Framing transdisciplinary research as an assemblage

In this case study of a transdisciplinary collaboration between a mental health nurse and a human geographer, we reflect on a continuing research venture to develop walking therapy as an accepted intervention in the mental health system. We draw on Gilles Delueuze and Félix Guattari’s assemblage theory to frame the research practice, or journey, as something which is boundless, fluid, and constantly evolving. Specifically, we (re)visit four points where the research project is forced to change course and which reveals vulnerabilities such as feelings of powerlessness and the absence of a clear route for our knowledge to be recognised. In the present moment, this is an exercise which has helped us as authors to understand our own passage. For the future, we offer other practitioners of qualitative inquiry an approach that helps them to draw strength and find acceptance in complex and unpredictable scenarios

Pursuing the Post-war Dream

Pursuing the Post War Dream offers methods to uncover the ‘rhizome’ (Thrift, 2000) which lies below the surface: offering ways to understand the role of the past in the present day. This inquiry arises from gerontology and develops a methodology which explores how the everyday – such as stories about houses, streets and neighbourhoods – allows people from different generations to build empathy in research relationships. The work uses Caerleon, south Wales, as a case study to consider what economic, technological and social changes through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s mean for contemporary ageing populations. Caerleon is a suitable site as statistics from Newport City Council (2017) convey that a fifth of citizens are aged 65 and above. On a theoretical level, this study uses walking interviews to explore how spaces act as thresholds to memories and levels of unconscious which may not otherwise reveal themselves – connecting to phenomena considered to be ‘non-representational’ in the work of Thrift (2008) or Anderson and Harrison (2010). This thesis uses relevant literature from gerontology, human geography and environmental psychology to develop a methodological framework which focuses on space more than time, particularly by using walking interviews. We also bridge between the disciplines of social science, literature and performance by following Solnit (2017, p. 5) where she advises that artists can ‘...open the doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar.’ The case study therefore involves a practical collaboration with a performance artist to make public site-specific performances based on the interview materials. The findings are presented as a guided walk where interview materials, public walking tours, responses to performance, and other contemporary materials are mapped on a specific geography. The main philosophical contribution of this study is a methodology which better understands space as unconscious maps or indexes to more deeply-held memories and affects

ChatGPT Figures Out Huddersfield: Three AI-Guided Urban Explorations

n 2023 the authors undertook several psychogeographical activities during a weekend in Huddersfield, UK. We based these around ChatGPT, the now well-known Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Model (LLM) that was just becoming available to the general public. Firstly, we asked ChatGPT to write song lyrics based on Huddersfield locations and had these 'sung' in public to karaoke backings. Secondly, we used ChatGPT as a navigational tool to help us to play a game of Monopoly based on Huddersfield streets. Thirdly, we asked ChatGPT to help us by finding locations and writing itineraries in Huddersfield. This article discusses these three experiments as they were experienced by the four authors, and offers perspectives for other writers, artists, walkers, and scholars who may seek to also use LLM forms of AI to interpret urban space

Urban Walking and The Spatial Hinge

This piece reframes the spatial hinge concept and incorporates it within an urban walking tour. The aim is to explore the value of walking practice for literary geographers and, through an engagement with emerging theory in this interdisciplinary approach, show how a literary text representing one place can be used to guide the mobile exploration of a different location. This case presents a public event experienced by nearly 40 people. In a collaboration with a performance artist, we explore The Hill of Dream by Arthur Machen

The Long Resolution? Responding to economic and social change in postwar South Wales

This article investigates the period between the late-1950s and the mid-1970s, a time when millions of people in Britain moved from towns and older industrial settlements to the urban periphery. South Wales offers a particularly interesting perspective as many moves were within twenty miles and seemed to be driven by high levels of state investment in industry, housing, and road infrastructure. This writing aims to examine the long-term impact of these decisions on later generations and to demonstrate the determination - or will – of political actors in Wales, often competing with other places. As well as adapting the well-known Raymond Williams work Long Revolution for my title, I use his structure of feeling concept to seek an understanding of how change was experienced. This is achieved by presenting four recent interview accounts gathered from people who lived in South Wales in the first three decades after World Ward Two

Tricks, practicalities, and ethics of teaching outdoor walking research, including interviews and group tours

In the context of a growing literature and practice around walking research, thischapter considers how to transfer such momentum into teaching outdoor walkingmethods within Higher Education. Presently there is a relative lack of teachingresources. This writing therefore offers reflections from three incremental andcomplementary techniques aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students.These include setting an assessed task from a 30-minute independent walk, usingthe psychogeographical dérive to structure group walking within a fieldtrip, andequipping postgraduates with the knowledge to scope out their own walking researchprojects. These approaches are largely grounded in ethnography and aimed at abroad disciplinary field. From these examples I summarise the logistical challengesand need to develop learning materials and courses

Arthur Machen’s Hill of Dreams and the Spatial Hinge

Arthur Machen’s semi-autobiographical novel The Hill of Dreams (1907) follows a young man who spent his childhood in Wales and now lives in late-Victorian London. This paper takes the latter text and uses the ‘spatial hinge’ concept (Thurgill, 2021) to explore how wandering the ever-expanding neighbourhoods of 1890s London evokes everyday moods (Highmore, 2011) in Caerleon, the actual birthplace of Machen, as post-war private housing estates were taking shape. My work takes an assemblage approach (Anderson, 2015) including close reading, historic maps, biographical interviews, and a collaboration with a performance artist to compose a Hill of Dreams-inspired public walk for the 2019 Caerleon Literary Festival. Text was shared during the walking event, such as Machen describing the metropolis’ edgelands as: ‘everywhere the ruins of the country, the tracks where sweet lanes had been, gangrened stumps of trees, the relics of hedges…’ (2006, p. 168). Such words, experienced in a suburban location, prompted people to recall the 1960s when woodlands and lapwing habitats were displaced by bricks and tarmac. This use of a fictional text in a real place works towards ‘interspatiality’ (Hones, forthcoming); revealing that which is more-than-representational and giving valuable insight to the subjective and affective dimensions of space

Developing Walking Methods for Lifecourse Research

This chapter presents and analyses empirical case studies from the United Kingdom, where three different walking methods uncover memories and emotions connected to earlier stages of the lifecourse. Alongside conventional outdoor walks, this writing describes both an oral method and an online digital approach that help the individual to imagine their walking body passing through spaces such as the house, street, and neighbourhood. These three connected methodologies change the format of biographical accounts from chronological to geographical, and so reveal rich accounts concerning topics such as homelife, leisure, and mobilities. Moreover, this approach helps to understand others' social and economic contexts, particularly when biographies are (re)presented for wider consumption on curated public walks and through an artistic film project. This chapter offers ways for researchers of different chronological ages and backgrounds to the interviewees find common ground, thus offering Linking Ages methodologies to understand the relationships that contemporary children have with space and place

Chapter 11 Framing Transdisciplinary Research as an Assemblage

In this case study of a transdisciplinary collaboration between a mental health nurse and a human geographer, we reflect on a continuing research venture to develop walking therapy as an accepted intervention in the mental health system. We draw on Gilles Delueuze and Félix Guattari’s assemblage theory to frame the research practice, or journey, as something which is boundless, fluid, and constantly evolving. Specifically, we (re)visit four points where the research project is forced to change course and which reveals vulnerabilities such as feelings of powerlessness and the absence of a clear route for our knowledge to be recognised. In the present moment, this is an exercise which has helped us as authors to understand our own passage. For the future, we offer other practitioners of qualitative inquiry an approach that helps them to draw strength and find acceptance in complex and unpredictable scenarios