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Cosmin Popan is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow whose project, 'Doing gig work: Social implications of platform-based food deliveries' (2020-2023), investigates the gig economy and its reconfiguration of urban spaces. His research focuses on the management, solidarity and resistance of cycle couriers in three European cities: Manchester, Lyon (France) and Cluj-Napoca (Romania).
Since joining Manchester Metropolitan University in 2018, Cosmin has been involved in the project Gendered Cycling Cultures and, more recently, he worked as a Research Associate on the Horizon 2020 pan-European cross-disciplinary programme MiCreate. This project is concerned with stimulating the inclusion of diverse groups of migrant children at policy and educational levels.
Cosmin holds a doctorate in Sociology from Lancaster University, which investigated the broader social, political and cultural processes through which cycling could expand into dominant mobility replacing the system of automobility. The results of his PhD research were published by Routledge as a book monograph titled Bicycle Utopias (2019).
His areas of interest are: gig economy, platform labour, the future of work, urban mobilities and cycling.
2017: PhD in Sociology, Lancaster University, United Kingdom. Thesis title: ‘Utopias of slow cycling. Imagining a bicycle system’.
2012: M.Sc. in Anthropology, The National School of Political Science and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania.
2004: Bachelor's degree in Journalism, Faculty of Political Sciences and Public Administration, University Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
2017: Associate Fellow of The Higher Education Academy
2015 - 2017: Digital Strategy Co-ordinator, Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University
2009 - 2013: Owner and editor, PortocalaMecanica.ro (urban cycling blog), Bucharest, Romania
2005 - 2010: Editor, Cotidianul (daily newspaper), Bucharest, Romania
Romanian, French
C. Popan, K. Psarikidou, D. Zuev (2021). Cycling Societies. Innovations, Inequalities and Governance. Routledge.
C. Popan (2020). Bicycle Utopias Imagining Fast and Slow Cycling Futures. Routledge.
C. Popan (2023). The fragile ‘art’ of multi-apping: Resilience and snapping in the gig economy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.
A. Szymczyk, C. Popan, S. Arun (2022). Othering through language: English as an Additional Language in England’s educational policy and practice. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. 22(2), pp.117-131.
C. Popan (2021). Embodied Precariat and Digital Control in the “Gig Economy”: The Mobile Labor of Food Delivery Workers. Journal of Urban Technology. pp.1-20.
K. Badwan, C. Popan, S. Arun (2021). Exploring schools as potential sites of foster-ship and empowerment for migrant children in the UK (Exploramos las escuelas como posibles centros de acogida y empoderamiento de los niños migrantes en el RU). Cultura y Educación. Culture and Education. 33(4), pp.1-27.
K. Psarikidou, D. Zuev, C. Popan (2020). Sustainable cycling futures: can cycling be the future?. Applied Mobilities. 5(3), pp.225-231.
C. Popan (2020). Beyond utilitarian mobilities: cycling senses and the subversion of the car system. Applied Mobilities. 5(3), pp.289-305.
I-C. Popan (2020). Fast and Slow Bicycle Utopias. Utopian Studies. 31(1), pp.118-118.
C. Boyko, S. Clune, R. Cooper, C. Coulton, N. Dunn, et al. S. Pollastri, J. Leach, C. Bouch, M. Cavada, V. De Laurentiis, M. Goodfellow-Smith, J. Hale, D. Hunt, S. Lee, M. Locret-Collet, J. Sadler, J. Ward, C. Rogers, C. Popan, K. Psarikidou, J. Urry, L. Blunden, L. Bourikas, M. Büchs, J. Falkingham, M. Harper, P. James, M. Kamanda, T. Sanches, P. Tuner, P. Wu, A. Bahaj, A. Ortegon, K. Barnes, E. Cosgrave, P. Honeybone, H. Joffe, C. Kwami, V. Zeeb, B. Collins, N. Tyler. (2017). How Sharing Can Contribute to More Sustainable Cities. Sustainability. 9(5), pp.701-701.
I-C. Popan (2021). Algorithmic governance in the gig economy: entrepreneurialism and solidarity among food delivery workers. In: Cycling Societies Innovations, Inequalities and Governance. Routledge,
J. Spinney, C. Popan (2020). Mobilising street culture: Understanding the implications of the shift from lifestyle bike messengers to gig economy workers. In: Routledge Handbook of Street Culture. Routledge, pp.137-146.
2017: Popan, C. et al. ‘How Sharing Can Contribute to More Sustainable Cities’ Sustainability 9(5):701, 1-16
2017: Popan, C. et al. ‘Dataset of the liveability performance of the city of Birmingham, UK, as measured by its citizen well-being, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon emissions’ Data in Brief, 15, 691–695
2016: Popan, C., Ortegon, A. and Tyler, N. ‘Car-Free Initiatives from Around the World: Concepts for Moving to Future Sustainable Mobility’. Available online at Transport Research Board: http://docs.trb.org/prp/17-06816.pdf
2012: Popan, C. and Dulamiță, I. ‘Between the Fireplace and the Pig Slaughter Feast: Exchanges on the Cajvana-Italy Route’, Societatea Reală, 4:1, 69-79
2018: Convening lectures and workshops on cycling mobilities and mobile methods at the summer school ‘Sociedades Móviles: fluidez y circulación de personas y objetos en las sociedades contemporáneas’ in Bogotá, Colombia
2018: ‘Utopias of slow cycling. Imagining a bicycle system’, The National School of Political Science and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, 7 February
2017: ‘Utopias of fast and slow cycling’, Cycling and Society Symposium, London, 8 September
2017: ‘Feel the slow. Imagining biketopias’, Velo-City conference, Nijmegen, 12 June
2016: ‘Representing cycling sensescapes and sociabilities with mobile methods’, Velomobile Methods workshop, Oxford, 11 May
2016: Lead organiser for the Cycling and Society Symposium, Lancaster, 29 – 30 September. This academic event gathered more than 50 participants from 17 countries, including Brazil and India
2016: Mobile Utopias Research Co-Creation Workshop, Lancaster, 19 April
EPSRC Doctoral Studentship