ESRC Studentships (+3 or 1+3): Human Geography Research Group at Edinburgh
University
The Human Geography Research Group at Edinburgh University is expected
to have ESRC studentships available for UK or EU candidates starting in
September 2010.
Application deadline: February / March 2010.
UK or EU residents only
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/geography/pg/human/
Topics of interest to students with a background in CA or ethnomethodology.
1. Environmental debates: discourse analysis and conversation analysis
• Spatial conflicts over offshore wind farms
While the UK may have one of the best wind energy resources in the
world, attempts to site wind farms onshore have met with conflict, controversy
– and very low siting rates. Moving wind farms offshore may seem like the
ideal solution - away from people, prized landscapes, and heated debates.
• Microgeneration of energy
Issues of energy cost, supply, and transmission have never been more
pertinent or prevalent. The UK Government has put forward a strategy to
increase the proportion of energy generated at the local scale - by householders,
businesses, schools, and community groups - for their own needs. Indeed,
this might seem to be an ideal solution; microgeneration means no energy
lost in transmission, reduces reliance on large scale generation, and encourages
users to become more energy efficient.
PhD research could focus on debates over locations where wind farms,
microgeneration or low energy housing is already being used, and explore
the benefits and challenges experienced. It could consider debates over
the role that energy generation plays, wind farms or low energy housing
plays in the context of such locations? It could also explore the organisation
of debates over the role of communities and stakeholders, considering issues
of 'local' issues, rights, and governance in an offshore environment.
Key in the analysis of these debates will be utilising a discursive
or conversation analytic approach. Familiarity with these approaches would
be expected.
2. Ethnomethodology and Everyday Life
Applications are invited that would take as their point of connection to
human geography the distinctive collection of studies, pioneered by Harold
Garfinkel and others, known as ethnomethodology or ethno-inquiries. Potential
studies would pursue practical reasoning, intelligibility, accountability
and questions of excellence in ordinary communities of practice. Everyday
life gathers together a wide array of possible subjects for study from
the perspective of ethnomethodology, including such possibilities as: talking,
reading, filling in forms, cooking, dog-walking, cafés, driving,
housework, searching for lost things, DIY, photography, shopping, dating,
gardening, neighbouring, parties, parenting and more.
3. Workplace Studies
Drawing on the tradition begun by Harold Garfinkel this topic addresses
the ordinary practices that ongoingly, on each and every occasion, create
workplaces. A central ambition is to produce non-ironic descriptions of
the day-to-day work of whatever particular sites of labour. An expectation
of PhDs pursued is that they would be investigated ethnographically and,
ideally, students would acquire basic competence in the particular work
they were studying (e.g. if you are studying hair dressing you will learn
to wash, cut and style hair). Examples from previous studies are: air traffic
control centres, tele-banking, laboratories, truck repair & parts supply,
cafés and hospitals.
4. Transport Cultures
The cultural aspects of the transportation of goods and people have tended
to be overlooked in existing research on this topic. Under the heading
of ‘mobility studies’ a number of new promising lines of research have
begun: road ethnographies, theorising automobility as a fundamental structure
of modern life, documenting histories the rise of the motorway and the
performative aspects of cabin crew. Applications are invited which might
examine variously: air, road, rail and water infrastructures, their related
vehicles (planes, trains, ships, bicycles, cars, animals and pedestrian)
and places (airports, garages, stations and ports). It is anticipated the
fieldwork will be ethnographic, potentially exploiting digital video as
medium.
5. Video Analysis
Emerging out of conversation-analysis and ethnomethodology, video-analysis
as a topic is concerned with both how social science develops its analysis
of video recordings of social life, and, forms of ‘vernacular’ video analysis
carried out in various work and domestic settings. Potential studies of
the latter would be of home-video making, TV production, CCTV systems,
video-blogs and v-jays. Applications are also invited on diverse topics
from students who would have video-analysis as their central methodology
and ambitions to develop their understanding of its analysis.
Contact Eric Laurier if interested in applying. eric.laurier AT ed.ac.uk
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland,
with registration number SC005336.