We focus in our Mobility, Culture and Society theme on how people live and move together in the contexts of everyday life, societal and environmental change, and various cultural and geopolitical events. We do this through multiple strands of work mixing theoretical reflection, empirical investigation, and applied research. Our research has:
- studied everyday transport practices and experience in terms of accessibility, infrastructural provision, and sustainable transport planning
- examined the mundane lived realities and the movements of various groups and individuals (musicians, artists, international migrants, military personnel and their families, students) and the impact past and present social formations have on them
- explored the imaginations and realities that circulate around and legitimate certain visions of (post-)military lives
- redefined citizenship from focusing on relationships between the state and individuals to encompass everyday performance and practice through the voluntary sector and active citizenship
- considered individual/community-state relationships in terms of the creation and management of urban environments and everyday practices of citizenship; and
- reconceptualized geographic understandings of subjectivity, materiality, and embodied experience.
Emerging and future research areas of research reinforce our concern with how mundane, everyday experiences impact on individuals’ relations to place. We will explore how individuals and communities respond to, and are shaped by, various features of their ‘natural’ and built environment. We will also place increasing emphasis on how creative practice, artistic expression, and popular culture is used to explore, develop, and influence views on social, cultural, political, and environmental issues. This will be pursued through a series of explicitly interdisciplinary frameworks, including critical military studies, creative representation through collaboration with Institute of Art at Plymouth, as well as with external non-academic partners.
