Our final report for the Cycling Cultures project will be launched in Bike Week (when else!) at UEL Stratford, at 5:30pm on the 19th June. Please sign up to attend here.

Interested in studying sustainable mobilities at PhD/MSc level?

Candidates can apply for bursaries to study the MSc Transport, Sustainability and Society. You should apply for the MSc itself first; more details of bursaries here and here.

Also this -

PhD studentship

The School of Law and Social Sciences is pleased to invite applications for one PhD Studentship in the Social Sciences SCLSS2012: This is a major award, for a period of THREE years, for UK and EU students covering the full cost of the fees plus a living allowance of £15,590 per year. Overseas students will receive the amount of the UK/EU fee plus a living allowance of £15,590 per year, but will be expected to pay the difference between UK/EU and overseas fees.

The School offers excellent opportunities for postgraduate education and contains four internationally renowned research centres and a number of vibrant research groups. Much of its research has been classified by the 2008 RAE as ‘internationally excellent’ as well as ‘world leading’.

To find out more about research opportunities at the school, please visit our website at: http://www.uel.ac.uk/lss/research/

To obtain application information please visit the website and follow the link to download your application form. We encourage you to review the sample PhD proposal on the link above in writing your application.

Please e-mail the application form and the research proposal to Phil Rees at p.rees@uel.ac.uk

Please note that only completed applications with full references will be considered.

Closing date for applications is Friday 1st June 2012.
Interviews of the short-listed applicants will be held on Monday 25th June, 2012.

Two events coming up (for more details/to attend, email R.E.Aldred@uel.ac.uk)

16th May, 5pm: MSc Transport, Sustainability and Society Q&A session at UEL Docklands. Find out more about the MSc here and bursaries here.

19th June, 5:30pm: The final report for our Cycling Cultures project will be launched at UEL Stratford, in Bike Week.

One of our two current UEL undergraduate research internship projects is looking at Cycling Activism and Advocacy in London. Maria and I will be attending the LCC Big Ride tomorrow, and asking participants to fill in our short online survey (questions include why they’re on the ride and their experience of cycling in London). It should be an interesting day.

The Big Ride Survey is available online here.

We are very pleased to announce the provisional programme for the 2012 Cycling and Society Symposium, and to open registration. You can see the programme and register here. Thanks to all who put in abstracts and to the peer reviewers – there were lots of good quality abstracts and some difficult decisions to make.

Our paper on ‘group rides’ (Constructing Mobile Places Between ‘Leisure’ and ‘Transport’: A Case Study of Two Group Cycle Rides) is now available online from Sociology for those with journal access. If you haven’t got access, feel free to email me for a personal copy, or you can read an earlier version on the papers page.

Here’s the abstract:

This article contributes to a growing literature examining the sociological significance of mobile places, exploring mobile place-making through an analysis of the practice of weekend group leisure cycling. These rides represent a mobility practice where the main aim of participants may be ‘leisure’ but most infrastructure used is designated for ‘transport’. Using ethnographic methods, the article provides an analysis of rhythm, positioning and communication on two group rides, one from Hull into the East Yorkshire countryside and one in London. External (including motor traffic flow and route type) and internal (including group composition and experience) factors shape the relationship between the riders and their ride, and hence the mobile places that they co-create. The article argues that cyclists riding in groups create distinctively flexible social spaces. These group cycling practices variously challenge, mimic and adapt to the motorized orientation of much road space.

I have had lots of requests for this paper after mentioning it on the blog. Having checked with the publisher, I realise that I am allowed to post a version of the article online now. This is the pre-peer review version so the one eventually published in Mobilities (hopefully in May/June) will be slightly different. Please click here to download the pre-print.

Incompetent, or too competent? Negotiating everyday cycling identities in a motor dominated society

Abstract:
This paper uses the concept of stigma to explore cycling identities in the UK. Drawing on interview data, it argues that people who cycle are caught between two threats: appearing too competent as a cyclist (a ‘proper cyclist’), and appearing not competent enough (a ‘bad cyclist’). Strategies of identity management are discussed, which can include elements of negotiation, disavowal, and challenge. The paper aims to show that transport modes can produce disadvantaged and stigmatised social identities: like other forms of stigma these are mediated both by social environments and by other social identities. Implications for policy and advocacy are suggested.

Quite a diverse range of talks coming up in February:

- Kat’s speaking on The Socio-Politics of Bloomers and Lycra: why what cyclists wear still matters, at an Institute of Railway Studies & Transport History Research Workshop at 2pm, in York, Thursday 2nd Feb.
- I will be speaking with James Woodcock on The Case Against The Car, at Tent City University, Occupy London, at 5:30pm on Thursday 2nd Feb.
- I’m talking on Cycling, Culture, Place, and Policy: making the connections, at CEMORE, Lancaster University, on February 21st, 4:15pm
- I’m presenting some of the Cycling Cultures findings to the Bristol Cycling Campaign on February 28th, at the YHA Bristol, 7:30pm.

The UEL Sustainable Mobilities Research Group is pleased to be hosting the 2012 Cycling and Society Symposium. Send your abstracts in now! The Symposium takes place on Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th September, and the deadline for abstracts is 29th February.

About the Symposium
The Cycling and Society Annual Symposium is an informal and interdisciplinary event. It welcomes academics, policy makers and advocates who wish to share research, knowledge and experience of any topic related to cycling. (At previous symposia, participants have discussed cycling in relation to comparative research; conflict; culture; environmental issues; fear and stigma; gender; history; identity; image; inequalities; interventions; legal issues; methodology; modelling; policy; planning; social change; social movements; statistics; technology; transport infrastructure; well-being – and more!)

This year we invite poster as well as oral presentations. Oral presentations should be no more than 15 minutes to allow plenty of time for discussion. Poster presentation may be particularly suitable for those new to presenting or those seeking to raise awareness of new projects. Those wishing to participate without presenting are also very welcome to attend. A programme will be available in April giving details of presentations and additional events including the annual Cycling and Society Research Group meeting. If you require any further information in the meantime please contact Rachel Aldred at R.E.Aldred@uel.ac.uk.

To submit an abstract, please email your title with an abstract of up to 300 words, stating whether this would be a poster or an oral presentation, to R.E.Aldred@uel.ac.uk by the deadline of Wednesday 29th February 2012. Abstracts will be reviewed by a panel of members of the Cycling and Society Research Group and decisions will be sent via e-mail to the corresponding author by Friday 30th March 2012. The fee for the event will not be more than £25.

Background to the C&S Symposium Series
The Cycling and Society symposium series was launched in 2004 at Lancaster University, with subsequent meetings at the Universities of Cardiff (2005), Chester (2006), at the offices of the CTC in Guildford (2007), University of West of England (2008), University of Bolton (2009), Oxford University (2010) and Glasgow School of Art (2011). The symposia are linked to the Cycling and Society Research Group (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cycling-and-society.html) whose members span many disciplines and approaches to the study of cycling. An edited collection of papers presented at earlier symposia was published in the book ‘Cycling and Society’ (eds. Horton, Rosen & Cox, 2007) by Ashgate as part of its Transport and Society Series.

I’ve been finishing off my amendments to the article ‘Incompetent, or too competent: negotiating everyday cycling identities in a motor dominated society’. Subject to them agreeing the amends, it will be going in Mobilities journal While I can’t post it online now because of copyright restrictions, I am happy to email it to anyone who’s interested.

In some ways this is a companion piece to my published article on ‘Cycling Citizenship’ which looks at positive discourses around being a cyclist and how these relate to practices of mobile citizenship. This one looks at ‘the cyclist’ as a stigmatised identity using some of the interview data from Cambridge and Hull. It argues that cyclists are caught between stereotypes of being an incompetent cyclist (the ‘bad cyclist’) and being too competent a cyclist (the ‘proper cyclist’, ‘bike nut’, ‘avid cyclist’, etc.)

Here’s a sample bit of data about being a ‘proper cyclist’ -

‘Oh I would say an avid cyclist is somebody who like, they live and breathe it really. You know the sort, you’ll see them when you’re driving somewhere going up a really steep hill and all you can see is these legs like tree trunks (laughter)’

Most people had vivid descriptions of one kind or another, representing the kind of cyclist they were definitely not. In the article I discuss this as a way of drawing boundaries, negotiating identity and avoiding what stigma writers call a ‘spoiled identity’. Also in the article I talk about some of the ways that being ‘a cyclist’ interacts differently with other social identities (class, gender, etc.) depending on the context. For example, in Cambridge cycling has a more middle-class image than it does in Hull, and that matters for how cyclists perceive themselves – and how easy or difficult it might be to be ‘a cyclist’.

One thing I don’t get a chance to discuss in the article is how cycling identities are informed by, and inform, cycling politics. This is something that’s being hotly debated in London at the moment – not necessarily in so many words, but in arguments around how advocacy should work, what forms activism should take, and so on. One sign of this is the email I got over the weekend from Lilli about the Londoners on Bikes project, a new group seeking to mobilise a cyclist ‘block vote’ in the upcoming mayoral elections.

I thought it was interesting (a) to see this form of cycling activism develop and (b) more specifically, the choice of name – ‘on bikes’ rather than ‘cyclists’. With the research internship on advocacy and activism, I’ll be thinking some more about how different forms of activism and advocacy mobilise different conceptions of ‘the cyclist’, ‘people on bikes’, ‘potential cyclists’ and so on, and the implications of this in turn for the changing politics of cycling.