Simulating bodily movement as an agent for the reactivation of forgotten open air spaces in the city

This paper presents experimental work that uses immersive technologies for engaging users and local communities in the design process of architectural interventions on historic, fragmented environments in an effort to re-activate the place under study. In addition to the use of cutting-edge methods of capturing and analysing on-site information, this research framework, implemented in the on-going study of Paphos Gate area of historic Nicosia which lies on the infamous Green Line that still divides the city, explores the potential of narrative-led visualization to enable personal interpretations of space and its history. This virtual environment hosts reconstructions of the Paphos Gate neighbourhood which were produced based on archival material and via 3D data acquisition (LiDAR, UAV and terrain Structure-from-Motion techniques), in order to explore the associations between the transformation of the monument through the years – from its construction to present day – and the bodily experience of the visitors sojourning in its surrounding part of the city. The vision of this research is to develop a digital platform which through immersion, cinematic language and storytelling will enable the evaluation of alternative scenarios and design interventions in the context of the management plan of forgotten open air spaces that used to be popular within their urban fabric.Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union.peer-reviewe

Sharpening the haze: visual essays on imperial history and memory

This volume presents ten visual essays that reflect on the historical, cultural and socio-political legacies of empires. Drawing on a variety of visual genres and forms, including photographs, illustrated advertisements, stills from site-specific art performances and films, and maps, the book illuminates the contours of empire’s social worlds and its political legacies through the visual essay. The guiding, titular metaphor, sharpening the haze, captures our commitment to frame empire from different vantage points, seeking focus within its plural modes of power. We contend that critical scholarship on empires would benefit from more creative attempts to reveal and confront empire. Broadly, the essays track a course from interrogations of imperial pasts to subversive reinscriptions of imperial images in the present, even as both projects inform each author’s intervention

Student engagement, practice architectures and phronesis in the student transitions and experiences project

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Student Transitions and Experiences (STEP) project, in which visual and creative research methodologies were used to enhance student engagement. Design/methodology/approach – The article provides an overview of three main strands within the field of student engagement practice, and explores the STEP project as an instance of the “critical-transformative” strand. The article draws on recent theorizations by Kemmis et al. of practice architectures and ecologies of practice to propose an understanding of the STEP project as a practice “niche”. Findings – In thinking through some implications of student engagement as a practice architecture, the article sheds analytical light on student engagement as a specific and complex form of contemporary education practice. The later part of the article focuses on a consideration of phronesis and praxis in specific instances from the STEP project. Working with concepts from Barad, the article develops a conceptualization of the STEP project as an intra-active, entangled situated and particularistic practice of phronesis-praxis. Originality/value – This article aims to contribute to the development of theoretical and empirical understandings of the field of student engagement. It does so by providing insights into a recent empirical study; by developing some new theorisations of student engagement; and by a detailed exploration of specific instances of student engagement practice.</p

Future touch in industry: exploring sociotechnical imaginaries of tactile (tele)robots

This paper explores sociotechnical imaginaries for industrial robotics. It is motivated by the prospect of promoting human-centred industrial futures. Investigating the tactility of labour through a critical social perspective the research attends to the future of tactile (tele)robots and elaborates on the concepts of pedagogic, collaborative and superhuman touch. These concepts are offered as starting points to foster productive dialogues between social scientists, roboticists, environmentalists, policy makers, industrial leaders and labourers (e.g. union representatives). This paper is framed through literature and ethnographic fieldwork that contextualises and maps the dominant sociotechnical imaginaries for a future touch in industry, identifying the role of a comparative-competitive frame in sustaining a splintering of the imaginary towards utopic and dystopic extremes. Against this, the paper draws on interviews with leading roboticists to chart alternative futures where humans and robots may work together as collaborators, not competitors

Our place : reimagining local history as life writing : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English) at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Figures are re-used with permission.The field of life writing scholarship encourages a variety of accounts of lived experience to be reframed and restudied as life writing. The thesis draws on this body of life writing theory to argue for local history books to be read as lived accounts of a geographical community, applying a life writing lens to the reading and analysis of local history books in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific. The thesis shows that expectations and significance (and even practice) of local history change when it is viewed as collaborative life writing. A multiple method research design integrates case studies of three texts—Matagi Tokelau, Moturoa, and Patumahoe: History & Memories—with analysis of the project experiences of a selection of local history book producers to provide further critical insight into the advantages of framing their work as life writing. The thesis reveals a literary complexity underpinning the history of local place as a window into social worlds and assumptions—particularly the postcolonial. It examines questions of authority and authorship in group life narratives to explore the ethical dimensions of writing about “self” and “other” in these complex, culturally diverse social and political spaces in local history book projects. Through questioning the producers of texts about these issues, and the tensions and nuances they raise, the thesis seeks to stimulate debate and influence changes in the way local history texts are written in future. The study of local history as life writing allows for context, process and reception in the “making” of local history to be appreciated as as important as the actual text that is produced. Similarly, life writing critique reveals the way in which communities assert themselves and their perceived community identities by making and remaking boundaries or controlling the significance of memories. Local history, my research posits, is always unfinished, waiting to be reimagined. The conclusion emphasises the importance of a duty of care expected of writers of local history books as an ethical responsibility to reflect critically and reflexively on their subjects and practices. The thesis enriches an understanding of the production processes of local history books in Aotearoa New Zealand and encourages a step towards more deliberate collaborative practices, posing questions of authorship and representation in the writing and publishing of future texts

What is Narrative Research?

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Narrative research has become a catchword in the social sciences today, promising new fields of inquiry and creative solutions to persistent problems. This book brings together ideas about narrative from a variety of contexts across the social sciences and synthesizes understandings of the field. Rather than focusing on theory, it examines how narrative research is conducted and applied. It operates as a practical introductory guide, basic enough for first-time researchers, but also as a window onto the more complex questions and difficulties that all researchers in this area face. The authors guide readers through current debates about how to obtain and analyse narrative data, about the nature of narrative, the place of the researcher, the limits of researcher interpretations, and the significance of narrative work in applied and in broader political contexts

Graphic Katrina: Disaster Capitalism, Tourism Gentrification and the Affect Economy in Josh Neufelds's A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (2009)

This article explores the ways in which Josh Neufeld’s documentary comic, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, which was published first online from 2007 to 2008 and then collected in book form in 2009, offers a radical visual commentary on the processes of disaster capitalism and tourism gentrification that have reshaped New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Whilst A.D.’s biblical imagery evokes the proto-corporate language of the ‘blank canvas’ in order to critique regimes of disaster capitalism, its vertical multi-scalar perspectives meanwhile resist the racism of media coverage of the event. Through colouring and other aesthetic choices, the comic also challenges the subsequent propagation of an ‘authentic image’ of New Orleans that promotes tourism gentrification. Where previous critics have emphasised the emotional appeal A.D.’s makes on its readers, I instead discuss the comic’s identification of the structural conditions that have violently impacted the city’s most marginalised inhabitants. Nevertheless, the article qualifies these contentions by acknowledging that A.D. also contributes to an ‘affect economy’ that has exacerbated the privatisation of previously public infrastructure and social services, often to the detriment of pre-Katrina residents simply trying to return to their city

Conversations Across Generations: Tracing an Intellectual, Political, and Literary Genealogy From Women of Color Feminist Anthologies to Women of Color Feminist Tumblr

This dissertation examines the digital pedagogy and political genealogy of women of color feminist Tumblr, a networked community of antiracist users on the social media platform Tumblr. I show how these users’ free collection and distribution of social justice educational materials online constitutes a digital feminist of color pedagogy, one which challenges entrenched hierarchies of knowledge-production and circulation. Using textual and discursive analysis as well as social media-specific qualitative methods, I argue that women of color feminist Tumblr harnesses social media as an alternative feminist classroom space—one which challenges the presumed location of feminist and ethnic studies as they have come to be incorporated into the neoliberal multicultural university (Ferguson) and which reimagines their “theoretical subject” (Alarcón) as online users who lack institutional access to these fields’ emancipatory knowledge. Further, I show how the very ethics of this online feminist classroom space are derived from the longer history of women of color feminist praxis and the theorization of “women of color” as a cross-racial, coalitional feminist identity. Building upon the work of Norma Alarcón, Chela Sandoval, and Analouise Keating, who argue that Third World feminism’s “most potentially transformational theories” were largely “bypassed and ignored” (Keating) by mainstream feminist scholarship, my dissertation intervenes by analyzing Third World feminism’s “digital afterlife” (Adair and Nakamura) on social media. By centering questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality within the digital humanities, I join emergent critiques of the digital humanities (Bailey, Cong-Huyen, Lothian, and Phillips 2016) and show how ordinary users transform social media platforms into powerful tools of feminist (re)education.PHDEnglish Language & LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163201/1/jalzate_1.pd

What is Narrative Research?

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Narrative research has become a catchword in the social sciences today, promising new fields of inquiry and creative solutions to persistent problems. This book brings together ideas about narrative from a variety of contexts across the social sciences and synthesizes understandings of the field. Rather than focusing on theory, it examines how narrative research is conducted and applied. It operates as a practical introductory guide, basic enough for first-time researchers, but also as a window onto the more complex questions and difficulties that all researchers in this area face. The authors guide readers through current debates about how to obtain and analyse narrative data, about the nature of narrative, the place of the researcher, the limits of researcher interpretations, and the significance of narrative work in applied and in broader political contexts