BOSTON AAG ANNUAL MEETING
5th-9th April, 2017
*Apologies for cross-posting*
Call for Papers: “Mobile Methods in Transport Research”
Session Organizers: Geoffrey Battista (McGill University); Julie Clark (University of Glasgow); Kevin Manaugh (McGill University)
We invite abstracts (≤ 250 words) from registered attendees who wish to engage with like-minded colleagues. Abstracts and corresponding program identification numbers (PIN) must be submitted to Geoffrey Battista ([log in to unmask]) by Wednesday 19th October, 2016 at 9pm GMT /5pm EST.
Imagine yourself on the Boston’s Silver Line, on your way from Logan Airport toward AAG 2017. You tap your CharlieCard onto the farebox reader, debit a couple dollars from your account, and sit down toward the back of the bus knowing you will arrive downtown in time for dinner. The remainder of the passengers step onto the bus: a doctoral student tuning out her surroundings with earbuds, sunglasses, and comfortable sneakers; a sweater-vested professor emeritus shuffling down the aisle with his cane; a group of tourists reminiscing about the relative convenience of their hometown’s maglev shuttle while a refugee family—guided by their local sponsor—marvels at the cleanliness and expense of the bus compared to the public transportation back home. The bus sets off at last, and while you’re tempted to record your journey with the technology in your bag (GoPro, GPS, accelerometer, Instagram), you would prefer to soak in the city after a long flight.
Surveys, sedentary interviews, and travel behaviour modelling may not capture many of the socio-spatial factors that induce travel and shape travel experiences. Recent scholarship has sought to address this gap by analyzing mobile subjects, from their physical corporality to their social and psychological engagement with lived space. Their work has generated insights to more effectively tailor transportation solutions for different socio-demographic groups. At the same time, Merriman (2014) notes that mobile methods rely on over-animated subjects and objects while neglecting “infrastructures, technologies, materialities, and spaces that are integral to the embodied movements of human subjects” (p. 177). How can we—scholars, policymakers, drivers, and passengers—employ mobile methods to better understand and improve transportation system design?
This session serves as a nexus for emerging scholarship on mobile methods in transport research including, but not limited to studies using
• Geographic information software;
• Qualitative research;
• Digital methods of inquiry; and,
• Embodied hardware.
We also welcome scholarship addressing “mobile methods” more broadly, particularly epistemological challenges and opportunities as technological innovations emerge in both transportation (e.g., self-driving cars) and data collection (e.g., big data).
The selected abstracts will be grouped into the session(s) according to their thematic congruence.
This session is co-sponsored by the Transportation Geography Specialty Group, Urban Geography Specialty Group, and Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group.
For more information on the conference, see: http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting
Works Cited
Merriman, P., 2014. Rethinking Mobile Methods. Mobilities 9, 167–187. doi:10.1080/17450101.2013.784540
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