Thursday, 14 February 2019 at 10:00 am – Thursday, 14 February 2019 at 4:30 pm

Cycling Cultures: Insights and Methods

Date: Thursday 14th February 2019

Time: 10am – 4.30pm

Location: Annexe, Number 70 Oxford St, Manchester Metropolitan University

Tickets: £5 BSA members, £15 non-BSA members. Available here.

Cycling Cultures: Insights and Methods is a one-day early career event organised for The British Sociological Association and The Research Centre for Applied Social Sciences at Manchester Metropolitan University. The symposium presents research to encourage links between academia and stakeholders on issues of cycling, gender and mobilities in the urban environment.

The Research Centre for Applied Social Sciences (RCASS) brings together researchers belonging to the departments of Sociology, Geography, InfoComms and Languages and is hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. We provide an interdisciplinary home for critical research that contributes to policy making debates and decision making, while genuinely impacting upon the work and strategies of local organisations and communities. It is this combination of social scientific disciplines, expertise and a determination to shed critical light on the most important ‘real world’ issues of the day that makes RCASS what it is: a Research Centre designed to have a real policy impact at a local, regional, national and global level and one that isn’t afraid to make a bit of a ruckus along the way.

This is a British Sociological Association Early Career Forum which showcases established and emerging research around cycling. The symposium is organized around themes of visual ethnography, gender and sensory and mobile methods. The first part of the event will introduce emergent issues around gender and cycling with particular focus on methods and fieldwork practices. Secondly, we intend to open up these debates and consider cycling advocacy and city mobilities underpinned by gender. Finally, we invite multi-media contributions to expand the breadth of methodological approaches to cycling and engage with a multi-sensorial ethnography of women’s cycling cultures.

10.00: Welcome, coffee and introductions

10.30 – 11.45: Part One: What has Gender Got to do with it? Methods and Movement in Cycling

• Kate Themen (Manchester Metropolitan University) A Study of Women’s Competitive Cycling
• Marlon Moncrieffe (University of Brighton) Exploring power-dynamics through 'race' in cycling
• Nadia Williams (Dundalk Institute of Technology) Media discourses and gendered cycling

11.45 – 12.00: Break

12.00 – 12.30: Short film and discussion: ‘We don’t usually get flowers’

The film tells the story of Andrew and Zara who met through volunteering for Food Cycle, a charity that uses unwanted food donated by supermarkets to prepare a weekly hearty vegetarian meal for people in food poverty.

12.30 – 13.30: Lunch

13.30 – 14.30: Part Two: Cycling Advocacy: Gender, City Mobilities and Policy

• Cosmin Popan (Manchester Metropolitan University) Bicycle Utopias: Imagining Fast and Slow Cycling Futures
• Tiffany Lam (urbanist, London) Cycling London: A gender lens 
• Anna Nikolaeva (University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University) Smart cycling: meaning, experience and governance (via Skype)

14.30 – 14.45: Refreshment Break

14.45 – 16.00: Part Three: Curating (women’s) cycling cultures

This third session is a multimedia session, where we will be displaying cultural representations of (women’s) cycling cultures.

• Bruce Bennett (Lancaster University): Researching cycling history through cinema
• Film projection: ‘Mama Agatha’ (by Fadi Hindash; with a foreword by Bruce Bennett)
• Zine exposition: ‘Taking the Lane’ (by Elly Blue) 
• Photo exhibition: First Black-British female cyclists (by Marlon Moncrieffe)

16.00 – 16.15: Presentation Lady Pedal (Cycling community of Manchester women): Hannah, Annabelle and Beth present some of their projects: bike maintenance, women's cycling stories, women’s cycle film festival, confidence-boosting rides and the HSBC UK Breeze programme.

16.15 – 16.30: Close

16.30 – 17.30: Reception

Registration

• BSA Member £5
• Non-Member £15

Click here to book your place.

For more information, please contact Kate Themen K.Themen@mmu.ac.uk