Psychological and contextual influences on travel mode choice for commuting

Travel behaviour - especially car use - is of concern because it contributes to environmental problems such as climate change. Focusing on commuting, this thesis aimed to explain people's travel mode decisions and what might motivate drivers to switch modes. The literature shows that - as in the wider field of environmentallysignificant behaviour - Schwartz's norm-activation theory (NAT) and Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (TPB) are predominant in travel psychology. Research undertaken for this thesis was based on these theories. Study 1 used logistic regression (n = 312) to test NAT and the TPB's ability to explain drivers' intentions to maintain or reduce their car use for commuting to De Montfort University (DMU). A model using variables from both theories was also tested, as was a model that added contextual variables to these psychological constructs. The model including contextual variables had the greatest predictive power (shown by Rl values). There were interactions between several predictor variables. Most notably, the influence of altruistic (pro-environmental) motives on intentions was moderated by perceived control over commuting mode choice and by contextual factors including bicycle ownership, carriage of passengers and journey time. In study 2,24 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with commuters to DMU. Using discourse analytic techniques, the prevalent stances on car use and use of other modes for travel to work were identified. Many echoed NAT and TPB constructs (e.g. moral motives, perceived control over modal choice), underlining these theories' applicability to commuting. However, other stances were also evident, most notably affective motives and habits as reasons for commuting mode decisions. People drew on various combinations of these discourses to explain their commuting behaviour. The thesis proposes a new model of commuting mode choice and suggests guidelines for interventions designed to encourage drivers to use alternative modes. However, it is stressed that reliance on attitude-behaviour research alone may ignore wider sociocultural influences on travel behaviour. Suggestions are made regarding theoretical perspectives and methods that may help in understanding these forces and a case is made for mixed-method research as the way ahead for travel psychology

Pragmatics and the consequentiality of talk: a study of members' methods at a planning application meeting

This study explores how talk is consequential by examining the sequential and pragmatic phenomena in talk-in-interaction. Reflecting the work of conversation analysis (CA), the approach assumes that the consequentiality of a 'context' must be demonstrated by the informants' sequential practices (cf. Schegloff 1987, Boden and Zimmerman 1991). However, in this study a model of consequentiality is proposed, in which not only sequential phenomena but also pragmatic categories are included within the repertoire of members' methods. In this way, the indexicality of language as explained by pragmatic theory is seen to contribute to the account of talk as consequential. The data represent a meeting between an urban planning department and a national development company in which a planning application is discussed. As such, members' methods are seen to invoke the institutional nature of the encounter, in which the formality of the setting and the work-related membership of the interactants is systematically oriented to. The talk consists of a series of negotiated issues in which the developers and the planners propose different candidate outcomes reflecting each party’s professional aims and the constraints they consider themselves to operate under. In particular, the analysis shows that candidate outcomes are largely managed by sequential preference systems and pragmatically characterized face-address (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987).The notion of reflexivity is also seen as a significant component in the study of consequentiality. While the concept is a basic assumption in a CA framework (Garfinkel and Sacks 1969) and is also recognized as fundamental in pragmatic inquiry (Lucy 1993), few studies provide a detailed analysis of members' reflexive awareness of the contexts they create. In this study, the interactants' metalinguistic and metapragmatic orientation, invoked by both pragmatic and sequential methods, is shown to be a prevalent members' resource for indicating awareness of consequentiality. Finally, observations of the kind made in this thesis, wherein pragmatic categories both work together and are systematically related to the sequential environment, contribute to a general re-analysis of pragmatic meaning. At the same time, the interaction of pragmatic and sequential features also represents a dynamic starting point for developing new methodological categories for investigating talk-in-interaction

The constitution of transgender masculinities through performance: a study of theatre and the everyday.

PhDThis doctoral project is concerned with gender and the way that transgender masculinities are manifested, articulated and debated through drama, theatre and performance. The central question of the research is how `performance' contributes to the process of constituting individual identities and communities, specifically transgender masculinities. The research engages with the multiple ways that the concepts or categories of the individual, of community and of performance are defined, and how they function and are experienced when transgender identities or transgender masculinities are central to a `performance event'. The particular individuals and groups of transgender-identified people, or people who might be described in relation to a trans framework of identity, are those for whom gender is not a fixed state rooted in a binary system, but a state that can be bent, moved or made malleable in order to fit according to individual need. The individuals and groups on whom I focus tend to have had their sex assigned female at birth and at some point in their lives have identified themselves as male rather than female. There are also individuals who do not self-identify as male but refute gender categorisation, thereby not identifying as female either. Moreover, there are people who still self-identify as female but have developed or produced markers of masculinity on their body that have a significant impact on their day-to-day living and in their performance work. In this thesis I will be referring to this range of varied identities as transgender masculinities. This research will be of relevance to contemporary theatre scholars, particularly those with an interest in the creation of avant-garde and community-generated practices. The research will also be of use to those interested in queer and non-normative identities as manifested through drama, theatre and performance, whether this is by solo artists or within project work with groups of people who identify as transgender, genderqueer or have an otherwise complex relationship to gender

Communicating through sound in museum exhibitions: unravelling a field of practice

The twentieth century was the stage for several phenomena which have paved the way for museums to start exhibiting sound and to nurture a vivid and increasing interest in its potentialities. The burgeoning of sound recording technologies stands as a milestone in this respect. These have allowed sound to become a physical object and, hence, new understandings and conceptualizations to emerge. In the wake of these developments, the ways in which museum curators look at sound has gone into a huge reconfiguration. The fact that both new museology and museum practice have been turning their attention to and focus on the visitor has similarly accelerated the curators’ interest in sound as a means to build museum exhibitions. One of the latest and most striking instances in this process has been the role of ethnomusicology and sound studies in demonstrating the cultural, social, political, economic and ethical significance of sound thereby stimulating museum’s interest in dealing with sound as a mode to build both individual subjectivities and communities in museum settings. The development of audio technologies and digital and multisensorial technologies (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality) also plays a part in this process. These have the merit to provide ways to deal with the elusiveness of sound when exhibited in museum galleries and to facilitate interactions underpinned by rationales such as experience, embodiment, and emplacement. During at least the last ten years, there has been a boost in the development of sound-based multimodal museum practices. These practices, nonetheless, have yet to be mapped, and their representational and experiential (emotional and sensorial) opportunities to be closely analysed. My thesis strives to start closing this gap by taking two analytical steps. Based on the analysis of 69 sound-based multimodal museum exhibitions staged in Europe and in the United States of America, I provide a five-use framework categorizing sound-based multimodal museum practices into sound as a “lecturing” mode, sound as an artefact, sound as “ambiance”/soundtrack, sound as art, and sound as a mode for crowd-curation. The case-study of sound art The Visitors, it unravels the communicative potential of sound for museums. In detail, the analysis stresses how sound and space comingle to articulate individual subjectivities and a sense of “togetherness.” The scope of the thesis is clearly multidisciplinary, encompassing ethnomusicology, sound studies, museum studies, and social semiotics. Overall, I seek to contribute towards the development of the study of sound in museums to develop and establish as a cohesive research field. I moreover seek to foster a sensory formation shift from a visual epistemology to one that merges the visual and the auditory.O século XX foi palco de vários fenómenos que conduziram a que os museus começassem a expor o som e a demonstrar um interesse crescente pelas suas potencialidades comunicativas. O aparecimento das tecnologias de gravação sonora constitui-se como um momento fundamental neste processo. Ao permitirem que o som se estabeleça enquanto objeto físico, vieram potenciar o aparecimento de novos entendimentos e conceptualizações sobre o som. Na sequência destes acontecimentos, a forma como os curadores de exposições começaram a olhar para o som sofreu grandes alterações. Simultaneamente, o facto de tanto os estudos museológicos como a prática museológica estarem cada vez mais preocupados com o visitante veio também acelerar o interesse dos curadores pelo som como meio para construir exposições museológicas. Os estudos musicais, em particular a etnomusicologia e os estudos de som, tiveram igualmente um papel preponderante: ao demonstrarem o valor cultural, social, político, económico e ético do som vieram claramente estimular o interesse dos curadores em usar o som como material para trabalhar noções de identidade, subjectividade e “comunhão.” É ainda de destacar o papel que o desenvolvimento de tecnologias áudio, digitais e multisensoriais (Realidade Virtual, Realidade Aumentada e Realidade Mista) têm no processo. Ao proporcionarem formas de lidar com a imaterialidade do som quando exposto em galerias, vieram também fomentar interações museológicas sustentadas pela experiência. Nos últimos dez anos, os museus têm, pois, assistido ao incrementar das práticas museológicas multimodais baseadas no som. O mapeamento e a categorização destas práticas, bem como o estudo das suas potencialidades narrativas e experienciais (emocionais e sensoriais), no entanto, está claramente por determinar. A minha tese visa dar início ao colmatar desta lacuna através de dois passos: providenciar uma estrutura classificativa das práticas multimodais baseadas em som com base na análise de 69 exposições que tiveram lugar nos últimos dez anos na Europa e nos Estados Unidos da América. A estrutura compreende as seguintes categorias: som como um modo "discursivo," som como artefacto, som como "ambiance"/banda sonora, som como arte, e som como curadoria partilhada. Simultaneamente, dar início ao desvendar do potencial comunicativo do som para exposições museológicas através do estudo de caso de arte sonora The Visitors. A análise deste estudo de caso veio demonstrar que som, em articulação com o espaço permitem trabalhar noções de identidade, subjetividade, e ainda de “comunhão.” O âmbito da tese é claramente multidisciplinar e engloba a etnomusicologia, os estudos de som, os estudos museológicos e a semiótica social. De uma forma geral, com a minha dissertação procuro contribuir para o desenvolvimento e o estabelecimento do estudo do uso do som nos museus como um campo de investigação multidisciplinar e coeso. Procuro ainda potenciar uma mudança de formação sensorial nos museus, em particular, estimular a passagem de uma epistemologia visual para uma epistemologia simultaneamente visual e auditiva

A Peer-reviewed Newspaper About_ Datafied Research

An examination of the implications of datafication for research: to investigate and propose actions that push against the limits of today’s pervasive quantification of life, work, and play. Publication resulting from research workshop at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, organised in collaboration with School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, and transmediale festival of art and digital culture, Berlin

Re-visualizing Care: Teachers\u27 Invisible Labor in Neoliberal Times

Re-visualizing care: Teachers’ invisible labor in neoliberal times takes up the topic of teacher evaluation in a moment of moral panic about “bad teachers,” public controversy over Value- Added Measures (VAM) of teacher work, and the widespread implementation of new assessment policies under Race to the Top (RTTT). Working with a group of ten progressive New York City public school teachers in the first year of one such policy (known as “Advance”), my multimodal study engages a wide variety of qualitative and arts-based research methods to explore teachers’ experiences of “Advance,” their broader reflections on practice, and the substantial work they do that is not captured by evaluation metrics. My research shines a light on teachers’ invisible carework expanding our imagination of teacher labor, and calling out the mismatch between white, middle-class expectations and the actual demands placed on urban teachers. Bringing forward the unequal distribution of teachers’ caring burdens and responsibilities across race/ class/ gender/ culture/ and language in urban schools, this research highlights teachers’ carework as a significant (and under-researched) site for the social reproduction of school inequality. And my use of digital and visual methodologies in the print document and companion digital assemblage, works to record and make visible the invisible work of teaching, thereby breaking through currently accepted quantitative images to see students, teachers and schools in their full humanity

Folding and withholding: writing with and by choreographers

The impetus for the present research comes from questions that arose in projects of collaborative writing by the author with British-based choreographers Rosemary Lee, Kim Brandstrup and Rosemary Butcher. In these projects, the three choreographers differently attempted to word elements of their ongoing choreographic enquiries. The conviction was that such writing might participate in a choreographer's current choreographic research, rather than document research that had already unfolded in the creation of a performance work. The present research thus interrogates the philosophical implications of asking a choreographer for an account of how she or he works. With reference to recent studies in critical ethnography and ethics, the research proposes the development of practices of collaborative writing by a choreographer and a researcher-observer alert to the motivated and implicated positions of each. Included as appendix to the thesis is a book co-written with a choreographer and a CD-ROM of published collaborative writing and open interviews with Butcher, Brandstrup and Lee, performance documentation and journals of studio observation. Published instances of writing by other performance makers are additionally drawn into the enquiry as "research companions". Interrogating relations between writing and choreographers' creation processes, the overall research premise thus concerns the development of writing capable of articulating what matters to choreographers. This research addresses those choreographers who have hesitated when asked about how they work, and asks every dance scholar to hesitate before writing on or about dance-making

Aboriginal English genres in Perth

Aboriginal Australia has a unique heritage of oral literature and Aboriginal people of all ages take delight in yarning. Despite the richness and contemporary relevance of this heritage, little is known in the wider Australian society about the oral discourse skills that are taken for granted in Aboriginal communities. Although the art of oral narrative has developed over countless generations and by medium of Indigenous languages, previous studies (Malcolm 1994a, b; Malcolm and Rochecouste 2000; Rochecouste and Malcolm 2000) have shown that it is vigorously maintained in Aboriginal English. The lack of general awareness of the verbal art of Aboriginal English speakers contrasts with the growing awareness, within the wider community, of the great accomplishment of contemporary Aboriginal people in other spheres of the arts, in particular, painting, music, dance and drama. The work reported on here was initiated with a view to helping this lack of awareness to be remedied, especially with respect to urban-dwelling Aboriginal people, in the interests of both giving credit where credit is due and of providing an informed input to education systems. Such input is an essential prerequisite for the further development of two-way bidialectal education which seeks to found the establishment of literacy skills in standard English on the basis of a prior and ongoing recognition of the existing repertoire of community-based language skills possessed by Aboriginal students..