Hello,
I'm Mike Gallagher, and I've just joined the list. I'm a geography
undergraduate at Edinburgh University, hoping to do a PhD, funding
willing, when I graduate in 2000. My academic interests are fairly
wide. I like historical geography, geography of empire and so on,
and my dissertation will be a socio-historiography of African
exploration, based on archival research of John Kirk's manuscripts -
Kirk was Livingstone's second-in-command on the Zambezi
expedition into Africa, and later became Consul General at Zanzibar,
having some rather fractious relations with H.M. Stanley in that
position. I'm also really taken by feminist geographies, their
critiques of knowledge and their focus on embodiment. I think
there's a lot of scope for using this work to theorise about popular
culture, since I'm really enthused by cultural geography too.
My main spare time interests are music - listening to and making,
I'm building a little studio right now, and trying to learn how to
scratch records DJ Shadow style - and comedy - I've been
interviewing comedians for the uni magazine since September, and
I'm hoping to continue that in the festival here this year. There's lots
of geographical scope for comedy; I recently completed a research
assignment which examined representations of places and bodies in
comedy, and I think this might be a potential PhD topic. Oh, and
anyone with a fascination for crop circles should probably get in
touch with me, too. There's lots of as-yet-undiscovered
geographical and social meanings in that little nest of vipers -
another potential PhD project, though where I'd get the funding is
anyone's guess.
Well, that's far too much about me already, so I'll leave you in peace
now,
Michael Gallagher
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