CITIES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: POTENTIAL PHD TOPICS
We have considerable experience in guiding students successfully through a PhD and helping applicants develop proposals and seek funding. Where possible, we feel that joint supervision is the best arrangement for students and value the importance of frequent supervisory meetings. We particularly welcome applications for those candidates interested in utilising participatory and action reseach methodologies, and in any of the following areas:
- Consumption Cultures and Subcultures
- Challenging Neoliberal Spaces
- Urban Memory and Landscape
- Territorial Governance and Urban Restructuring
- Cultural Policy and Regeneration
- Sustainable Urban Futures
1. Consumption Cultures and Subcultures
Exploring the impress of consumption and consumerist lifestyles on the city and on urban life is a key aspect of the cluster's research agenda. We are interested on the impacts of globalisation on traditional retail patterns and types of consumer behaviour. We look forward to research proposals on spaces of consumption and city living (from domestic and retail sites to recreational spaces such as parks and nightclubs) in both historical and contemporary cities, across a variety of cultural contexts and locations.
We would welcome research proposals on:
- Downshifting and the Rural 'Creative Class'.
- Material and Embodied Spaces of Sexual Practices.
- Experiencing and Imagining New Technologies.
- Food and Identities.
- Drinking Cultures and Spaces.
- Social Uses of the Internet.
- Night-time economies.
- Gambling.
- Retail change in developing worlds.
- Consumption, diet, food access & growing levels of obesity.
Cluster members interested in potential PhD students in this area:
2. Challenging Neoliberal Spaces
Neoliberalism has become one of the key terms used to interpret contemporary urban development. People now talk about the urbanisation of neoliberalism. We are interested in research that looks at social movements and resistance practices that have emerged in cities in the UK, Europe and across Latin America to resist life under capitalism and reinvent new forms of democracy and politics.
We would welcome research proposals on:
- Autonomous Social Movements in the UK.
- Social Movements in Latin America including Zapatista in Mexico and popular groups in Argentina.
- Challenging the urban competitiveness discourse and practices.
- The privatisation of public space and services.
- International Trade Unions.
- Global capitalism.
Cluster members interested in potential PhD students in this area:
Paul Chatterton, Sara Gonzalez,
Stuart Hodkinson, Robert Vanderbeck
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