Research Associate

The ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) is the first major Research Centre in Britain to develop broad, empirically focused, cross-disciplinary accounts of the economic, social and political implications of cultural change. (See www.cresc.ac.ukfor further details).

CRESC research is organised into 5 substantive themes and this post will play a key role in supporting CRESC’s Theme 4 on Infrastructures of Social Change. This research theme analyses processes of social/infrastructural change by paying attention to the interplay between technologies, materials and social imaginaries. Building on research with a wide range of partners: from engineers, planners, and policy makers who are devising methods of bringing about and accounting for infrastructural change; to activists and artists who are re-imagining society through alternative renderings of infrastructural relations, Theme 4 researchers are developing methodological and theoretical approaches that look to extend our understanding of infrastructural relations and their implications for engaging the socially transformative effects of projects of infrastructural change. Empirically our engagement with infrastructural systems which include roads, airports, borders, urban planning and transformative architectures, focuses on the politics of infrastructural projects.

Following the publication of our jointly edited Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion we continue to investigate the interplay between materiality and imagination in the making of social futures. Our focus on the infrastructural is also concerned to explore practices of standardisation alongside the transformative or disruptive effects of the often invisible processes and practices that lie behind the development and implementation of contemporary infrastructures. The post holder will be expected to support the work of Theme 4, to develop their own particular field of research interest and to publish research findings, to explore innovative methodological approaches, and to work collaboratively with other CRESC researchers across themes and across disciplines.

Applicants should have a Ph.D. (or equivalent) in a relevant subject, a research project commensurate with the interests of theme 4, ability to take responsibility for all aspects of the research process, to work as part of a team, meet deadlines and to work on a range of different research projects concurrently. Experience of writing and presenting research findings to scholarly audiences is essential.