projects PhD Archives

09/04/202111/06/2021

Bikes and Sport-for-development (S4D)

Bikes and Sport-for-development. Bicycles Create Change.com. 9th April 2021.

My PhD looks at how bicycles feature in West African girls’ access to secondary education.

This means I read widely about gender, geography, aid and development, education, mobility and innovative research methods.

I’ve been reviewing what has been done so far to help girls get to and from schools on bikes – and this has to lead me to Sport-for-development literature. Which I love!

The field of sport-for-development (S4D) has received significant attention in the last 10 years, legitimizing it as a recognized and critical new genre of scholarship and praxis. The focus of S4D is to engage disadvantaged people and communities in physical activity projects with an overarching aim of achieving various social, cultural, physical, economic, or health outcomes.

Where at the beginning of the 21st century it was difficult to find projects that use sport or physical activity as a specific vehicle for positive change, the number of S4D initiatives that aim to make a difference has grown substantially. One explanation for this escalation is the strong political support for a movement that combines sports associations, aid agencies, development bodies, sponsoring organisations, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)under a single umbrella.

An example of this is my project, which showcases how for the last decade, the collaboration of NGO Village Bicycle Project (my research partner organization) with Stylish Karim Kamara has helped progress local individuals, schools, community groups and education/health organisations by supplying bicycles and bike riding services.

A lovely moment of (research) providence

Often in research, what is being worked on is removed and abstracted from the goings-on in ‘the real-world’.

But not for me this week! This week I had a lovely moment of research providence!

I am currently reading a book on S4D (see image above) which details programs like Football for Peace in the Middle East, Ganar and Deportes para la Vida in the Caribbean, Soldados Nunca Mais which rehabilitates and retrains Brasilian child soldiers using sport, Pacifica Wokabot Jalens (team-based step challenges) programs and other EduSport initiatives.

And it just so happened that my reading of this book coincided with the UN International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSDP 2021) which was on the 6th of April.

So this made what I am working on even more real and meaningful.

What is the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace?

Here are some great IDSDP resources and information.

Here’s some background from the UN explaining IDSDP 2021.

In recognition of the positive contribution that sport can have on the realization of sustainable development and on the advancement of human rights, 6 April was proclaimed the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSDP) by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 67/296 in 2013.

Theme: International Day of Sport for Development and Peace (IDSDP) 2021

The International Day of Sport for Development and Peace 2021 there is an opportunity to recognize the role that sport plays in communities, in individuals’ lives, in building resilience and in the recovery from the pandemic through online and social media activity in the lead up to and on the Day.

The Department of Global Communications, in collaboration with DESA, WHO and the co-chairs of the Group of Friends of Sport for Sustainable Development in New York – Qatar and Monaco – have developed social media and online messaging around the theme of recovery from the pandemic, the importance of equity in that recovery, and what is necessary to build back better for a more resilient and equitable world.

Sport can cross boundaries, defy stereotypes, improve our physical and emotional health, and inspire hope across nations, but we will only be able to get back to this, if we recover better and help end the pandemic by helping ensure everyone is protected from COVID-19 Using the hashtags #SportDay and #OnlyTogether, interested UN entities and external organizations will be able to tailor the theme to closely fit their own specific mandates and activities to demonstrate how sport and physical activity can help build back better and stronger as society begins to reopen and recover, once the pandemic ends.

Sporting analogies, such as “achieving success through teamwork,” and “using a level playing field” can also be incorporated to deliver the important equity and resilience messaging, and sports personalities and organizations can help promote. Teamwork is essential to building back better.

So, let’s help end the pandemic by ensuring everyone is protected from COVID-19. Let’s level the playing field and recover better. #OnlyTogether will we play again.

Objectives

The 2021 International Day of Sport for Development and Peace aims to:

– Reaffirm the place of sport in the recovery from the pandemic and beyond
– Foster equity, solidarity, community and team spirit in response to the pandemic
– Encourage healthy habits through physical activity and building emotional wellbeing
– and inspire hope through sporting analogies.

These are the hashtags for the International Day of Sport this year: #SportDay #OnlyTogether

31/03/202109/06/2021

New Materialisms SIG: How to work with and ‘write-up’ ‘data’.

Hooray! Finally!

Our New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) is back on!

The March NM SIG is our first meeting back for 2021. I’m so happy!

Because we are reconvening after the New Year break, we wanted to offer the opportunity for participants to reconnect more directly. So instead of going straight into guest presentations, we decided to have a writing-process open forum to ‘warm-up’ our ideas, discussion and writing-with NM approaches.

So, in this session, we gave breathing space for a topic we all wrestle with: how to ‘write up’ or ‘present’ New Materialisms research.

We invited participants to bring a piece of writing/data/something you are working on to share.

This NM forum encouraged cross-pollination, stimulate new ideas, spark some inspiration, offered some new skills and probed what im/possibilities might emerge for stretching your NM research writing-data.

In this meeting, we asked: How might researchers who are working with New Materialisms ‘write up data’?

We had two readings to get the juices flowing.

Readings:

Somerville, M. (2016) The post-human I: encountering ‘data’ in new materialism, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29:9, 1161-1172, DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2016.1201611

Niccolini, A. D., Zarabadi, S., & Ringrose, J. (2018). Spinning yarns: Affective kinshipping as posthuman pedagogy. Parallax (Leeds, England), 24(3), 324-343.

March NM SIG notes

Our warm-up NM writing activity was on: Delicious research(er)s. I developed my Delicious Research(er)s warm-up into a 25mins, 100-word worlding – and this is what emerged:

Delicious research(er)s.

Delicious research(er)ing is an open-ended kitchette of inquisitiveness, capabilities, ingredients and alchemy. Folding, passing, mixing and blending: foundational blisters pop into syrupy-sweet intellectual nectar. Flavour(ful) data fragments over tongues, in eyes, and on minds. Delicious researchers are lightning rods for the unexplained. They stand tall: chins up, ears swivelling, noses twitching, eyes roving and skin electrified with buzzing intensity. They dive deep into salty pedogological soups, spin with umami-rolled embodiment, and languish in astringent-infused relationalities of common wor(l)ds. Delicious researchers are sexy, amorous, desirable and magnetic, heated yet ‘cool’ – and prone to spontaneously combust in moments of exquisite flambé rupture.

See images below for some of our other NM lines of flight.

Spinning Yarns. NM SIG March 2021.
Post-human ‘I’. NM SIG March 2021.
Discussing NM problematics. NM SIG March 2021.
NM SIG collaborative notes. NM SIG March 2021.
NM ‘data’-research-writing discussion. NM SIG March 2021.

16/03/202113/07/2021

New Materialisms SIG: What we have done so far 2019-2020

In anticipation of Griffith’s New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) starting back up very soon for 2021, I’m looking back over what we have done so far.

I am the co-convenor of Griffith’s New Materialism SIG. The aim of the New Materialisms Special Interest Group is to provide a supportive space for students, HDR candidates, ECRs, mid-career and more senior Academics to explore, discuss, experiment and share complex and emerging post-qualitative/post-humanisms ideas, methods and approaches.

I am particularly proud of the diverse and transdisciplinary nature of the current group which includes members from the Health Sciences, Humanities, Education and Psychology and from multiple Universities Australia-wide and internationally.

This SIG is a fertile environment for sharing ideas, research experiences and synergies with multiple projects and possible papers benefiting from the ideas and expertise made available.

With Sherilyn taking a step back in Dec 2020, Griffith HDR candidate and long-term NM SIG member Janis Hanley has come on board with me as co-convenor for 2021. Woohoo!

I am very excited!

Here’s some highlights of past NM SIG sessions.

New Materialisms SIG 2019

We started out with 13 members in 2019 spread evenly across Griffith University and other Universities in South East Queensland (UQ, QUT, Sippy Downs). After four 2019 monthly meetings, interest in the SIG expanded significantly as word spread.

August 2019 – Inaugural meeting

The inaugural session of the Griffith New Materialist (NM) Special Interest Group came together to support researchers and academics to engage more deeply, critically, collaboratively and creatively with NM thinking and practice. This first meeting was semi-structured with the readings and discussion focus being on: The emergence of feminist New Materialisms.

More details on the emergence of feminist New Materialisms inaugural meeting here.

September 2019

In this second NM SIG meeting, we had a guest presentation by Prof Simone Fullagar and Dr Wendy O’Brien whose book (cowritten with Dr Adele Pavlidis who could not make it), Feminism and a Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery, had just been published. In this meeting, we discussed feminist New Materialisms and how the book traces the complex material-discursive processes through which women’s recovery from depression is enacted within a gendered biopolitics. Within the biomedical assemblage that connects mental health policy, service provision, research and everyday life, the gendered context of recovery remains little understood despite the recurrence and pervasiveness of depression.

More details on Feminism and the Vital Politics of Depression and Recovery here.

October 2019

In this session we had PhD researcher Geraldine Harris share some of her emerging New Materialisms thoughts, approaches and inroads from her research looking at early intervention and prevention strategies for child-centered leadership. This meeting was called Diverse plateaus + visualisations of place-based child-centered leadership and it was a great presentation for many reasons. Geraldine shared some of her unique data analysis visualisations that have helped her think-with, process and communicate the complexity of her work (they were amazing!). We also got to hear about her current PhD musings and emerging NM understandings, as well as tips, challenges and blockages she has experienced using New Materialisms approaches in educational and workplace settings.

More details on the New Materialisms SIG: Diverse Plateus and visualisations here.

October 2019 – PhD Retreat

Our SIG New Materialisms Garden Retreat was for HDRers only. This was a special event. For the NM Garden Retreat, I invited five New Materialist and Posthumanist PhD friends to a full-day group/workshop in my garden where we collaborated to create and share knowledge. I wanted to get out of the uni confines and have the (literal) time and space to work, think and share more generatively and deeply with others – without time constraints or other pressures. The garden provides an alternative ‘learning context’ that deliberately disrupted and displaced traditional notions about academic knowledge, performances, educational spaces, and who is ‘an expert’. Each participant nominated an NM tropic to share/teach the group. We also had time for writing, teaching-learning discussions and reflection. We had a musician friend of mine come to play and stay for lunch and the afternoon (so awesome!). Everyone brought a lunch plate to share and each participant went home with a garden box bursting at the seams. A wonderful day of collaborative NM work.

More details on the New Materialisms Garden Retreat (for PhDers) here.

November 2019

Instead of having a guest presenter, we invited everyone to ‘present’ by bringing a piece of data that ‘glows’ for them – a piece they would like to ‘re-turn’ with and share with some suppotive-critical friends. The idea here is that we are all working on different research projects, with different applications and with different data. This was our last meeting before the holidays, so we thought it might be interesting for participants to share a part of their research with others as a way of mining alternative insights – and to give each researcher some fresh ideas and considerations to mull over during the holidays. It was a huge success and wonderful to hear what everyone was working on, wrestling with and how they were thinking-with and processing. Super helpful and inspiring! A great end to our first year as a SIG!

More details on the New Materialisms SIG: Sharing data that ‘glows’ here.

New Materialisms SIG 2020

Some people are still away in January. February is busy orientating and getting prepared for the year, so we start our SIGs in April after people have had a chance to settle back in at Uni.

In 2020 we had 6 meetings from March – November and our membership expanded to 40 members – not only Griffith and other Queensland-based universities, but Australia-wide and internationally.

April 2020

I had just returned from my bicycles-for-education PhD fieldwork in West Africa and the other SIG members were keen to hear how it went and what/how I was thinking of moving forward to frame the experience as a posthumanist research project. Great questions! So, to kick off the NM SIG for 2020, I presented my project to date. I outlined what I did during fieldwork and some initial ideas for moving forward and putting to work NM approaches. It was wonderful hearing people ideas, comments and suggestions on possible ways to process and think-with all that had transpired. I brought a lot of (actual) materials and realia from Sierra Leone – and my bike – into the session.

More details on New Materialisms SIG: My bicycles-for-education PhD fieldwork here.

May 2020

In this session, we had Dr Lazaroo return to her PhD work (two years ago) to untangle the mess in order to make new discoveries. Her project was: Making Noise: An Ethnography of a Community Performance Project between Vulcana Women’s Circus and People with Disabilities. In this session, Natalie reflected on her early methodology and locates a poem titles ‘Expressions of longing’ which she wrote in response to NM SIG provocations. This return poem captures the essence of articulations that emerged during her artistic collaboration over a 4-month period of fieldwork with Vulcana Women’s Circus to create a community performance called Stronghold, which involved people with disabilities.

More details on New Materialisms SIG: Vulcana Circus – Stronghold here.

June 2020

Our presenter (referred to as X) for this session had just submitted her Griffith EPS Master’s thesis two days before this meeting. In this session, X shared some insights, ‘data’ and narrative moments from her latest research project which was an exploration of workplace sexual harassment on teacher identity. Now that X’s Masters was submitted, she was interested in feedback from the group on what resonates and how she might build the project into a PhD using a New Materialisms lens. Specifically, X was keen to explore how the sexual harassment complaint has its own agency and to get feedback from the SIG on how she might approach this. A very unsettling and moving session for all.

More details on New Materialisms SIG: Workplace sexual harassment and identity here.

July 2020

For this session, we had the incredible Melbourne-based PlayTank Collective – Alicia Flynn, Sarah Healy and Allie Edwards present a session entitled Lessons from the Play Tank: Adventures in playful scholarship. In this session, we discussed enacting NM theories and how to provide a playful and collaborative space to re-think, re-imagine, re-( ) research for others. We looked at using art education and design as opportunities to create workshops that attended to the joys and curiosities experienced while working/playing together in a material way. A key focus was on collaboration, intentionally responsive and response-able practices. And we had lots of fun playing, making and learning!

More on New Materialisms SIG: The Play Tank: Adventures in playful scholarship here.

August 2020

For this session, we had Griffith PhD candidate Janis Hanley take us on a creative and analytical exploration of Milieu, Territory, Atmosphere, Agency & Culture. Using written and visual excerpts from her current PhD research-in-progress on the historical Queensland textile industry, Janis provoked us to consider how milieu, chi, concepts of ‘home’ and atmosphere resonated with us and in our research. We did a number of individual and collaborative activities that helped activate and draw out interesting aspects such as how a piano, political graffiti in a factory and participant appreciation of research diagrams reveal new opportunities. We also looked at how conceptions of ‘home’ feature in our own work and life.

More on New Materialisms SIG: Milieu, Territory, Atmosphere, Agency & Culture here.

September 2020

For this session, we had our first international guest presenter, A/P Tom Reynolds (Dept of Writing Studies, Uni of Minnesota, USA). Tom’s interested in critical theories of writing instruction, histories of popular literacy, and intersections of literacy and cultural movements. He is currently working on multimodality with his students, who are making group digital videos that advocate for issues. In this session, he shared some ideas (and wanted feedback for) how these projects might involve greater NM engagement with both discursive and non-discursive elements. Hells yeah! Did the SIG have some good ideas on how to do that!

More on New Materialisms SIG: Multimodality- digital video and the materiality of academic writing here.

October 2020

For this session, we held a New Materialist’s Writing Party! This session provided time and space for thinking-writing-playing and to shift the focus from ‘academic’ reading and presentations into a different positive and exploratory space. Many of us are hard at work writing alone at our desks, so this was an opportunity to come together, share ideas and get some serious NM writing done. I hosted the party – it was close to my birthday so it was an extra academic birthday treat and celebration for me! We had a few fun warm-ups, a few open-ended guided writing activities, and some research-focused timed writing time. We also had time to chat, reflect and share as much or as little as people wanted. Great fun!

More on New Materialisms SIG: Writing Party here.

November 2020

For our last session of 2020, we had Patricia Ni Ivor who works in Project Management at RMIT (Melbourne) present a session with the amazing title: Feeling success in project teams: Travelling from the domain ruled by the supreme God-of-Things to the fresh air of Sensation and the Ineffable. Patricia explored the concept of affect as used by Deleuze and Guattari, drawn from Spinoza’s Ethics and the work of Henry Bergson. She outlined the fit between the theoretical paradigm of Self-inquiry (Spinoza’s synergy with eastern spiritual traditions and Bergson’s notions of consciousness) and how the emphasis on embodiment or somatic inquiry reflects the yogic basis of Self-inquiry (central to Patricia’s thesis) and more recent theories in social science, psychology and physical movement studies in art and wellbeing. The participants got to practice with one of Patricia’s self-inquiry/meditation exercises during the session.

More on New Materialisms SIG: Feeling Success in Project Teams here.

08/03/202111/06/2021

Worlding: Cooperative Gap-ness

Being an open and inquisitive researcher means I attend a wide range of SIGs, workshops and seminars. I’m open to lots of new ideas. Recently, I went to a feminist research group where a PhD candidate presented their work. The presentation gave me much to think about – and below is a 100-word worlding I wrote that explains why.

Cooperative Gap-ness

Passionate work to accelerate fair and (just) transitions to climate action using a grassroots union of Western Australian youths. Encouraging and political. Using Feminist Participatory Action Research and Cooperative Inquiry to be more culturally responsive, ethical and inclusive. Emotional labour. Green and ‘sustainable’ as false solutions. Extractivism of volunteers. Research(er)ing through-with-and-as ‘storying’. As insider-researcher-activists, I suggest Sherilyn Lennon’s ‘Unsettling Research’. Nicely messy. Critical cusps of Hope. Anna Tsing says hope can obfuscate activism. Astrida Neimanis and Jen Hamilton question hope, turning instead to desire. Tactical gap-ness. Expectant tool-processes of change and reviving neglected knowledges. Wrangling manageable recuperative action.

17/02/202113/04/2021

Geography and Collective Memories through Art Workshop

Recently, I attended a very unique opportunity: a 4-part virtual Geography, Art and Memory Workshop co-convened by Griffith’s Centre for Social and Cultural Research Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro, Dr Diti Bhattacharya, Dr Kaya Barry and Prof. Barabra Pini.

As a New Materialisms community bike researcher working in Sierra Leone, my work is embedded with post(de)coloniality, cultural dynamics, current-past experiences, gender, geography, mobility and space-time-matterings.

So I was excited about this workshop! Right up my (v)alley! (Get it? Geo joke!)

This workshop invited us to examine and experiment with the cultural and political potentials of ‘memory through art’ in geography inquiry. We looked at creative practices, collaborated and had discussions on some key and pressing issues related to our specific research. There was also the added bonus of an invitation to contribute to a Special Issue of Australian Geographer (2022).

In this session we asked:

What does art do to geographies of memories?

Geography and Collective Memories through Art Workshop. Bicycles Create Change.com. 17th February 2021. — Image: Memories Through Art

A workshop in 4 parts

The workshop was structured in four parts:

Part 1 – 1st February 2021 by 5:00pm: In the week leading up to the event, workshop participants submitted a 1 page (A4 portrait or landscape) response to the question: ‘What does art do to geographies of memory?’ The response could be written, creative, drawn, mapped, photos, collage, text, prose, or more. We will share these on our website, and will form a key discussion point for the interactive workshop event.

Part 2 – 4th February 2021, 3:00pm-5:00pm: We attended the keynote presentations by Libby Harward (Australia) and Virgelina Chara (Columbia). These two artists (see below) work with the current pressing issues of geographical research, treating them as a threshold point for their own creative responses and provocations that they may choose to share during parts 3 and 4. We focused on artistic interventions from Southern epistemologies as these continue to be underrepresented in Australian geography.

Part 3 – 5th February 2021, 9.30am – 12:30pm: Each participant gave an informal 5-minute talk about their creative response which they submitted prior to the workshop. (See my submission is at the end of this post).

Part 4 (optional) – 5th February 2021, 12:30pm – 1:30pm: In the final hour, we collectively discussed how to take these ideas and discussions forward as a Special Issue of Australian Geographer integrating some of the workshop themes.

Keynote speakers

Virgelina Chara

Virgelina Chará is a human rights defender, educator, embroidery artist and protest music composer from Colombia. She coordinates the ‘Association for the Integral Development of Women, Youth and Children’ (ASOMUJER y Trabajo) which works with forcibly displaced families and victims of the armed violence in Colombia. She is also the leader of the Embroidery Union at the Memory Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Bogotá, Colombia. She is a world-renowned educator on the pedagogy and power of memory for the construction of peace.

She was born in Suárez, Cauca, which is a region where armed conflict, extractivism and neoliberal development have meant many people, including Virgelina and her family, have had to confront violence and displacement. Since 2003 Virgelina has resided in Bogotá. In 2005 she was proposed as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.

You can read more on Virgelina’s work here (left click to Google Translate to English).

Libby Harward

Artist Libby Harward is a descendant of the the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Morton Island) in the Quandamooka (Morton Bay Area).

Known for her early work as an urban graffiti artist under the pseudonym of ‘Mz Murricod’, and her performance-based community activism, Harward’s recent series, ALREADY OCCUPIED, engages a continual process of re-calling – re-hearing – re-mapping – re-contextualising – de-colonising and re-instating on country that which colonisation has denied Australia’s First Peoples.

This political practice engages Traditional Custodians in the evolution of ephemeral installations on mainland country which has become highly urbanised and calls for an artistic response that seeks to uncover and reinstate the cultural significance of place, which always was, and remains to be there. Her current place-based sound and video work engages directly with politically charged ideas of national and international significance.

You can find on Libby’s work here and read more on her project DABILBUNG here.

Workshop foucs

During this workshop we discussed themes of memory, art, and geographical knowledge in order to motivate a creative dialogue among geographers, artists, and activists.

We talked about the key question and looked at how to move beyond methodological debates and how to use art mediums as approaches to bring to light the affective and political forces of place speaking to timely and important issues such as colonialism, climate change, migration and peace and conflict.

There was a strong focus on Indigenous and Southern epistemologies and discussions on how to decolonize feminist research involved with geography, power, labour, art, and memory.

Workshop convergences, notes, artifacts and ideas

I was heavily invested in the discussions, which were provocative, rich and challenging. Out of respect for the content and participants present, I have chosen to deliberately deviate from the traditional blog ‘reportage’ style of summarising the workshop. Instead, I am using a non-linear, fragmented, messy, (in)process(un)complete, more New Materialist approach to ‘throw up’ a few random snippets, thoughts and connections I noted during these sessions. The below content is a deliberate post-human shift from presenting content as if it is ‘right’, ‘accurate’ or ‘makes sense’ to humans-participants-knowers. While some content may make sense – some may not. There are no mistakes or errors in these notes. So for the below notes, you dear reader, are implicated in the reiteration and (re)co-creation of the workshop ‘matters’ ….. here we go!

This story is ‘sew’ important …memory, history and life for so many, but new information for others (like me) elsewhere..truthtelling, invasion, pollution, academic violence and extractivism…The ‘Justice ‘ dept, The Memory Centre, the Power of Memory, parent-teacher-adult time with student-children-learner, ‘education is so square now’, pedagogy of memory, to the teachers: ‘do you realise you are the useless ones here?’… we don’t do it through writing, we do it through sewing and food, they have had massacres in every country, ‘ (Duque) he’ is just the model..creative outputs that help us think about these issues…

Some participants linked Virgelina‘s keynote to other textile protests, work and exhibitions, such as:

Libby shares with us her visionary bloodletting, deadstream and saltwater reflections. Flow. Sand Crunch. Lying in grass. Forms and textures. Listen (more) carefully. Birds-eye views. Film as experiential documentation. Art that moves and breathes. Unexpected. Tasmanian salvaged timber. Art(work)s. lying – lying. Post-colonisation – Decolonisation.

Mike is a chairmaker and researcher. Listening to Mike makes me think about how the ideological state apparatus presents a ‘version of collective memory-truth’ (ie statues & iconoclasts) – that is literally set in concrete (or other material) and associated forms of patriarchal, colonistic (tee-hee..get it?! not now, stay focus(ed), be serious!), political issues that go along with that kind of art …and that the artist is rarely? clearly? identified or acknowledged….after all it is their output/work/….

Mike shares this…… Mae’s Lullaby.

Amelia shares that…………..A millennia of seepage.

A Janet Cardiff work in Sydney…..the city of forking paths.

Eva links to Bangala’s most recent site-specific commission, but there is also The Distance From Your Heart.

The importance of having smaller groups and being able to share our ideas as opposed to the large groups and conferences.

I share Janis Hanley’s blog Local Yarns which looks at critical heritage and textiles in Qld..memory artifacts.

Started with a basket that reps KP and her thinking of the time – enfolding life.

Katie is inspired by John Wolseley – an artist who moves through the ecology to make art.

BI re(views) the memory artifacts produced: Proserpine Ambulance Depot (1990), Proserpine Hospital Outpatients Department (1939-1999), Proserpine RSL Club (1950-1990), and the Eldorado Picture Theatre (1927-1985).

Janis literary maps and remaps the Queensland Wollen Manufacturing Company floorplan(s) with mill(field)work, mill(i)visits, millscapes and milieus. Overlaying Coral’s draft interpretations of Mud Maps. Ron’s List across the ages – staff payroll (50?) years on.

Embodiment -moving through time-space-places

Public art

Art, bike, memory and geography

Institualization of memory – academic violences – uni mapping vs uni tracing

Watch the film: Painting country

Mapping the way? Maps, Emotions, Gender by Mike Esbester ……… WTF!!! THIS WAS ME IN DEC! The link! TConvergence with my thought-bridge(s) as I navigate-share-move with my own Bikes, Maps and Emotions! Woah! That’s a little spooky! I knew this session had cross-overs!

Daphne Backer (Suriname) architectural Twitter conversation

Centraling forms of memory – institutionalizing memory (through art)

It is the official institutions that get the money/funding – not the collectives

Didactic vs dialectic institutional

By the end, I am tired and about to implode.

I might have lost it in the final 5 mins.

Some Emerging Themes:

Contaminated materials and lives + (de)contamination and the materiality of life
Decolonising memory
More-than-human memory (not-human and not-human time scale)
Extractivism and memory

Parts of this post taken from the Memory Through Art homepage.

26/01/202126/03/2021

Know What Happen(s/ed) on January 26th

As I work on my bicycling PhD, time seems to lengthen, flatten and conflate.

Timestamps such as teaching semesters, due dates, and Public Holidays mean little to me as I continue to work independently on my self-directed community bike research.

But today is different.

January 26th stands out for me (as it does for many others): ideologically politically, socially and culturally as a very challenging day.

This is because two significant events occurred on this date that continue to have reverberations – and both of which have a particular link and meaning to me and my research. (Read to the end of this post to find out why).

Trouble in Australia

Where I live in Australia and around the world, January 26th historically and currently continues to be a date on which a number of transgressive and contested struggles have been brought to the surface.

Here are two main reasons society should be engaging with challenging conversations on January 26th.

In Australia, January 26th is a VERY controversial date.

This date is the official national (holi)day of Australia – what many call ‘Australia Day’.

It has also been called Anniversary Day, First Landing Day and Foundation Day.

It was on this date in 1788 that the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove* and white colonisers ‘claimed’ sovereignty over Australia.

Australia Day has been positioned in politics and the media as being a day to celebrate national pride and the diverse Australian community.

But such ‘celebrations’ negate Indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nations peoples who were here well before European colonisers arrived, but who suffered the brutal and fatal hostile take-over of colonisers, the legacy of which is still very much alive today.

In recognition of this, ‘Australia Day’ is hotly contested and is also referred to as Invasion Day, Survival Day, and Day of Mourning.

Despite what your position is on this issue, it is important to keep engaging with a range of voices, ideas and perspectives. It is unconscionable to simply reject, disengage or ignore that this debate is going on – such a social issue demands attention and action.

This blog has thousands of readers, many of whom are outside Australia and may not be aware of this debate.

So I’ve put together an initial list showcasing a range of indigenous, academic, educational and news commentaries below for our international friends and those interested in learning more:

Australia Day: January 26 marks a massacre in NSW. Will a cement plaque really help? – national Indigenous affairs correspondent Isabella Higgins & Sarah Collard
The truth about Australia Day – Henry Reynolds (Australian Historian)
The Hypocrisy of Australia Day – Koori History
Australia Day, Invasion Day, Survival Day; a long history of celebration and congestion – Prof. Katie Darian-Smith
Australia Day History & timeline (on the Official Australia Day website) by Dr Elizabeth Kwan
Australia Day: What’s the fuss about January 26th? – Australians Together
Changing Australia Day is pointless – and there is much to celebrate – Dr Anthony Dillon
The day I don’t feel Australian? That would be Australia Day – Assoc. Prof. Chelsea Bond (ATSIS Unit, UQ)
Debunking the myth of Australia Day – Charis Chang
Australia Day – Rona Glynn-McDonald (Common Ground)

But January 26th is not only a day of confrontation in Australia.

*Many of us growing up in Australia were taught in school that it was Captain Cook who landed the First Fleet in January 1788, but in actual fact, it was Captain Arthur Phillip. Captain Cook had been dead for nine years at that point. Just goes to show there are serious discrepancies in the so-called factual reporting and historical educational/news reproductions of this event that needs to be interrogated and revised to be more accurate… and most important of these is the truthtelling, recognition, experiences, and the standing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples.

Trouble on January 26th (2000) in the USA

Elsewhere, this date is also infamous, but for different reasons.

On this date, 21-years ago in New York, American rock band Rage Against the Machine (famous for their provocative and revolutionary political views and lyrics) played on the steps of the US Stock Exchange.

They had a permit to play and were recording a music video with Michael Moore for their song ‘Sleep now with the fire’ (which is about capitalism and greed).

The video pretty much shows what happened.

It is essential viewing and I set it for homework for my students.

Yup…it’s (still) that good!!

Essentially, with several hundred fans watching on, the protest-concert-flash mob-recording was considered so disruptive and ‘dangerous’ that the cops were called in and scuffles broke out. During the confrontation, security made the call to shut down the New York Stock Exchange – a move that had never happened before in its 200-year history…and one that many saw as a successful, direct political challenge to halt capitalism.

These two events are very important individually, but there is a specific link for me between the two as well.

A particularly unsettling link

As a middle-aged, temporarily able-bodied, Australian, white, educated, female conducting research located in disadvantaged communities in Sierra Leone (West Africa) issues of power, gender, race, and ethics are paramount.

As a researcher, I constantly need to revisit my relationality to my research from the point of view of:

Subjectivity: to what degree this research is influenced by my subjective, personal perspectives, values, preferences, opinions, feelings, and experiences.
Positionality: What is the stance or position of me (researcher) in relation to aspects of the study (participants, places, communities, organizations)
Ethics: To uphold ethical conduct and the highest integrity for the design, conduct, activities and reporting of the research.
Postcoloniality is another ongoing tension I wrestle with in my research.

Forefront in my mind is to avoid being another white person (benefiting from) doing research ‘on’ a southern, disadvantaged community – and thus reinscribing the very exploitative colonial practices and not the empowering/progressive alternative my research claims to be.

So on January 26th, I am ideologically and culturally engaged and moved by both these events and ongoing challenges – and the kicker for me is this:

In the lyrics are these lines:

Naming Christopher Columbus three ships The Nina, The Pinta, The Santa Maria, is a deliberate move by Rage to draw attention to European colonisation ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’ , which essentially lead to the decimation of first nations peoples, cultures, and land.

Although I am not specifically named after Columbus’ ship The Nina (I’m named after a great Aunt), the intertwining link between these two events AND my name PLUS the inherent (post)colonial challenges inherent in my research adds extra complexity and assumed accountability for me based on past-present implications of/for colonization, greed, extractivism, and exploitation.

Such a link is a weighty reminder for me.

And I take it very seriously.

This is why January 26th has an even greater significance for me.

So, I am not ‘celebrating’ today.

Instead, I’m taking time to think deeply about these events (and around the world) and look at who has power, who does not, and to consider my role in situations where social injustices occur.

We should all be engaging more directly, intelligently and honestly with such events.

15/01/202106/06/2021

3 Research Assistant & Fellowship Opportunities

There are many Ph.D. candidates who are near-submission or who have recently been conferred. For these brave souls, entering the workforce at such a tumultuous time is even more tricky with additional CORONAverse pressures.

Where I can, I share news of any Research Assistant (RA), Internships, Postdocs or Fellowship opportunities I come across here on the blog, like the PhD interns role offered by APR Interns working on young war vetrans medical support project or the opportunity to do a PhD in Transport and Equity (with a bike specific component) on a full scholarship.

I have also created some of these roles as part of this blog especially for overseas students, like the BCC 8-week Summer Internship Intensive I ran with the four amazing budding-professionals Sachie, Mauricio, Juliet & Gabriel as well as taking on Research Assistant Nao Kamakura.

This Summer, I’ve had three particularly interesting research opportunities sent to me which I am sharing below for anyone who might be interested.

These 3 research positions are based in Australia and have a good range of topics, disciplines, and locations. I’ve grabbed some key details from each to get started – see below.

It is difficult to find suitable postgrad RA, Internship, Post Doc or Fellowships – so if this is you, I wish you all the best!

1. Griffith Uni Peacebuilding Project: Research Assistant

Project: Local, place-based, and community-driven approaches to peacebuilding

A Research Assistant is needed for a research project: Local, place-based, and community-driven approaches to peacebuilding funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust and co-led by the University of Glasgow (Scotland) and Griffith University (Australia).

The project will bring together the voices and perspectives of diverse actors working on building peace in their communities to share their experiences and advice and to learn from each other. Please see the attached document for the project description.

Duration: 30-35 hrs. Start date: Immediate. Salary: TBD re Griffith PayScale .

Duties:

Involvement with and (networking opportunities with international stakeholders) in:
- collaborative and participatory research
- multiple phases or aspects of the larger research project including:
  - Participant Recruitment
  - Coordinating knowledge mobilization efforts with and to different stakeholder audiences
  - Reviewing and synthesizing literature in relation to the project
  - Participating webinars and note-taking for Focus Group Discussions
- In addition to the above, other tasks that arise may be included to advance the research and transforming practice agenda.

Qualifications:

Strong communication capabilities with proactive attitude
Ideally, in as many of the following areas:
- Peace, Conflict, Reconciliation, Indigenous Education, International Development, qualitative methods (Open to any HDR students in AEL)
Excellent organizational skills.

Interested individuals, please send an email to (eun-ji.kim@griffith.edu.au) by March 5th, Friday by 3:00pm with CV.

2. Australian Parliamentary Fellowship

The Australian Parliamentary Fellowship open to PhD graduates who graduated within the last 3 years.

Do you have a PhD which has been awarded within the last three years with an interest in public policy, the environment, science & technology, natural resources, foreign affairs, social policy, law, statistics or economics? Would you like to apply your research skills in the parliamentary environment? The Australian Parliamentary Fellowship is managed by the Parliamentary Library on behalf of the Parliament.

The purpose of the Fellowship is to:

contribute to scholarship on the Parliament and its work
promote knowledge and understanding of the Parliament
raise awareness of the role of the Library’s Research service
provide a researcher with work experience in the parliamentary environment
and support ECR (early career scholars/researchers).

The Fellowship is of flexible duration (up to 6 months full time with provision for part time or broken periods of employment) in the Research Branch of the Parliamentary Library.

A successful applicant for the 2021 Fellowship would be expected to take up the position in the second quarter of 2021.The Fellow will be required to research and write a monograph on an approved project.

Applications close 31st January, 2021.

More details here: DPS 2021 Australian Parliamentary Fellowship Flyer Download

3. 22 new WA & NZ Prospect Fellows positions

A new post-doctoral fellowship program, funded by the Forrest Research Foundation, will be offering up to 22 new post-doctoral fellowships of 18 months duration, to be held at any of Western Australia’s five universities.

The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in reduced opportunities for recent Ph.D. graduates to pursue post-doctoral research. In response, the Forrest Research Foundation is investing $3 million in 22 new post-doctoral fellowships of 18 months duration – the Prospect Fellowships.

These Prospect Fellowships are open to Australian and New Zealand citizens and Australian permanent residents who have completed their PhD on or after 1 January 2019. Applicants must have an outstanding academic profile, and must provide evidence (e.g. Dean’s list, university or other prizes, publications and other outputs) that they are among the top 5% of recent PhD graduates in their field.

Applicants may come from any disciplinary background but their proposed research must be focused on one of six areas of Western Australian research excellence:

Indian Ocean (to include e.g. marine science and engineering, geo-politics, economics)
Agriculture, food and nutrition
Environment and natural resources (to include e.g. extractive industries, ecology, conservation)
Frontier technologies (to include e.g. space science, AI, bio-engineering, nano-technology)
Mental and physical health and well-being (to include e.g. medicine, human bio-sciences)
Arts and culture

More details here: 2021 Prospect Fellowship Flyer Download

07/01/202109/03/2021

Worlding: A galaxy of relational encounters

Worlding: A galaxy of realtional encounters. Bicycles Create Change.com. 7th January 2021.

During this holiday break, I have sorely missed our New Materialisms (NM) Special Interest Group (SIG) monthly meetings. NM is the approach I am using for my bicycle PhD (more specifically Quantum Physicist Karen Barad’s Agential Realism). I thrive on sharing ideas, resources and experiences with this incredible group. In November, we had our last meeting for 2020. We reconvene in March 2021. It feels so far away! I am craving some NM activity. So, I revisited my 2020 NM SIG notes and here’s some of what bubbled up in 100 words. Enjoy, NG.

Worlding: A galaxy of relational encounters

Each month we meet to discuss theory, practice and research. Who knows what might emerge? The bite of elliptical surfboards. How affects have wayward offspring. Stealth(ily) mother-in-laws. Malian master desert musicians. Temporarily captured objects. Run-ins, rangings, ruts and recognitions. The half-life of (could-be) facts. Un(re)learning sentipensanto feminisms. Personalities, prisms, passions and ponderings. Gothic academic co-authored monsters. Atmospheric political graffiti in disused textile factories. A school-child’s unexplained vomit. Women’s business from the paddock to the boardroom. Dynamics, details, disorientations and discoveries. Always something interesting, always something new. Conversations worth having and experiences worth sharing. This is what is remembered.

20/12/202026/02/2021

My Thesis and Candidature Review Milestone (TCRM)

This week I am delivering my final in-progress PhD milestone before submission – the Thesis and Candidature Review Milestone (TCRM).

The timing is perfect/necessary/awkward being right at the end of the year and just before holidays! Righto!

What is a TCRM?

The aim of the TCRM is a ‘final check-in’ to see how the candidate and thesis are tracking and to provide a forum for a formative review of work completed so far. Part of the TCMR is to also outline what work is still left to do and progress towards submission.

Like other milestones such as the Early Candidature Milestone Report (ECMR) and Confirmation, the TCRM requires a written report and a 30-mins presentation. The report is reviewed by external assessors who also attend the presentation (with your supervisors and anyone else who is interested and invited).

The TCRM is set up to:

review and confirm I am making ‘satisfactory progress’
check my timeline for completion
review that my work is fulfilling the University research output requirements (like publications)
identify any difficulties I am having that might negatively affect the quality of my research or completion (ie COVID – like everyone else!)
give me an opportunity to share preliminary findings
demonstrate I have been developing capabilities that progress my research goals and career objectives

Preparing for my TCRM

Like any milestone, preparation is a little nerve-racking, but also very helpful.

I kept telling myself: I don’t have to have all the answers; this is a moment-in-time ‘catch-up’; my data analysis is still unfolding, so I can only share as much as I have.

It was really beneficial to take stock and audit my work done so far – it feels good!

For my TCRM, I ditched the ‘template’ format the Uni recommended and opted instead to ‘tell the story’ of the project’s evolution in my own way. It was more ethical, genuine and satisfying to do so.

Unlike my previous milestones, I felt much more relaxed and confident because now I have some prelim ‘findings’ after doing my fieldwork in Sierra Leone earlier this year.

I was tired by the time the presentation came about, so I was conscious not to overinvest. I knew I ‘had this’ and that the project is on track.

Dr Sherilyn Lennon (my principal supervisor and kick-ass educator, writer, philosopher and New Materialist) made the brilliant suggestion that I perform some of my data as the clincher at the end. This way I could give a sense of what I was working on for data analysis. It was a unique and engaging way to finish – and was very much in keeping with New Materialisms and my personality…and the audience LOVE it!!

My TCRM went really well

The external assessors were very supportive and gave me awesome feedback and ideas to consider.

My mum and dad came along for moral support (and because they are genuinely interested) and it was awesome having them there. After the presentation, people were invited for questions and comments and both my parents contributed some very thoughtful on-point comments (as well as being very proud – which was a given). My other supervisor Prof. Parlo Singh said it was lovely they came and gave them a special mention.

I’m not sharing the details of my work here (still top secret) but below are a few slides from TCRM slides as an indicator for some of the content covered.

Hazah! It was good to do and a relief now it’s now done.

For the next wee while, I’m taking some time to rest and recuperate.

Then the real hard work starts: data analysis and write up.

For anyone else doing a TCRM – best of luck!

15/12/202019/02/2021

Bikes, Maps & Emotions

Biking, Maps & Emotion. Bicycles Create Change.com. 15th December 2020. — Image: Greenwhich Emotion Map by Christian Nold.

Recently I’ve been preoccupied with maps.

Maps are ubiquitous and we’ve all used them at some stage: schematic maps of bus routes, locating ‘you are here’ to explore a city, finding the nearest train station, driving to a new destination or going on holiday. As a bike rider, I use maps to check and navigate direction, connection, location or distance, and points of interest.

Maps are used to communicate information about places.

Historically, under the guise of ‘exploration’, maps enabled geo-political or economic motives such as colonial expansion, mercantile ambitions and violent extractivism. Such utility speaks to the epitome of rationality: objective, cold and calculated.

But maps are more than just geospatial wayfaring tools.

Maps are also gendered. Mapping the physical world has been, until more recently, the domain of masculine perceptions and control of resources, governance, power and administration. Maps of yore were solely created by male cartographers for male users. In doing so, they showed a very selective promotion of what was considered ‘significant’ and detailed interpretations as to ‘what is on the ground’ or located in environments – both physical and socio-cultural. Female and non-binary ways of moving, traveling, experiencing and journeying have been largely ignored or overlooked in cartography.

Thankfully, things have changed since then – and so have maps and maps users.

As part of my bicycle research, I read a lot about bike riding in different spaces, places, terrains and environments. As a New Materialisms researcher, I’m especially interested in embodiment, relationality, movement and the affective intensities of bike riding.

This means I’m look at maps differently and I’m interested in considering how gender and emotionality feature in mapping.

Maps elicit emotions:

I feel anger knowing modern maps negate the abuse of indigenous peoples
I feel frustration when the place I want to get to is not shown on the map
I feel satisfaction when I finally get to the location I want
I feel connected when I recognise a familiar route
I feel nostalgia when I trace trails of past beloved adventures

Today, I am thinking of the absences in physical cartographies and considering:

How can maps/mapping better attend to the intersectionality of gendered journeys, bike riding and emotionality?

I thought I’d share a few of the initial considerations I’ve come across so far.

Cyclists’ participation in Emotional Mapping

Emotional mapping is an approach to capture how users of a space ‘feel’ or emotionally relate to spaces. This approach is used by those interested in engaging with how end uses feel as a way to enhance functionality, design and process, people like educators, policymakers and city planners.

As many cities work to encourage more bike riding, cyclists are a central target user group who have significant value to add by expressing their emotional reactions to routes and places. Cyclists experience spaces definitely to other users and have very clear reactions to lines, paths and points that are shown statically on a map of the city, but yet manifest emotionally, such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ places, or places to avoid because of anxiety, safety fears, or desire lines for the familiar and ‘fun’ routes. Such emotionally-charged choices and behaviours are not adequately represented on static maps – hence the addition of emotional mapping.

Emotional mapping is volunteered geographical information and/or crowdsourcing as a way to boost citizen participation in urban planning and it provides a platform for alternative voices and experiences to be better accounted for.

Emotional mapping foregrounds the importance of natural and built environments for cyclists, as well as the range of feelings engendered by cycling close to car traffic or in the street with cars, or traversing natural environments and obstacles.

Emotional Cartographies: Technologies of the Self

This entry comes direct from the ever-inspiring Brainpickings by Maria Popva. Say no more.

Emotional Cartography is an excellent, free book on emotion mapping, featuring a collection of essays by artists, designers, psychologists, cultural researchers, futurists and neuroscientists. Together, they explore the political, social and cultural implications of dissecting the private world of human emotion with bleeding-edge technology.

From art projects to hi-tech gadgets, the collection looks at emotion in its social context. It’s an experiment in cultural hacking — a way to bridge the individual with the collective through experiential interconnectedness.

Download the book in PDF here, for 53 glorious pages of technology, art and cultural insight.

Bike T-shirt with Map Icons

I found this innovative bike T-shirt design by StorySpark on Etsy. Although not technically a map in the true sense of the word, I found this generative for a number of reasons. I like the provocation that instead of mapping spaces, it was using map icons to trace experiences with the bike as opposed to on the bike. I like that it’s described as a ‘Pathfinder Cyclist Graphic’ and that it’s gender-neutral.

When I first saw it, I saw it I thought it was using cosmology and celestial constellations which I thought that was cool, but when I looked closer and realised it was using familiar map icons, it worked just as well.

It also speaks to my ethical compunctions to support artists (an innovative and unique creative output) and the environment (this eco-friendly T-shirt is made From organic cotton and recycled polyester). I see this as a wonderful example to think more divergently about ‘mapping’ and is a creative reframing of mapping bicycle experiences anew.

Heat maps for cycling flows

Cycling heat maps show the intensity of movement in spaces. Usually, a cycling heat map is city-based and created by cyclists who download an app which tracks ride data. This is then collated into a visualisation to enable new perspective and insights to emerge that might not have been considered before.

This is useful to represent changes in movement and places over time. So things that are not shown on traditional static maps, like traffic jams, peak hours, changes in routes, most used routes (and when) are documented. There are also a few women’s only heat maps underway so as to compare ‘general’ users to ascertain differences.

What I like about these heat maps is that changes in flow is foregrounded and temporality (time) can more directly be folded into the map/ped/ing experience. I also like that the ‘heat’ terminology hints at the heat of bodies (riders), warm climate (environmental temperature or humidity) and ‘hot spots’ (such as avoidances, blockages or issues). Some pretty cool future potentialities here.

Also the use of ‘heat’ body

Here is an example of a cycling heat map project for Berlin, Vienna and Graz.

Using Strava GPS to be a bike ride map artist

This idea has been around for a while and many bike riders would have seen these before. I’m not sure how well-known they are outside of cycling communities. These are fun, dynamic, creative and wholly bike-focused, movement-based moment-in-time expressions of user (re)mapping. These approaches reinvent modern mapping with the user reinterpreting the map using technology which could not have been achieved previously. These are also freely available and shared.

Here, bike rides transcend exercise, competition and transportation to press into more unfamiliar (and exciting) territories such as public art and performance. Kudos to the bike rider-creative-(re)mapper whose interpretation and commitment in order to produce these pieces: I appreciate the careful planning and organisation needed to make these pieces happen. There is also a telescoping aspect of the riders understanding their trip as being (literally) larger and more significant than just the route in front of them…I love the idea of riding for a purpose that can be seen from outer space! Here, a known map which is a social product embodying a range of histories and ideologies in and of itself is iteratively reimagined by each individual rider into a (re)newed vision, commentary or reality.

These are a few entry points so far and each have their own usefulness, limitations and possibilities.

I’ll be exploring other ways to think differently about how mapping might better attend to gendered bike riding and emotionality and let you know what I find.

I hope you enjoyed this thought-experiment.

Enjoy mapping your next ride!