12 SEP 2019 (THU) | 18:00 - 19:00
Map Library, Rm10.10, 10/F, The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
SPEAKER:
DAVID BISSELL
The University of Melbourne
ORGANISED BY:
Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong
ABSTRACT:
In an era of intensified urbanisation, where more people are living and working in cities than ever before, the question of how our everyday mobilities are transforming the fabric of social life is a critical issue for our times. In this seminar, I will discuss some of my recent research on urban commuting in Australia to show how the mobilities paradigm can provide geographers with new understandings of power in a world increasingly characterised by complex patterns of mobility and stillness. Drawing on fieldwork encounters with three long distance commuters whose daily lives extent over vast distances, I will draw attention to the diverse circumstances through which mobile lives can emerge, and I will discuss the political, ethical and practical questions that mobile lives provoke. I will explain how mobility is the missing link in a set of debates currently taking place where job creation and housing affordability are currently centre-stage.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
David Bissell is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. He combines qualitative research on embodied practices with social theory to explore the social, political and ethical consequences of mobile lives. He is author of Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities (MIT Press, 2018), and co-editor of Stillness in a Mobile World (2011), and the Routledge Handbook of Mobilities (2014). He is Managing Editor of Social & Cultural Geography and Steering Committee Chair for AusMob, the Australian Mobilities Research Network.