I’m currently in the middle of a month of fieldwork exploring Cycling Cultures in Hull and can be found blogging here.

Back soon.

I designed these cards for fieldwork in Hull. The first is an intro to the project and invitation to participate. We handed these to cyclists, left them in bike shops and attached them to parked bikes throughout the city. The second was designed for use at the Lord Mayor’s parade on Saturday 15th May. We shared a stall with the Hull City Council (HCC) Sustainable Travel Officer located in front of a well-signed transport bus. We asked local cyclists what they liked and disliked about cycling in Hull and if they wanted to participate further in the study. The response was terrific. We ran out of cards. (It helped, of course, that HCC was giving away a range of cycling vests, trouser guards and maps).

I’ve been working on this website for my new project at UEL – http://www.cyclingcultures.org.uk. It is now live and will be used to document the developing research. Rachel and I are especially interested in gathering Bike Stories from as many cyclists as possible so if you are interested, please add one here.

Rachel and I (along with Dave Horton and Griet Scheldeman of Lancaster University) are giving a public lecture next week.

New Cycling Research
Tuesday 27 April 2010
University of East London

The public lecture showcases two projects using mixed method and qualitative approaches to cycling: the EPSRC-funded ‘Understanding Walking and Cycling’ (Lancaster University), and the ESRC-funded ‘Cycling Cultures’ (UEL).

Dave Horton (Lancaster University) is undertaking ethnographic research as part of the ‘Understanding Walking and Cycling’ project. The project adopts mixed methods to explore walking and cycling in four English cities; Lancaster, Leeds, Leicester and Worcester. Dave will describe the wider project, before concentrating on the qualitative research, and specifically the ethnographic fieldwork, which he is conducting with the Flemish anthropologist Griet Scheldeman. He’ll give details of the methods that Griet and he has so far been using to produce data which should improve current understandings of cycling and he’ll talk through some of their preliminary findings, with the hope that those present will discuss and help him think about what they might mean!

Rachel and Katrina are working on ‘Cycling Cultures’, which looks at four urban areas with relatively high cycling rates: Cambridge, Hull, Bristol, and Hackney. Rachel and Katrina will discuss the rationale for the project and the findings emerging from pilot and background research. They’ll talk about the methods that they are currently exploring, including mapping applications (ArcView and Google mashups) to represent and analyse qualitative and quantitative data. Rachel and Katrina will also discuss their ongoing experiments in visual methodology including the use of time-lapse photography.

I’ve been playing with a Go Pro camera which takes a photo every two seconds. Compiling all of these images (and there are a lot), I am working on a clunky and bumpy time-lapse film of my commute to school- will post shortly.

I’ve been photographing a few of the bike lane signs and am fascinated by the uniqueness of each one. I used to think there was some kind of impossible bike stencil, but it appears in many cases that the street sign writer makes them up on the job.

I also recently came across this – oh, if only…..

It came from here where there are many more weird and wonderful bike related things.

This week I started a new role as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Humanities and Social Science Department at University of East London. I will be working on an ethnographic ESRC project called ‘Cycling cultures in a mass motorised society: a multi-method case study of four English urban areas’. But from now on, it will be known by the more snappy title – Cycling Cultures.

This project will focus on four relatively high-cycling areas – Hull, Hackney, Cambridge and Bristol – and try to find out why cycling thrives in these areas. Cycling rates in the UK are low by Northern European standards, but relatively high-cycling areas do exist here. In such areas, cycling extends beyond “committed cyclists”, so it is likely that many residents who cycle regularly would not do so if they lived elsewhere in the UK. Their experiences are important for understanding processes through which cycling becomes more “normal”.

My new job is about bikes, involves a lot of ethnographic research and I get to make stuff. Plus I get to cycle to each of my fieldsites….. that is pretty cool.

More info here and a new website currently in development will be here.

I was aiming to make my way from London to Lancaster (300miles) by bike over five days. A sudden onslaught of snow and sub-zero temperatures meant that I made it to Birmingham by bike (135miles) but had to resort to trains for the rest of the journey. It was a hell of an adventure slipping and sliding on iced roads for at least part of the way. I ended up with a split chin after one particularly unexpected smack down in the ice, and oh my that red stuff looks super impressive on fresh snow. I’ll try again when it is slightly less c-c-c-cold.

I’ve been invited to participate in a workshop exploring practical knowledge and modes of sociological expression at Goldsmiths. I’ll be talking about WiFi makers and bike makers. It should be very interesting.

Workshop: Analysing Practical Knowledge
Goldsmiths, University of London
Wednesday, 11 November 2009

The idea of this event is to explore how we can make sociological sense of the kinds of practical knowledge that cannot necessarily be spoken, nor even readily observed. What we mean by practical knowledge is an embodied or tacit skill, competence or feel for something such as being in a place or undertaking a particular activity or job. At this workshop, we want to discuss the possibilities and limitations of talk, sound, image, and objects in producing understandings of practical knowledge. Participants are asked to articulate general issue/problems of analysing practical knowledge and how these might be worked through with reference to a specific research project.

Participants include Lynne Pettinger (Essex), Les Back (Goldsmiths), Dawn Lyon (Kent), Alison Rooke (Goldsmiths), Alex Rhys-Taylor (Goldsmiths), and Kat Jungnickel (Goldsmiths).

The fact that five colleagues alerted me to this post-doc more than hints at common knowledge of my professional and personal interest in cycling : )

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW – Fixed term until 31st December 2011
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Reference: 074R2009
Closing Date: Wednesday 11 November 2009
Interview Date: Monday 07 December 2009
Salary: £25,659 to £32,432 pa inc.

The University of East London is a dynamic and rapidly expanding university at the heart of Europe’s largest regeneration area and adjacent to the site of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. In the 2008 RAE exercise we are in the top ten modern UK universities for research. The Guardian League tables ranked us 52 of 84 university departments teaching Sociology and results of the RAE ranked us 25th of 40 submissions for Sociology.

Dr. Rachel Aldred, Senior Lecturer in Sociology within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, has been awarded an ESRC First Grant to study “Cycling Cultures in a Mass Motorised Society: a multi-method case study of four English urban areas”. You will be the research fellow on this project; you will be carrying out the majority of the empirical research and you will participate in other stages of the research including data analysis and research dissemination and networking.

You should have a PhD (or near completion), or a Masters plus substantial research experience. You will have in-depth knowledge of an academic or policy field of relevance to the research area. You must have experience of carrying out qualitative interviews, be interested in cycling as a research area, and be willing to travel around the UK to conduct fieldwork. You should be available to start work on 1st March 2010 or soon afterwards.

To obtain further details about this vacancy please visit our website at http://jobs.uel.ac.uk (ref no: 74r2009). For an informal discussion about this post please contact Rachel Aldred, R.E.Aldred@uel.ac.uk. The closing date for applications is 11th November 2009 and we anticipate that interviews will take place on 7 December 2009.