Affect and Place meaning of contested urban sites

Project details

Full project title: Affect and Place meaning in contested urban sites

Project duration: August 2013 - July 2014

Funder: UWE Bristol (SPUR programme)

Project leader for SPE: Dr Michael Buser

Research partners/collaborators:

• Bearpit Improvement Group
• David Hopkinson (digital artist)

Project summary

This project develops a performative, post-phenomenological study of ‘place’. While similar methods are common in arts and humanities, they have not gained a foothold in social science or planning.

Drawing on innovations in cultural geography, feminist theory and the new materialism where humanist accounts have been criticised for overvaluing language and discourse (to the neglect of non-human forces), the investigation involves a reading of place experience where matter and meaning are mutually articulated and where the more-than-human is agential.

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Key outputs

• Buser, M. (2018). Machinic assemblages of publicness. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 42(5), 769-784.
• Buser, M. (2017). Atmospheres of stillness in Bristol's Bearpit. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 35(1), 126-145.

Project contact

For further information on the project, please contact Dr Michael Buser (Michael.Buser@uwe.ac.uk).