, organised by Javier Caletrio and Katharina Manderscheid

Organizers: Javier Caletrío, Lancaster University, UK, j.caletrio@lancaster.ac.uk
and Katharina Manderscheid, Lancaster University, UK, k.manderscheid@lancaster.ac.uk
Peak oil and climate change have brought to the fore the centrality of mobility to social and economic life and the urgent pressures to develop alternative mobilities. Hosting half the world’s population, cities are increasingly important actors in achieving low carbon futures and privileged sites where the moral dilemmas of modern techno-utopias are being rehearsed. In the context of transport, urban futures are haunted between idyllic visions of clean, just and democratised mobilities such as those projected by Dongtan ecocity in China and present and future dystopias of splintering urbanisms, ever growing slums, large scale infrastructural collapse and climate related disasters. This session explores futures of urban mobilities paying special attention to (i) what kind of mobilities futures are being created by current techno-social developments; (ii) the performative role of expectations and hope in shaping urban mobility regimes (iii) the connected understandings of social ineq...

Edited by Saulo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring, John Urry

London: Routledge, December 2008. 272 pages. Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-44956-4, ₤75.00

About the Book

Aeromobilities is a collection of essays that tackle in many different ways the growing importance of aviation and air travel in our hypermobile, globalized world. Providing a multidisciplinary focus on issues ranging from global airports to the production of airspace, from airline work to helicopters, and from movement in airports to software systems, Aeromobilities seeks to enhance our understanding of space, time and mobility in the age of mass air travel. From Sao Paulo to Sydney, Aeromobilities draws on local experiences of airspaces to generate theory and research that are global in scope. It is the first book of its kind, bringing together a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to aviation and air travel in the social sciences and humanities, while emphasizing the central role of aeromobilities in contemporary social relations. In a world where virtually every aspect of social life is touched upon, in one way or another, by the complex global network of airline flows, with its large passenger aircraft and iconic international airports, Aeromobilities provides innovative analyses of some of the most fundamental and influential mobility networks of our time.<...

Urban Transitions and Climate Change Research Associate

The Department of Geography at Durham University wishes to appoint a full time Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on the research project Urban Transitions: climate change, global cities and the transformation of socio-technical systems, awarded to Dr. Harriet Bulkeley by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Climate Change Leadership Fellowship scheme. The aims of the Fellowship are to advance conceptual approaches for understanding urban socio-technical systems and their response to climate change, to develop the evidence base on the climate change experiments taking place in global cities, and consider the socio-environmental justice implications of these developments. The successful candidate will join. Dr. Bulkeley and two graduate students on the project, and will be responsible for key aspects of the day to day organisation and conduct of the project. We anticipate that this two and a half year fixed term appointment will start on 1st April 2009.

Closing Date for Applications: 31/01/2009



Contact for informal enquiries:

Dr Harriet Bulkeley
0191 334 1940
h.a.bulkeley@durham.ac.uk

KSI International Conference 2009

First European Conference on Sustainability Transitions:

Dynamics & Governance of Transitions to Sustainability

4th and 5th June 2009

Felix Meritis, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Call for papers

Bringing together a community of researchers and practitioners interested in transitions to sustainability

The 1st European Conference on Sustainability Transitions will bring together a rapidly growing community of researchers and practitioners interested in broad societal transitions towards sustainability. The common goal is to inform strategies for the governance of sustainability through a better understanding of the dynamics of transitions. Transitions involve the transformation of the socio-technical configuration of whole sectors (such as materials or chemicals) or of patterns of production and consumption in areas such as housing and mobility. Recent research has aimed to better understand the ways in which transitions unfold and the process dynamics which can lead to them succeeding or failing. Particularly in the Netherlands there has also been a great interest in recent years in the potential for governing transitions to sustainability and a number of innovative experiments have been facilitated by the Dutch government. This work has been supported by a major research programme on the opportunities and barriers to system innovations in the context of addressing climate change and...

Sponsored by the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group and the Urban Geography Research Group (UGRG tbc)

Convenors: Mags Adams (University of Salford) and Kye Askins (Northumbria University)

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the role of non-visual senses in the relationships between people and places, in particular how ‘sense of place’ involves complex corporeal encounters with our environments – how we ‘sense’ place in terms of sound, smell, touch, taste (alongside sight) as well as understand it through social constructions and circulated texts (Wylie, 2005; Butler, 2006; Edensor, 2006; Pink, 2007). Such interest is evidenced in the publication of ‘The Senses and Society’ journal since 2006, and includes an increasing body of work regarding the ways in which senses and sensory perception are caught up in social and spatial in/exclusion and everyday cultural geographies (eg. Tolia-Kelly, 2007; MacPherson, 2007; Paterson, 2007).

An emerging development of such work is the innovative use of sensewalking, in a variety of guises, as a research methodology to investigate and analyse how we understand, experience and utilise space. Such methodologies have been adopted to examine a diverse range of issues in a variety of contexts: from eth...

Mobility and Creativity:
Narrative, Representation & Performance

3rd-4th July

Department of English, University of Surrey, UK

Keynote Speakers include: Prof. John Urry, Lancaster University

Mobilities has increasingly become central to the analysis of social relations in contemporary society where it often appears that all the world is on the move, from the movement of diasporas, tourists, migrants and refugees. While the emergence of this new mobility paradigm (Sheller and Urry, 2006; Urry 2002, 2007) originated within the social sciences, this conference focuses on how such a mobility turn has been narrated, represented and performed within the arts and humanities. The two-day international conference aims to explore creative responses to these diverse mobilities in literature, art, film, and theatre for example. How have these complex mobilities been negotiated and critiqued through creative practice? Is creativity dependent upon mobility?

The conference aims to explore themes such as:

* Narratives of movement (How are mobilities narrated? Do different
mobilities demand different forms of narrative?)

* Moving narratives (How are narratives moved from one medium to another?
What is the role of translation for mobilities? Is adaptation a form of mobility? How do texts move us/fail to move us as readers?)

* Experiences of movement and dislocation (How have writers, artists,
photo...

Understanding and Shaping Regions: Spatial, Social and Economic Futures

Leuven, Belgium: 6-8 April 2009 (excursion and walking tour Sunday 5th April 2009)

FINAL CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

* Early registration fees still apply - see website for full details.
* Territorial registration fees are now available.
* All abstracts will be accepted but the convenors reserve the right to enter discussion with you to ensure the abstract best fits the theme of the conference.
* Papers are welcome from all - academics, students and those in policyand practice.
* Abstracts are published in an ISBN publication.
* Best paper competition


We are writing to remind you that the deadline for submitting an abstract for the above conference is this Friday, 9th January 2009.

Plenary speakers include:

* Danuta Hübner, Commissioner, European Commission
* Professor Liu Shiqing, West Development Research Centre, Sichuan Academy
of Social Sciences, Chengdu, PRC
* Truman Packard, World Bank, World Development Report
* Professor Frank Moulaert, KU Leuven
* Professor Andres Rodriguez-Pose, LSE
* Mikel Landabasso, European Commission (tbc)


Conference Themes:

* Regional policy and evaluation
* Regions as innovation hubs?
* Labour markets, employability, worklessness and migration
* Spatial planning, cities and regions
* City regions, governance and democracy
* Tourism, innovation and local developme...

In the Company of Cars: Driving as a Social and Cultural Practice Sarah Redshaw, Macquarie University, Australia

It has long been accepted that the social and cultural meanings of the car far exceed the practical need for mobility. This book marks the
first attempt to contribute to road safety, considering, in depth, these meanings and the cultures of driving that are shaped by them.
In the Company of Cars examines the perspectives that young people have on cars, and explores the broader social and cultural meanings of the car, the potential it is supposed to fulfil, and the anticipated benefits it offers to young drivers.
From focus-group research conducted in Australia, the book takes up the views of young people on a range of topics, from media to car use to gender performance. The author looks at the ways in which driving has been defined by articulations of the car that emphasize valued features of the car-driver, such as gender, youthfulness, status, age, power, raciness, sexiness, ruggedness and competitiveness. The book takes a global perspective on mobility, considering the impact of cars and road safety policy on quality of life, and the value and significance of other modes of travel, in a range of countries.

Contents: Foreword, Tim Dant; Preface; Introduction: cars and their associations; Enticing cars and driving styles; Inscribing driving:
boredom and pleasure on the roads; Cultured drivers; Driven by desire; Dilemma...

Ruhr-University Bochum

The Faculty of Geosciences at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, invites applications for the position of an Associate Professor
(W2 salary rank) for

"Human Geography: Mobility and Demographic Change"

The appointee will be involved in research and teaching in the field of human geography. His/her research should particularly focus on the following research themes: demographic change and settlement development, social and spatial mobility, lifestyle and action space, socio-spatial analysis. The appointee will thus contribute to the university s research focus on Global Change. He/She will be teaching prescribed and elective courses within the department s geography programmes at both Bachelor and Master level, particularly in the Master Programme on "Urban and Regional Development Management".

A research and teaching focus on the methods of empirical social research (particularly quantitative methods) is an indispensable requirement for the position offered. Proven competencies in GIS are desirable. Furthermore, a non-European regional focus, preferably in North America, South or South East Asia, would be an added advantage. The appointee must fulfil the formal requirements for appointment within the German university system (positively evaluated junior professorship, "Habilitation" or equivalent academic achievements), have proven competencies in university teaching and be willing to actively partake in the administra...

Immigrant Image Archive - Chamber for Immigrant Visual Studies

Chamber for Immigrant Visual Studies was established in Copenhagen 2007 as an independent, non-profit art project focusing on the visual aspects of immigration. The archive collects, preserves, and provides photographs and video films about immigrants in Denmark. The aim is to build a national, visual documentation centre for the immigration to Denmark in the period from 1950 and till today. The archive solely contains images with relation to immigration taken by the immigrants themselves. Hence, visitors to the archive are confronted with the social realities and experiences of the contributors who are conveying their own stories. The archive functions as an information and research centre and is open to the public. It consists of an electronic image database, which form basis for exhibitions, talks, publications and electronic presentations. The archive also organizes public lectures and seminars, and provides professional advice through arrangements addressing the relationship between the various immigrant societies and the Danish society. The purpose of this is to increase the mutual knowledge of the societies and break down social barriers.

Activities
Through exhibitions, debates, talks, symposiums, artist presentations, performances, slide shows and film screenings, the archive sheds light on the last 60 years immigration to Denmark. Simultaneously with this, it passes...

GLOCAL IMAGINARIES: WRITING / MIGRATION / PLACE

Lancaster University and Whitworth Gallery Manchester, 9-12 Sep 2009

Abstracts – no more than 300 words – are now invited for the above event which is the closing conference of the AHRC-funded Moving Manchester project (2006-2009).

Plenary speakers at the conference will include: Mieke Bal; Roger Bromley; Shirley Chew; David L. Eng; Gayatri Gopinath; Ranjana Khanna; Susheila Nasta; James Procter; John Thieme; John Urry; Robert J.C. Young; Ruth Wodak.

Conference streams to include: The Glocal City; Glocal Diasporas; Migration and Diaspora; Glocal Economies (eg. publishing industry, food); Discourses of the Glocal; Virtual Glocalities; Gendering Glocalities; Moving Stories (creative writing / arts stream); Queer Glocalities; Glocal Mobilities.

Papers are invited from colleagues with an interest in any of these areas, but we are also happy to consider proposals which fall outside of them. In addition, we are willing to consider proposals from colleagues who would like to present their work collectively and / or constitute their own ‘three paper’ panel.

Please note that this is a multi-disciplinary conference and streams will led and / or co-hosted by colleagues from Geography, Sociology, Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, Media Studies, Linguistics and European Literatures and Cultures as well as English Literature and Creative Writing.

FURTHER DETAILS ...

Call for papers

Visualizing Migration and Divided Societies

Hosted by the MSH Paris Nord
5th June 2009

Deadline 9th January 2009

Organizers:

Susan Ball (University of Paris 8)
Chris Gilligan (University of the West of Scotland)

Supported by: EA1569 Transferts critiques et dynamiques des saviors (domaine anglophone), and the University of Paris 8.

Contemporary society is often characterised as being marked by
unprecedented levels of movement of people, goods and information (as articulated, for example, in discussions of globalisation, information society or liquid modernity). A related theme is that of barriers and division (as articulated, for example, in concerns about residential segregation, social exclusion or immigration controls).

This conference s focus on migration and divided society brings these two themes together in a single framework, and shifts the method of their analysis from concepts which have been predominantly language-based and/or number-based to the visual medium. In the conference we want to bring social scientists (sociologists, geographers, historians, anthropologists, researchers in urban and development studies, etc.) together with practitioners who are employed primarily in a visual medium (photography, audiovisual material, new media, museum scenography, thematic cartography, etc.) in order to generate synergies between the different fields. By giving primacy to me...

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sociology Department

LECTURER in MOBILITIES RESEARCH (A127)

Applications are invited for a new Lectureship in the Centre for Mobilities Research.  The person appointed will have or be able to develop an outstanding research record with good prospects of generating external research funds.  They will be based in the Sociology Department but expected to develop links across the Faculty and University.  They will also be expected to contribute to teaching on the department s undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

For appointment at Grade 7, applications are particularly invited from those who are completing or have recently completed their PhD.  Applicants for the Grade 8 post would normally be expected to have some post-doctoral research and/or teaching experience.

Informal enquiries may be made to the Director of the Centre, Professor John Urry on j.urry@lancaster.ac.uk

Closing date:           5 January 2009

Starting date           1 September 2009

Further details see:    http://www.personnel.lancs.ac.uk/

Salary information:     Lecturer Grade 7 £31,513 - £35,469 pa

    &...

RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Manchester: 26-28 August 2009

Call for papers

Geographies of the Passenger

Sponsored by the Social & Cultural Geography Research Group and the Transport Geography Research Group

Convenors: Peter Adey (Keele University); David Bissell (University of Brighton); Eric Laurier (University of Edinburgh); Jon Shaw (University of Plymouth)

Research that has contributed to the new mobilities paradigm has helped to illuminate some of the various intersecting virtual, corporeal and incarcereal mobilities that constitute contemporary spaces of flows (Cresswell; Urry). However significantly less has been said about the particular experience of passengers who are caught up within these flows, networks and systems (although see Adey; Laurier; Bissell). Even less has been expressed about how the passenger and their experiences have been conceived, imagined, manipulated, regulated and engineered. And whilst some detail has been given to the various modalities of mobility the passenger may take, far less engagement has looked at how the experiences and imaginations of the passenger cut across multiple of modes of mobility in different historical, economic, political and geographical contexts (Shaw). In a world increasingly on the move, these issues seem particularly pertinent.

First, this session seeks to attend to the sociality of the passenger experience by considering the types of relationship that cohere,...

Dr Roberto Zani of the University of Bologna is conducting a web-based research on the sociology of mobility, aiming at exploring and disseminating the theoretical fundamentals and the most relevant variables and indicators used to undertake researches on mobility.

The research is addressed to sociologists working in the academic environment and to all professionals and post graduate students with experience in mobility related studies.

Please visit the sociology of mobility Web Site: www.sociologyofmobility.net[1] 

Each professional filling in the questionnaire will receive a copy of the results of the study.

Salter, Mark B. (2008): Politics at the airport. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Establishes the airport as a crucial site in the rise of the surveillance state.

Few sites are more symbolic of both the opportunities and vulnerabilities of contemporary globalization than the international airport.

Politics at the Airport brings together leading scholars to examine how airports both shape and are shaped by current political, social, and economic conditions. Focusing on the ways that airports have become securitized, the essays address a wide range of practices and technologies—from architecture, biometric identification, and CCTV systems to “no-fly lists” and the privatization of border control—now being deployed to frame the social sorting of safe and potentially dangerous travelers.

This provocative volume broadens our understanding of the connections among power, space, bureaucracy, and migration while establishing the airport as critical to the study of politics and global life.

Contributors: Peter Adey, Colin J. Bennett, Gillian Fuller, Francisco R. Klauser, Gallya Lahav, David Lyon, Benjamin J. Muller, Valérie November, Jean Ruegg.

Mark B. Salter is associate professor of political science at the University of Ottawa.

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/S/salter_politics.html

mobil.TUM 2009
International Scientific Conference on Mobility and Transport

12th & 13th May 2009
Munich, Germany

Call for Papers – Topics

The global population is growing exponentially. Already more than half is living in larger cities, metropolitan regions and megacities. On the one hand, well functioning transportation systems are vital to ensure a high quality of individual mobility as well as to provide an efficient backbone for the regional economy. On the other hand, the increasing transport negatively effects the environment, the ecology, as well as the economy.Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) have evolved to offer a wide range of options to cope with these challenges and to provide environmentally sustainable mobility in
larger cities.

The conference aims to progress transport research and its application by
- state of the art reviews
- latest scientific achievements
- technological innovations
- exemplary solutions

The conference will be organized in plenary as well as parallel sessions covering the following areas
- traffic state estimation and transport modeling
- traffic management and control
- cooperative systems based on car2x
- public transport solutions
- transportation demand management
all with a clear focus on larger cities and agglomerations.

Conference language is English. Papers may be contributed in German or English.

Submission of abstracts: n...

1st Transatlantic NECTAR Conference 2009 Arlington, Virginia USA, 18-20 June, 2009

Call for Papers

The Conference is aimed at developing a better understanding of the way that transport and communications networks are evolving in a rapidly changing world. It will consider the complex and diverse challenges facing providers of transport and communications services and those responsible for establishing the institutional structures in which they are provided.

Sessions: The meeting will be divided between sessions devoted to
submitted papers, and to a number of specified thematic sessions. The latter will focus on transatlantic initiatives that embrace both the
commonality of transport, communications, and mobility issues found on either sides of the Atlantic, and the differences in approaches that have been applied to analysing them. The call is for volunteers who would like to organize a thematic session, and for those who wish to submit a research paper on themes relating to transport, communications, and mobility.

Deadline: Abstracts of papers should be submitted electronically to
AbstractsNectar@feweb.vu.nl, using the abstract form attached to this message. Those wishing to organize a thematic session should contact Ken Button directly (KButton@gmu.edu) offering a session title and the names ...

University of East London

School Of Social Sciences, Media & Cultural Studies

TEMPORARY POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW
7 Months fixed-term contract in the first instance

Salary up to £32,432 p.a. incl.

The University of East London is a dynamic and rapidly expanding university at the heart of Europe s largest regeneration area and adjacent to the site of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.    

The School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies, one of the largest and fastest-growing in the UK has achieved Grade 5 in the last two RAEs. The School has eight research centres and five academic fields.

We are seeking a colleague to work on a project entitled Exhausting Risks? The car industry, CO2, and the regulatory state focused around attempts to create EU-level regulation of road transport CO2 emissions. You will have a Masters degree in a relevant social science discipline (for example, Sociology, Politics, or Geography) with substantial proven experience of conducting qualitative interviews and literature reviews.  A PhD qualification (or near completion) in a social science discipline and fluency in a European language (preferably French or German) would be an advantage.  You will be self-motivated and able to work as part of a small
team.

To obtain further details about this vacancy please visit our website at www.uel.ac.uk/...

Appel à communication
(clôture le vendredi 12 décembre 2008) pour le

9e colloque du groupe de travail

Mobilités Spatiales et Fluidité Sociale
de l’Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française (AISLF)

organisé par le CEPS/INSTEAD

Luxembourg, 26, 27 et 28 mars 2009

http://msfs2009.ceps.lu

Ce colloque, envisagé comme une rencontre interdisciplinaire visant à faire dialoguer sociologues, géographes, démographes, psychologues, économistes, aménageurs, ainsi que les divers acteurs territoriaux, portera sur la thématique suivante :

 « Les interactions entre mobilités quotidienne et résidentielle à l épreuve des nouvelles pratiques sociales »

La question est de savoir dans quelle mesure les articulations entre déplacements routiniers et stratégies résidentielles constituent une ressource mobilisée par les individus pour assurer la faisabilité et la pérennité de leur programme d’activités. En d’autres termes, comment les comportements individuels peuvent-ils faire émerger de nouveaux modes d’habiter ?

Trois axes de réflexion sont proposés (détails dans l’appel ci-joint) :

Mobilités et évolution des structures familiales,
Mobilités, ressources techniques et modes de vie,
Mobilités, formes urbaines et inégalités sociales.
Les propositions de communication sont à adresser par courriel au plus tard pour le vend...

Annoucement: Publication of monograph on video essays

URSULA BIEMANN MISSION REPORTS
Artistic Practice in the Field
Video Works 1998-2008

This substantial monograph, on and around Ursula Biemann s practice, provides an opportunity to engage with more than a decade of her video art production and writing. Through a range of essays by cultural theorists, as well as texts by the artist herself and generous visual documentation, this book surveys the numerous artistic and visual research projects Biemann has conducted throughout the contested trans-national territories of the world. She has consistently developed a unique aesthetic language with which to explore her concerns with the gendered concept of borders and the contemporary forms of migration that they produce. Her video essays offer a critique of the visual technologies being advanced for the acceleration, and control, of global mobility, confounding the prevailing representations to reveal a more complex human geography of collateral effects and unrecorded movements on the ground.

Texts by Ursula Biemann on conceptualising artistic fieldwork discussing her videos essays from Performing the Border (1999) to X-Mission (2008); and essays by Angela Dimitrakaki Materialist Feminism for the Twenty-First Century: The Video Essays of Ursula Biemann, Wendy S. Hesford Global Sex Work and Video Advocacy: The Geopolitics of Rhetorical Identificati...

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Postgraduate Forum Mid-Term Conference 2009
Hosted by the University of Plymouth’s School of Geography
Saturday, March 7th 2009

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Postgraduate Forum Mid-Term Conference provides a relaxed, supportive, yet academically relevant atmosphere for postgraduate geographers, from all aspects of the discipline, to present their research and discuss ideas. The conference is also a social event and an ideal opportunity to meet up with other postgraduates.
Website - http://www.geog.plymouth.ac.uk/rgspostgradconf09

Contributions
We welcome papers and posters from students at any stage in their
research. (Presentations are arranged into themed sessions. Among these a transport geography session is projected. Proposals for papers or posters which relates to transport or mobility topics are therefore very appreciated.) The guidelines for submissions are as follows:

Papers - Paper Presentations should be 10 minutes in length, with fiveminutes allocated for questions afterwards. PowerPoint facilities will be provided. Overhead projectors and facilities for sound can be arranged on request.

Posters - Posters should be A0, A1 or A2 size.
Posters will be mounted on display boards throughout the day, and
presenters will be allocated a 30 minute slot in which to answ...

Urban Networks - Network Urbanism

by Gabriel Dupuy
Techne Press - series Design/Science/Planning  Volume 7, September 2008

Urban networks, network cities, networked cities and city networks are widely discussed, but there has hardly been debate on what constitutes an urbanism of networks. It is time to shift network urbanism from the realm of general debate to that of identifying the task-specific tools and techniques required for its implementation. This book does so.

Urban Networks - Network Urbanism provides theoretical groundwork, historical perspective, detailed arguments and explanatory case descriptions for network-oriented thinking in developing urban and regional spatial strategies. The key argument is that the development of technical networks and urban development go hand in hand and need to be dealt with as such by urban planners. This book gives special attention to the territorial effects caused by the automobile system and to the geography of ICT. It provides pointers to deal with the huge challenges facing urban planning with regard to changes of scale, technological
progress, the "two-track city", and network liberalisation.

Urban Networks - Network Urbanism is a collection of 19 key articles by Gabriel Dupuy. These articles have been selected and are introduced by Jeroen van Schaick and Ina Klaasen, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft, The Netherlands. Gabriel Dupuy is Professor of Urban Planning at Universite de ...

Securitising Mobilities and Circulations

A workshop to be held at the Claus Moser Research Centre, University of Keele, 27-28 November 2008

Please register with Rosie Shepherd (see below).

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
* Thursday 27 November *

*13.00 -- Registration and coffee*
* *
*13.30 -- Introduction: *
Luis Lobo-Guerrero and Peter Adey (University of Keele)
Securitising Mobilities and Circulations as a problem space

*14.00 --16:00 *
*Panel 1: Biosecurities, Infectious microbes, and pollinators*

Javier Lezaun (University of Oxford)
A New Degree of Connectivity : Bees and Bureaucrats in a changing
European landscape

Stefan Elbe (University of Sussex)
Viral Sovereignty: Microbial Crises of Circulation and the Biopolitics of Security

Nick Bingham, (Department of Geography, The Open University)
Mapping the multiplicities of biosecurity

Discussant: Ronnie Lippens, University of Keele

*16.00 -- tea and coffee*

*16.30*
Keynote address:
Prof. Mark Salter (University of Ottawa)
Title to be announced

*19.00 -- Drinks reception: Claus Moser Research Centre, lobby*
*19.30 -- Workshop Dinner: The Terrace Restaurant, Keele Hall*

*Friday 28 November*
*9.00 Panel 2 *
*Targeting circulation, protecting heterotopia*

Martin Coward (University of Sussex)
From shock and awe to 7/7 : Attacks on infrastructure as a lens for
underst...

Spaces of Mobility

The Planning, Ethics, Engineering and Religion of Human Motion

Edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Thomas Hoff and Tore Sager

November 2008, 296pp

ISBN:   PB 978 1 84553 340 3   £22.95    

HB 978 1 84553 339 7   £65    

Description:

Conflicts surrounding modern human mobility are more than one hundred years old, and are deeply connected to the history of modernization and globalization.  The multidisciplinary contributions in this volume do not offer one single theory or methodology for mobility studies, but are instead meant to promote the development of overarching approaches in the future.

The first section contains reflections on the socio-political, environmental, and ethical aspects of mobility, where “hypermobility” causes serious and deep damage to social planning, and in doing so, creates an explosive challenge to democracy. Through its enormous energy consumption, hypermobility also produces problematic impacts on local and global natural environments, which makes it necessary to refocus the analysis of attitudes towards mobility patterns. From an ethical perspective, mobility represents a marginal but still crucial challenge to reflect on why and how modern modes of transport emerge, are preserved and could or could not be transformed.

The second section emphasises the interaction between surroundings...

Mobility and Technology in the Workplace
Edited by Donald Hislop

Price: £75.00

ISBN: 978-0-415-44346-3

Binding: Hardback

Published by: Routledge

Publication Date: 14th July 2008

Pages: 256

About the Book

The contemporary period has witnessed the rapid evolution in a wide range of mobile technology. This book charts the profound implications these technological changes have for workers and business organizations. From an organizational point of view they have the potential to transform the nature of organizations, through allowing workers to be increasingly mobile. From the perspective of workers these changes have the potential to impact on their work-related communications, how they manage the increasingly blurred public-private divide, and the nature of the home-work boundary.

These chapters provide a detailed insight into these issues through bringing together an international collection of contemporary studies and analysis and taking a critical perspective towards some of the advertised myths regarding mobile technology usage. Issues covered include:

·Travel and changing nature of spatial mobility patterns.

·Work-Space and Place and the ‘leaking’ out of organizations into more public domains.

·Mobile Work Practices including detailed and heterogeneous case studies.

·Home-work dynamics and the changing nature of the home-work boundary.

·Implicat...

Call for Papers

From Mobile Anthropologists to Anthropologies of Mobility
Canadian Anthropology Society/American Ethnological Society Joint Meeting
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, May 13-16, 2009

Organizer: Noel B. Salazar (University of Leuven)

This panel takes up the general conference theme, "Transnational
Anthropologies: Convergences and Divergences in Globalized Disciplinary Networks".

Long before transnationalism, globalization or cosmopolitanism became academic buzzwords, anthropologists already knew
about these phenomena and processes as experience experts (although they not necessarily acknowledged them in their writings). With the present hype over global fluxes and flows, we tend to forget that many of anthropology’s founding scholars, including Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski, were themselves migrants and that the latter put transcultural mobility at the heart of ethnographic practice. Not only the experience of “being there” produced invaluable insights that shaped the discipline, but also the act of traveling “out of place” played a determining role. The papers in this panel analyze how professional as well as personal engagements of anthropologists with  variety of mobilities (e.g. migration, translocal fieldwork, and global academic exchange via conferences, visiting programs, and online networks) strategically positions them within the social sciences to ethnographically describe, criticall...

Mediterranean waters: Urban Infrastructure, Transdisciplinary Dialogue and Sustainable Futures
Institute for Advanced Studies @ Lancaster University | 14th of November 2008

Workshop organised by ‘mediterranean mobilities’ – CeMoRe and the Geography Departament Lancaster University, UK

Speakers:

Tony Allan, School of Oriental and African Studies and and London Water Research Group, King s College

Maria Kaika, The University of Manchester

Magda Sibley, Liverpool University

Erik Swyngedouw, The University of Manchester

Water as an intermediary, travelling through a multiplicity of socio-natural conduits, is known for the interconnectivity it produces across time and space, socio-natural worlds, generations, as well as cultural beliefs and values. And yet, we know much less about how to bring together different disciplinary understandings of water into strategies for effective sustainable water management. Nowhere is this more urgent than in the arid and semi-arid regions such as the Mediterranean, especially in the face of global climate change. Recurrent and persistent droughts, water shortages and infrastructure stress often become the norm rather than the exception in this area characterised by a recent history of overexploitation of ground and surface water resources, rapid coastal urbanisation, lack of planning and population growth.

These challenges have been brought together in the Bl...

AAG Conference, Las Vegas, 22-27 March 2009

Call for Papers

Circulating Stillness: investigating lived mobilitiy

Organizers:   Ariel Terranova-Webb (The Open University) 
              Shannon Hensley (University of Exeter)

Sponser:  Cultural Geography Specialty Group

Rather than merely documenting mobility as the flow of goods or materials, recent geographical work on mobilities begins to focus more on the performance of mobility or mobile performances, paying close attention to the ways in which mobilities are embedded in social life.  This shift expands not only our understanding of lived mobilites, but also our approach to investigating geographies of both mobility and performance.  For this session we invite papers that consider the following kinds of questions:  What constitutes mobility?  How is it experienced and lived?  How do mobilities and mobile performances  generate change and surprise but also regularity or stillness? How do mobilities become fixed? How do we research mobilities? How do practices of being/becoming mobile become habitual or routine? What does this contribute to understanding the interplay of mobility and performance?

Papers for this session might address:

* lived mobilities
* sensorial experiences of mobility
* representations of mobi...

New Publication:
Une approche laïque de la mobilité
[A layman’s guide to mobility]

By Jean-Pierre Orfeuil
Professor at the French Institute of Town Planning
President of the Academic Chair of the Institut pour la ville en mouvement.
Published by Descartes & Cie, “Les Urbanités” Collection

The aim of this book, published in partnership with the City on the Move, is to explain the terms of the debates and arguments, and to describe the state of play so that people can reach an informed position on a fundamental societal issue.

Climate change looms, petroleum reserves are not inexhaustible, huge countries where oil demand until recently was low, are now opening up to mass automobile ownership. The question of the physical limits of human activity, which in the last century could be set aside, will be very present in this century.
Transportation, and in particular day-to-day mobility, is particularly at issue. Because the stakes are high, we need to keep a cool head, undogmatically assess the effectiveness of potential solutions, question old assumptions. Good intentions and “politically correct” solutions may seem attractive today, but tomorrow’s climate and the well-being of future generations will depend entirely on our capacity to reconcile prudence, mobility and cost. There are reasons for thinking that the current consensuses and choices are taking us in the wrong direction.

Because the question of tomorrow’...

5th Cosmobilities Conference
October 16-17, 2008

Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (Germany)

Tracing the new mobilities regimes.
The analytical power of the social sciences and the arts

In a certain way the social sciences and some forms of contemporary arts have a similar intention: to analyze modern societies and cultures. They use specific methods, methodologies and techniques to explore and to signify the fundamental changes and phenomena characteristic for the world of today. Mobility, flexibility, acceleration and the rise of a globally networked society are topics for many scientists and artists as well.

In the early nineteenth century, there was a conflict that arose between the literary and scientific intellectuals of Europe, as they competed for recognition as the chief analysts of the new industrial society in which they lived. Sociology was conceived as the third major discipline, a hybrid of the scientific and literary traditions. This conference targets not to a conflict but to a new discourse on the potentials the fine arts and the social sciences have to analyze contemporary phenomena of mobility in its cultural and societal relevance.

We invited scientists from all disciplines dealing with mobility (sociology, ethnology, an-thropology, history, art history and so forth) and artists to gi...

Welcome to the new Cosmobilities website!

In the news section you will find a range of information on upcoming conferences, calls for papers, new publication, job openings, etcetera.

The activities section is the space for all Cosmobilities related news. Here you also find info about the upcoming Cosmobilities Conference Tracing the new mobilities regime on October 16 and 17, 2008.

You can also contact the Cosmobilities network organisation, and find the contact details of the members of the network.

Members will soon have the opportunity to publish papers and access the internal part of the site.

If you want to be kept informed about mobilities research, please register as a member of our mailinglist

Call for Papers TTRA2009

TTRA European Chapter Conference

"Transport and Tourism: Challenges, Issues and Conflicts"

22 – 24 April 2009, The Netherlands

OBJECTIVES OF THE CONFERENCE

Although tourism’s very existence depends on transport, most researchers in transportation and logistics show little interest in tourism and travel, and few tourism researchers focus on transport issues. Important new technological developments in transport – e.g. the invention of passenger trains and jet aircraft – have always provided significant opportunities for the tourist industry. At the same time, tourism also has a major impact on transport modes and networks through its ability to supply additional motivations for leisure and business travel.

There is , therefore, a strong interdependence between tourism activities and transport systems, both of which have expanded at a large scale. However, this continued growth over many decades may be threatened in the near future by global factors such as climate change and security issues. The impact of transport on the environmental quality of destinations (e.g. noise and air pollution, damage to nature and landscapes) may increasingly set limits on tourism growth.

Integrated knowledge of transport and tourism is essential to develop destinations, tourism enterprises and effective tourism policies, and to cope with emerging local and global issues and conflicts. There are four sub-themes:

You are warmly invited to the launch event of a new research centre at Aalborg University.

The Centre for Mobility and Urban Studies is a new trans-disciplinary research collaboration between mobility researchers from the Humanities Faculty, Social Science Faculty and Engineering, Science and Medicine Faculty at Aalborg University. The centre aims to contribute to mobility research at the highest international level. C-MUS contributes to the development of theories, concepts and analytical frameworks of mobility studies as well as working with empirical studies embracing disciplinary approaches from urban studies, ethnography, geography, sociology, consumer studies, media studies, discourse studies, urban design, urban planning and management, city politics, urban traffic planning and engineering, and tourism studies.

The launch seminar and reception will be held on Monday 15th September at 13.00 at Toldboden, Østerågade, Aalborg.

13.00-13.10 Welcome by Dr Claus Lassen (C-MUS Director) and Professor Ole B. Jensen (C-MUS Board Member).

13.15-14.00 Keynote lecture by Dr. Mimi Sheller: ‘Architectures of Complex Mobilities in Island-Space’.

14.00-14.15 Discussion

14.15-15.30 Reception

Mimi Sheller is Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Swarthmore College, and Senio...

University of York Department of History Cultural History Conference 2009

Cultural Histories of Sociability, Spaces and Mobility

9-11 July 2009

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline 28 November 2008

Spatial mobility has moved to the centre of lively debates in a number of key areas of social inquiry. Terms such as travel , mobility , displacement , diaspora , frontier , transience , dislocation , fluidity and permeability are central to thinking about the nature of subjectivity and hence the formation of identity on any number of geographical scales and social dimensions. In particular, some scholars argue that the contemporary meaning and practice of what it is to belong is changing as new technologies of transport, along with communications, help to reduce the power of traditional places to define personal and communal identities. Some commentators even suggest that unparalleled levels of mobility are shaping a post-societal world of extreme individualization in which nation-states and civil societies are being replaced by global citizens moving endlessly through worldwide networks and flows . Critics argue that this assumption of unbounded movement and geographically fluid identities is unwarranted, and that what matters is understanding how inequalities of mobility arise and with what consequences for social equity and ecological sustainability. But without a sure grasp of the historical precedents to these scenarios, it is all to...

The Graduate School „Topology of Technology" at Darmstadt University of Technology is organizing an international conference on the spatial dimensions of past and current technologies.

30-31 October 2008

Presently (re-)shaping social life as well as economics and science, the effects of globalization are in their turn – and in manifold ways – related to and in fact highly dependent on technology. The first International Conference of the DFG-post graduate school "Topologies of Technology" seeks to explore in greater detail and from a delibarately interdisciplinary angle the role(s) and function(s) of world-embracing information and communication technologies, transport and computing facilities in the global age.

The panels which will be at the core of the conference are centered around four keynotes dealing with the technological dimensions of globalization (Dr. Sattelberger, head of HR, Deutsche Telekom), with the economic and financial significance of globalization (Dr. Reinhard Blomert, Chief Editor "Leviathan"), with the relationship between globalization and science (Prof. J.-D. Wörner, CEO of the German Aerospace Center), and with the spatial dimensions of urban environments in a global context (Prof. Jyoti Hosagrahar, Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University). The conference will conclude with a panel...

Built Environment. Volume 34, number 2, 2008

People plus Technology: New Approaches to Sustainable Mobility

Editor: Ralf Brand, Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC)

The contributors to this issue interpret mobility as a complex system of
social, institutional and technical factors. And technical factors are
not just valve heads, catalytic converters and other technologies meant
to reduce the environmental impact of mobility without any change of
social practices; they also include road surface textures, street
layouts, pedestrian precincts, bicycle lanes, speed bumps, underpasses,
building designs and all other urban artefacts with an intended or
unintended impact on our mobility choices. This issue investigates what
can be seen, learned and done when we interpret the challenge of
sustainable mobility from this vantage point. The answers do not come as
cookbook style advice, but certainly increase our awareness of options
that mainstream technical or social ‘fixes’ tend to overlook.

People plus Technology: New Approaches to Sustainable Mobility
RALF BRAND

The Role of Human Powered Vehicles in Sustainable Mobility
PETER COX

Shared Space: Reconciling People, Places and Traffic
BEN HAMILTON-BAILLIE

Co-evolution of Technical and Social Change in Action: Hasselt’s
Approach to Urban Mobility
RALF BRAND

Urban Transport Systems in Bogotá and Copenhagen: An Approach fro...

Der mobilen Welt auf der Spur

Dr. Ulrich Marsch, Presse & Kommunikation
Technische Universität München

01.07.2008

Münchner Fachkonferenz für Mobilitätsforscher und Künstler

Weltweiter Verkehr, Wochenend-Beziehungen quer durch Europa, internationale berufliche Mobilität, künstlerische oder kommerzielle Projekte mit weltweit verteilten Partnern: Die Globalisierung spielt im Rahmen der modernen Lebens- und Arbeitsgestaltung eine immer größere Rolle.
Wie aber entwickeln sich Mobilität und Verkehr in der Zukunft? Wie können sie geregelt, gestaltet und beherrscht werden? Welche neuen sozialen, technischen und verkehrlichen Netzwerke entstehen? Wie lassen diese sich beschreiben und darstellen, und was lässt sich an ihnen für die Beschreibung moderner Gesellschaften ablesen? Letztlich: Wo liegen die Chancen, wo die Risiken in einer mobilen Welt?

Diesen Fragen widmet sich eine interdisziplinäre Konferenz am 16. und 17. Oktober 2008 in München in der Akademie der Bildenden Künste. Neben Soziologen werden Verkehrswissenschaftler, Ethnologen, Anthropologen, Historiker, Kunstwissenschaftler und bildende Künstler teilnehmen. "In gewisser Weise ist diese Fachkonferenz ein Experiment. Sie bringt Vertreter völlig verschiedener Disziplinen und Denkrichtungen an einen Tisch, um gemeinsam nach Analysekriterien für die mobile Weltgesellschaft zu...

ISSN 1753-9021(print) 1753-903X (online)

migrations & identities is a new journal published bi-annually by Liverpool University Press. The title represents a programme: We aim to interrogate notions of ‘identity’ while asking how the fact of mobility and displacement does shape understandings of self and the wider world, among both migrants and ‘host’ societies. By the same token, we seek to understand how ideas and concepts are transformed as they ‘migrate’ from one place and culture to another. These issues have been, and continue to be, addressed under a number of rubrics and through a number of approaches in the humanities and social sciences. In acknowledgement of this, migrations & identities is multi- and interdisciplinary in its conception and management. It also aims to cover the widest possible range of places, periods and methods, subject only to a shared curiosity and enthusiasm about the possibilities of working at the interface between the investigation of the material conditions of migration processes and the study of ideas and subjectivities. In particular, we hope that scholars working in many fields will find in migrations & identities a forum for discussion of the methods appropriate to a project of linking observable experience and mentalities in different times and places, and that among the topic...

Call for papers:

new publication at Ashgate:

Mobility and Place

Enacting Northern European Peripheries

Aldershot: Ashgate 2008. 272 pages. Hardback ISBN 978-0-7546-7141-1. ₤55/€70

Edited by Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Roskilde University, Denmark and Brynhild Granås, University of Tromso, Norway

The Northern peripheries of Europe, which are covered by this book, are associated with remoteness, the frontier, isolated communities, colonialism and resource extraction. Recently, huge projects in petroleum and hydropower have been located there, and the region has become better known as an attractive tourist destination. Although these spaces are perceived as being marginal, they are inhabited and linked into globalization and international agendas. This book examines how people live in such remote spaces in an emerging global world of connectivity, interdependency, mobility and non-linear dynamics.

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9965&edition_id=10609

Print friendly information sheet <http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/tis/9780754671411.pdf>

This special issue is now online available:

Built Environment. Volume 34, number 2, 2008

People plus Technology: New Approaches to Sustainable Mobility

Editor: Ralf Brand, Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC)

The contributors to this issue interpret mobility as a complex system of social, institutional and technical factors. And technical factors are
not just valve heads, catalytic converters and other technologies meant to reduce the environmental impact of mobility without any change of
social practices; they also include road surface textures, street layouts, pedestrian precincts, bicycle lanes, speed bumps, underpasses,
building designs and all other urban artefacts with an intended or unintended impact on our mobility choices. This issue investigates what
can be seen, learned and done when we interpret the challenge of sustainable mobility from this vantage point. The answers do not come as
cookbook style advice, but certainly increase our awareness of options that mainstream technical or social ‘fixes’ tend to overlook.

People plus Technology: New Approaches to Sustainable Mobility
RALF BRAND

The Role of Human Powered Vehicles in Sustainable Mobility
PETER COX

Shared Space: Reconciling People, Places and Traffic
BEN HAMILTON-BAILLIE

Co-evolution of Technical and Social Change in Action: Hasselt’s
Approach to Urban Mobility
RALF BRAND

Urban Transport Systems in Bogot...

Call for papers

Mobility, the City and STS workshop

Date: November 20-22, 2008
Place: Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen

Mobility is at the very centre of the dynamics of contemporary cities. From bikes to subways, wifi hotspots to sewage infrastructure; our cities are increasingly becoming spaces of flows through which a growing number of people, materials and information move on a daily basis. These growing levels of movement represent not only a technical challenge for planners or the increase of pollution and congestion for authorities and environmentalists. Beyond this we can
observe the development of new kinds of highly complex socio-technical systems of urban mobility that radically reconfigure the practice and experience of living in cities.

This situation has been acknowledged by a series of developments in the fields of urban studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, and others related areas in which the study of these multiple mobilities appear as its main subject. Even a particular area of social research and theory called "mobility studies" has been established with the explicit aim to study the mobile aspects of social life in all its complexity and heterogeneity; from everyday interactions at the local level to wider issues regarding themes like globalization, exclusion, and sustainability.

In this context the aim of this workshop is to bring together social scientists and o...

New publication at Ashgate

Edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway and Tore Sager, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

With this book the international academic discourse on mobility is taken a step further, through the intertwined perspectives of different social sciences, engineering and the humanities. Ethics of Mobilities builds upon the recent interest in social surveillance, raised by the use of technology for the surveillance and control of mobility as well as for transport. It widens this theme to encompass a broad scale of issues, ranging from freedom and escape to social exclusion and control, thus raising important questions of ethics, identity and metaphysics; questions that are dealt with by a diverse, yet structured range of chapters, arranged around the themes of ethics and religion, and freedom and control.

As such, this volume undertakes not only to describe and explore contemporary and narrow notions of mobility but also to investigate and nurture their transition to richer conceptual models. Spatial, ethical, and technical dimensions of mobility, so far not satisfactorily analyzed, are related for the first time in this collection to established research on mobilities in geography, economics and sociology. Through their variety and d...

CALL FOR PAPERS

Tourism Landscapes and Luxury Consumption in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean

Institute for Advanced Studies @ Lancaster University

11 & 12 September 2008

Conference organised by the Departamento de Análisis Geográfico Regional y Geografía Física, Facultad de Geografía e Historia. UCM, Spain
Departamento de Antropología Social, Facultad de CC. Políticas y Sociología. UCM, Spain
and mediterranean mobilities - CeMoRe, Lancaster University, UK

www.medmobilities.net


Keynote speakers:

Ghislain Dubois, advisor to UNEP Blue Plan and IPCC. Limoges University, France

Pau Obrador, Sunderland University, UK

Rothanti Tzanelli, Leeds University, UK

Ana García Silberman, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (tbc)

Mimi Sheller, Swathmore University, USA (tbc)

John Urry, Centre for Mobilities Research, UK

Signs of conspicuous ostentation proliferate along Caribbean and Mediterranean landscapes. Megayatchs, private islands, ultra-expensive mansions, luxury hotels, and exclusive restaurants and country clubs speak of the prominence these regions are gaining in the transnational lifestyles of the super-rich.

Luxury has been no stranger to places like Antigua, Belize, Bahamas, Barbados, Saint Tropez, Mallorca, or Monte Carlo in the 20th century. Ye...

Sixth International Conference on the History of
Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M)

Ottawa, Canada
September 18-21, 2008

-Mobility and the Environment

From September 18th to the 21st, 2008, T2M will be holding its sixth annual conference in Ottawa, Ontario, the first meeting
of this young, dynamic association to be held in Canada. The conference will be hosted by the Canada Science and Technology
Museum and the theme of the 2008 conference is: Mobility and the Environment. The T2M 2008 conference coincides with a
period of growing national and international concern about the problematic relationship between the human desire and need
for greater mobility, and the environmental consequences and challenges of this demand. Historical perspectives on this relationship
offer the promise of greater clarity and understanding. In addition, the conference theme will also embrace philosophical, technical and
cultural perspectives on the history and future of overcoming, or adapting to, the challenges of geography and climate. The Ottawa
conference will also provide a lively context within which to consider how important insights and ideas arising from historical research on
the environment, and on issues of mobility in general, can best be shared with an interested general public. This gathering of scholars,
engineers, scientists and policy makers presents a significant and timely opportunity to bring new ligh...

Wi: Journal of Mobile Media (formerly known as Wi: Journal of the Mobile Digital Commons Network) addresses the latest in international scholarship, artistic productions and design research on mobility, wireless technologies, and digital media.

In this issue on Pedestrian Traffic:

* Letter from the Editors by Andrea Zeffiro, Kim Sawchuk, Barbara Crow and Michael Longford

* A Door to the Digital Locus: Walking in the City with a Mobile Phone - and Michel de Certeau by Fabio B. Josgrilberg

* Registering Realities, Parasiting Networks: An Interview with Antoni Abad by Kim Sawchuk

* Pedestrian Thoughts: Waiting in the Street Looking Squatting Filming Taking Time by Robert Prenovault

* Street Level Conversations: On the Urban Interventions of Stephan Schulz by Jennifer Dorner

* Spatial Dissonance, Subjective Imagination and Locative Media: An Interview with Paula Levine by Barbara Crow

* What Else do We Lose When we Make People Disappear? The Passage Oublié Project by Maroussia Lévesque & Jason Lewis

To read this issue, please visit www.wi-not.ca <http://www.wi-not.ca/>

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16342147639

Questions, suggestions, comments: wieditors@gmail.com
<mailto:wieditors@gmail.com>

29 October:
Workshops with paper presentations

30 - 31 October:
Conference with speakers

Location: University of Copenhagen (Denmark)
Organised by: Center for Housing and Welfare,
University of Copenhagen.
Date :29-31 October 2008
Venue :University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

The international conference Home & Urbanity discusses a range of cultural perspectives on housing research. From an interdisciplinary, cultural analytical perspective, drawing from anthropology, sociology, and the humanities, the conference adresses the role of housing in everyday life. How are flows, objects, images, people and narratives incorporated into everyday urban practices?

Setha Low, Prof. of Anthropology and Environmental Psychology, City University of New York (US) :: Inger Sjørslev, Ass. Prof. of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen (DK) :: Jan Bäcklund, artist (S) :: Kirsten Marie Raahauge, Post.Doc., Anthropology, University of Copenhagen (DK)

David Clapham, Prof. of Housing, Cardiff University (UK):: Orvar Löfgren, Prof. of Ethnology, Lund University (S) :: Ida Wentzel Winther, Ass. ...

New MA in Sociology / Mobilities pathway at Lancaster, UK

This pathway provides an introduction to a new approach within the social sciences that focuses upon the study of intersecting mobilities. Lancaster is one of the pioneering mobilities research centres that continues to shape this new social science which examines how very many practices and institutions in social life depend upon diverse forms of travel, transport, tourism and communications.

This course provides an opportunity to study this new approach where in part it is being generated. It is taught by some of the leading contributors to this new approach who have produced major books, reports and articles. Some of this work involves collaborations with designers, engineers and artists who are involved in imagining and producing alternative mobility futures. The major interdisciplinary journal Mobilities is based in the Centre for Mobilities Research, Sociology Department, Lancaster University.

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/prospective/ma/pathways/mobilitiesHYPERLINK "http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/prospective/ma/pathways/mobilities.htm".htm

Tracing Mobilities

Towards a Cosmopolitan Perspective

Edited by Weert Canzler, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Germany,
Vincent Kaufmann, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
and Sven Kesselring, Technische Universität München, Germany

Mobility is one of the basic principles of modernity. The book presents a movement that begins with the macrosocial transformations linked to mobility and ends with empirical discussions on the new forms of mobility and their implications for everyday life. It opens with a study of the social changes unique to the second age of modernity. It continues with a discussion of the implications of these changes for...

Call for papers

The Future of Disused Railway Areas

Conference at the EPFL in Lausanne, September 4th-5th, 2008

Often absent of building structures and situated in inner city areas, disused railway areas offer vast opportunities to develop dense and compact urban projects.  However, numerous obstacles hinder the development of these sites, such as hesitations towards densification, multiple land owners, negative perceptions, safety concerns, land contamination, etc.

To overcome these frequent obstacles, we propose to develop three research themes:

Theme 1 – Innovative partnerships: Investing in disused railway areas requires investors.  What structures are available to attract private investments?

• Theme 2 – Innovative urban planning processes: Developing a disused railway area requires a procedural approach based o...