This ethnographic study currently traces in situ urban maintenance practices across a number of professional and volunteer groups in Cardiff, UK. It is interested, broadly, in how the city is maintained on a daily basis, and explores the small-scale, street-level tactics and interactions that manifest in and constitute the daily round. Current interests are in members’ categorisation practices regarding people and place, and the implications of their public visibility and accountability as street-level bureaucrats responsible for, and category-bound to, the regular ‘dirty work’ of quotidian regeneration. Other research interests include the situated organisational accomplishment of teamwork, and the navigation of varying levels of practical skills between members in the context of the ever-broadening public requirements and obligations of urban public maintenance work.
Sociology Student Profiles
Sociology
Austin, Josie
The aim of this project is to explore the relationship between young people’s gendered bodies, their sexual practices and their sexual subjectivities in South Wales in its current ‘era of sexualisation’. ‘Gendered bodies’ are in this context understood to be bodies existing in and emerging from gendered discursive frames, in which hegemonic notions of masculinity and femininity have materialised and in which an automatisation of ‘gender-appropriate’ perfomativity has occurred (Butler, 1990). Since female bodies have been theorised to be more often objectified and ‘othered’, while male ones have been theorised to more often be presented as subjects and agents (Gill, 2008), this may include the extent to which young people’s bodies are lived and experienced as subjects or objects. ‘Sexual practices’ are in this context understood to be sexual behaviours young people engage in; and ‘sexual subjectivities’ are understood as the way young people understand themselves as sexual beings, and how they experience and make sense of sex, given the confines of their social worlds.
Although an open mind will be kept with regards to the nature of the relationship between young people’s gendered bodies, their sexual practices and their sexual subjectivities, two aspects will be foregrounded in the conduct and the analysis of the study. Firstly it will be emphasised what role the gendered body plays in determining young people’s sexual practices and sexual subjectivities, especially in relation to the accessibility and their experience of sexual pleasure. Accumulating knowledge as to how embodied notions of masculinity and femininity can have detrimental impacts on young people’s sexual experiences, including their sexual pleasure, will be beneficial in challenging such notions and working towards a society in which all young people are given the opportunity to enjoy their sexuality freely. Secondly it is of particular interest what role the sexual practices young people engage in play in reinforcing and subverting the process of the gendering of the body, as this may, as well as giving insight into the maintenance of the gendered body, present an opportunity for young people to work towards social and personal change should this be desired.
The project will take a participatory approach in which young people between the ages of 16 and 18 years, who will have often only just begun to engage in sexual practices with other people and are hence very much in a process of negotiating their changing subject positions, are given the opportunity to contribute to the design of the study and to express their thoughts and feelings in a variety of ways. The project will begin by carrying out focus groups with young people, in which the research questions will be addressed and the further conduct of the study will be discussed. Possible further steps include individual interviews, a range of creative methods such as diaries and collages, and a survey.
Baudu, Talwyn
My thesis seeks to explore the impact of minority language education systems on second language youth sense-making.
My PhD research aims to better understand the experiences of young people who have acquired a minority language as a second language in French comprehensive schools (Lycée). It does so by focusing on two main issues. Firstly, the project examines the ways in which language ideologies are “produced” within minority language schools as well as at regional and state level. Secondly, the thesis focuses on youths’ language ideologies and practices and the way these are articulated and negotiated amongst themselves as well as with state, regional and school macro-hegemonies.
This research project is based on data collected in four schools in both Brittany and Corsica and which all have different approaches to minority language teaching. Although, both regions and the four schools face structural difficulties in promoting the acquisition of their minority languages within the French education system, this research wishes to understand better how young people contextualise differently issues surrounding language injustices and wishes to shed light on the negotiation and interpretation of multiple and conflicting language discourses and ideologies. Young people for the sake of this research are individuals in classe de première (year 12) and classe de terminale (year 13) between the age of 16 to 18 years old.
Baurley, Jade
Jade Jenkins’s research concerns improving practice and policy to aid young people in having meaningful and empowering experiences with cultural sites such as museums.
She is keenly interested in the benifits of young people engageing creatively with culture but also the issues that the area faces. Young people can face many barriers to participation and there are contemporary challenges around representation, inclusivity and tokenism.
This research will utilise case studies, observations and interviews to gather an in-depth understanding of the challenges currently facing the field as well as piloting projects to test new working practices with the aim of informing policy for cultural sites.
Benson, Katy
Research focus & rationale:
There is substantial evidence that mothers with a learning disability are more likely to lose custody of their children. They are also at an increased risk of adversities that affect perceived parenting capacity including victimization, poverty, substance use and mental ill-health.
Research from the perspective of mothers themselves highlights challenging experiences with statutory services. These are often characterised by misunderstanding, frustration, fear and helplessness. Additionally, there is a sense that mothers with a learning disability feel a need to work much harder to “prove” themselves in the eyes of professionals and others. However, despite this extra work, acceptance as a mother remains elusive.
While much of this existing research alludes to stigma – at both structural and interpersonal levels – as a significant feature of women’s experiences, this has not been explicitly explored.
My research seeks to address this gap. It will explore stigma as a force in the lives of mothers with a learning disability as they navigate interactions with statutory services. It will look at this structurally and intersectionally, considering how mothers experience and resist hostile social conditions.
Methodology:
Provisionally, my research will answer the following research questions:
• To what extent does stigma play a role in the experience of mothering with a learning disability?
• How can stigma in this context be understood structurally?
• What strategies do mothers with learning disabilities use to resist stigma?
Methods:
I am hoping to conduct my research within either a parental advocacy service or a social work pre-birth assessment team.
I will use a mixed-methods approach which will include:
• Narrative life-story work with mothers/parents with learning disabilities
• Ethnographic observations of professionals in their discussions with each other and practice with mothers with a learning disability
• Multi-sensory methods as a means of increasing accessibility
• Documentary analysis of case-notes and court reports
• Questionnaires which consider stigma in experiences of mothering – looking at access to services, networks & resources as well as attitudes encountered and modes of resistance.
While the nature of a PhD means that I cannot commit to a fully co-produced piece of work I will seek to involve the learning disability community meaningfully. This will include input from a paid Research Assistant with a learning disability.
Chachamu, Netta
I intend to study equality and diversity training in workplaces using participant-observation and interviews. I am particularly interested in the political implications of E&D training and in the interactions that take place during training.
Selected Recent Publications
Duschinsky, R. and Chachamu, N. 2014 Abnormality, Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology
Duschinsky, R. and Chachamu, N. 2013 Sexual dysfunction and paraphilias in the DSM-5: Pathology, heterogeneity, and gender. Feminism and Psychology 23: 49-55
Craft, Rhiannon
This study is motivated by an interest in social movements that involve an abandonment of conventional lifestyles, and experimentation with new ones. This involves new forms of housing, identification, notions of community and family, and other value systems that contest consumer capitalism.
To explore this, I will carry out an ethnographic study looking into the lives of “New Travellers.” The largely mobile, stigmatised and “uprooted” nature of the New Traveller community has resulted in a more geographically dispersed, mobile approach to data collection. I am currently carrying out “in situ” interviews, with an array of New Travellers from different generations in various geographical locations with a diverse set of living arrangements.
Snowball – or “Rhizomatic – sampling (Stehlik, 2014) has been employed to locate participants via social networks, starting from my own personal contacts within the community. The project will end with a more static, conventionally “ethnographic” kind of participation within a specific community.
This approach was necessary due to difficulties accessing (often) off-grid communities (many of whom have bad relations with researchers). Many sites are very much hidden due to unauthorised or off-grid nature or frequent displacement. For those that are accessible, free pitches are often unavailable due to high demand for such places. Those who have been fortunate enough to secure a permanent, legitimate place to dwell are often protective of their spaces and fear disruption.
The lack of authorised stopping places is an ongoing problem in the UK. Indeed, while planning permission applications are almost always rejected at first hearing (Crawley, 2004; Niner, 2006; CRE, 2006; Department for Local Communities and Government, 2007; Greenfields & Brindley, 2016), the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 has also effectively criminalised those who attempt to form communities of this kind without permission.
While the economic and social benefits of site provision (to both the state and individuals) has repeatedly been illustrated through previous research (e.g. Morris & Clements, 2002; Crawley, 2004; Niner, 2004; CRE, 2006; Department for Local Communities and Government, 2007), this study aims to explore further benefits of site provision. Most notably, in relation to an experimentation with alternative ways of being with each other and the world.
This includes a focus on the reconfiguration of people’s lives with eachother, as different New Traveller collectives often exercise various forms of decision making. This also includes a reconfiguration of people’s lives with their environments – a particularly important issue in the face of today’s climate crisis. In this sense, this study is concerned with “prefigurative politics:” whereby people enact the changes they want to see in the world.
It is considered how responses from the state and wider society are impacting the growth of alternative housing, and the alternative economics and organisational practices that often come with these new forms of housing. The more static element of the study will delve deeper into the lived experience of managing these relations and practices on a daily basis.
Dahl, Patrik
The PhD project draws on ethnographic, interview, and collaborative methods to explore how data practitioners produce data solutions to social problems. The main fieldwork sites are competitions, events, and hackerspaces where participants practice and compete in working out how to solve problems with data and technology.
It asks:
1) how social problems are translated into data problems that can be solved with data,
2) what kinds of knowledge are brought into that process,
3) how practitioners present data solutions
4) what (understandings of) ‘data’ practitioners use to do their work
The project reflects on imagined futures like those of the data-driven society or the age of surveillance capitalism and aims to base them in an understanding of how data-based solutions are produced.
Davies, Peter
My project aims to examine how former coal and steel mining areas in South Wales and Yorkshire are represented in literature, film and other media and how these representations affect communities. The genre of the industrial novel has contributed to an image which can be perceived as one-sided, and in certain, circumstances, stigmatising. Academic and media reports of South Wales and Yorkshire can also present a negative perspective. This study will examine how literary and film projects and other meaning-making structures could counter these representations; and also how places like the South Wales’ valleys and South Yorkshire can become storied differently. The approach will be conceptualised through the suggestion that literacy practices are not independent of social context but are situated in an ideological framework in which reading and writing are intertwined with cultural and power structures. This project is linked to the WISERD Civil Society research centre and will contribute to two projects in the AHRC’s Connected Communities Programme: Representing communities: developing the creative power of people to improve health and well-being and Imagine: connecting communities through research.
Recent Publications
Norms and Values in Defining a Sense of Place in the University of Wales Trinity Saint David magazine The Student Researcher, 2 (2), pp. 49-58, May 2013
Ellis, Oliver
In recent times the persistence of nationalist politics has been evident across Europe – of both stateless nations, e.g. Scotland, Catalonia, and of nation-states, e.g. Front National in France or UKIP in Britain. With the emergence of digital media networks provoking accounts of the enhanced agency of political actors and movements, this research will look to map the field of digital activity of nationalist movements situated in the UK. It will explore the structure and organisation of nationalist, but also broader civic, networks in the emerging digital public spaces of social media, the prominent modes and methods of social media usage by actors as well as prominent nationalist discourses and counter-discourses deployed and contested in these spaces. However, this will also be supplemented by investigating how such online activity is situated within broader offline strategies. This will involve conducting various event-based case studies, with the EU referendum anticipated as a prominent case where national identities are to be mobilised.
Flutter, Lorna
Urban Studies has lent heavily on the premise that people move between areas of dry land (Hall, 2012; Miller, 2008; Allen et al, 2003). However, 2.5% of London is made up of ‘blue space’, formed of canals and rivers that host an annually expanding floating population (NBTA, 2016). Increasing dramatically from 638 in 2012, there are now upward of 1, 954 ‘continuous cruiser’ boat-dwellers in London (NBTA, 2016; RBOA, 2017). Regulations state that ‘continuous cruisers’ can moor in one ‘neighbourhood’ for 14 days, putting them in constant flux through central and peripheral areas of the city (CRT, 2015b:11). Whilst mobility theorists analyse urban movement, work remains separate from the residential context (Jenson, 2010; Sager, 2006). Challenging the association of mobile dwelling with rural ‘traveller’ communities (Martin, 2002; Hetherington, 1998), London’s mobile boaters bring continuous residential mobility into the discussion of everyday urban life. This ethnographic study will explore practices of belonging, variant forms of mobile-home making, and urban interaction. Durational ethnographic engagement with ‘everyday life’ is intended to encourage understanding of the ‘rhythm and temporality’ of London’s urban water.
Gater, Richard
The study is situated in an ex-coaling mining community in the South Wales’ valleys and explores masculinity and its effects on young men’s attitudes towards employment. Incorporating the use of co-production research and in partnership with a local youth organisation, qualitative methods will be used in the form of ethnography, participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The research aims to investigate the historical legacy of industrial work in the area, its ties to masculinity and how this characteristic affects young men’s future employment ambitions and choices. Furthermore, the empirical findings of this research will be used to develop a pilot programme that aims to support and help the young men into employment. The programme will be trialled by the participants of the research and evaluated based on its overall success.
Gray, Daniel
Investigation into misogynistic hate speech found on Twitter and other social media, employing big data collection and critical discourse analysis.
Greaves, Catrin Edwards-
I have an academic background in social anthropology (graduating from Queen’s University Belfast in 2013). Since returning to Wales, I have decided to explore my own society. This interest has been developed through my experience of working in Wales, particularly in the heritage sector and as a tour guide at the Senedd (Welsh Parliament). These experiences have informed my research interest in the intersection of public heritage/ museums, and their social value for contemporary society. This is particularly the case as heritage organisations are under increased pressure to demonstrate social value and contribute to social change in their work (Morse 2019, Chynoweth et al 2020, Brownson 2022). Also relevant are policy and popular media contexts of questions around heritage and public space, particularly regarding what should be done about (problematic) historical monuments (Burch-Brown 2022) and what their continued value might be to society today. Furthermore, I feel that it is important to acknowledge contexts of increased commercialisation of public space (Bodnar 2015, Smith 2018) in exploring the heritage value of public spaces.
My research is a case study of heritage values and practice at Cathays Park, Cardiff’s Civic Centre.. I have chosen Cathays Park because I aim to generate diverse data, for example working with stakeholders across organisations such as Cardiff Council, heritage organisations (national museums Wales), and charities (the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, based at the Temple of Peace and Health). Heritage values do not necessarily have a single definition (Pearson and Sullivan 1995) but can be understood as meanings and values that individuals or groups of people bestow on heritage, which is a significant factor in legitimising heritage management and protection (Diaz-Andreu 2017:2).
There has been a shift in recent decades away from an understanding of heritage value in terms of moving from a preservationist approach focused on physical conservation (for example of buildings), to one that rejects such a Western perspective, in favour of considering heritage significance from multiple perspectives. This involves for example bearing in mind the points of view of local or indigenous people and the meaning that they might attach to heritage, and the reasons why they may feel heritage to be significant (Duval 2019). This means that my research can be positioned within critical heritage studies, which focuses on heritage as a political, cultural and social phenomenon (Gentry and Smith 2019). I am interested to explore how heritage sector workers incorporate such approaches in their practice.
Heritage values are a prominent theme in heritage studies and museum studies literature across contexts in recent years (Stephenson 2008, Smith et al 2017, Pastor Perez et al 2021), with particular emphasis on social values and creating social impact (Scott 2016, Wearing et al 2021, Janes 2022). Social values can be understood as attachment of a collective to a place that embodies meanings and values that are important to a community or communities (Jones and Leech 2015). In this case, I am interested in heritage practitioners as a community working across contexts within one location and the meanings and values attached to Cathays Park as a heritage space.
Heritage organisations demonstrate social value and impact through work involving among other things social justice (Sandell 2012, Unsal 2019, Huhn 2021), decolonisation (Abungu 2019, Museums Association 2022), wellbeing (Brown 2019, French et al 2020) active citizenship (Fleming 2019, Turk et al 2022), identity (Preziosi and Farago 2019, Gilespie 2020) and commemorative or ‘memory’ work (Oztig 2022, Lloyd and Steele 2022). Thus heritage (buildings, objects) can be viewed to be valuable because of their potential contribution to this kind of work, which is seen to be valuable by communities. I am interested to see how this social value approach to heritage may be evident in the ways in which heritage professionals and other stakeholders at Cathays Park work, and how this is significant to Cathays Park as a specific heritage site.
I am particularly interested in cases of ‘inherited’ objects such as existing collections, buildings, or monuments at Cathays Park as a historical site, as opposed to a focus on for example acquiring new collections. This is because Cathays Park has been constructed from the start as a public space, with different generations contributing monuments, buildings or collections to the park over time (see Hilling 2016 for a social history of Cathays Park). This case study is informed by a relative lack of literature around heritage values in public spaces beyond museums and other official heritage organisations in Wales (for discussion of Welsh museums or heritage sites including work on identity and community see Dicks 1997, Mason 2007). I am interested in different approaches to heritage work which may be apparent at different public sites.
My research will likely consist of an ethnographic approach incorporating participant observation, photo-elicitation interviews, and autoethnography with visual methods such as photographs of the park, memorials, objects, buildings and heritage interpretation. I am also keen to use creative writing such as poetry as part of my methodology, most likely as a tool for reflexivity. Findings could include how heritage practitioners value the park as a site of memory and commemoration, a learning tool for social justice work, or as a space for promoting positive identity and wellbeing. I aim to shed light on the ways in which heritage professionals work across Cathays Park and how this could inform practice, for example in sharing learning across the site between different organisations. I also hope to demonstrate the heritage and social values of public space, including how they are important for different types of work such as addressing social justice issues or understanding identities.
During the first year of my PhD, I have got to know Cathays Park very well, including conducting a heritage audit for the Temple of Peace and Health, and attending commemorative events at Cathays Park. From January to April 2023, I will be completing an internship at Amgueddfa Cymru/ National Museums Wales, working in the research department around decolonising collections. I am also the editor of the ESRC DTP Methods blog, and I am a Welsh speaker.
Reference list
Abungu, G.O., 2019. Museums: geopolitics, decolonisation, globalisation and migration. Museum International, 71(1-2), pp.62-71.
Bodnar, J. 2015. Reclaiming public space. Urban Studies 52(12), pp. 2090–2104. doi: 10.1177/0042098015583626.
Brown, K., 2019. Museums and Local development: An introduction to museums, sustainability and well-being. Museum International, 71(3-4), pp.1-13.
Brownson, L., 2022. Diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in Museums: edited by Johnetta Betsch Cole and Laura L. Lott, London, Rowman and Littlefield, 2019, 184 pp.,£ 65 (hardback), $37 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1538118634.
Burch‐Brown, J., 2022. Should slavery’s statues be preserved? On transitional justice and contested heritage. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 39(5), pp.807-824.
Chynoweth, A., Lynch, B., Petersen, K. and Smed, S., 2020. Museums and social change. Challenging the Unhelpful Museum, London and New York: Routledege.
Fleming, D., 2019. Global Trends in museums. Museum International, 71(1-2), pp.106-113.
French, J., Lunt, N. and Pearson, M. 2020. The MindLab Project. Local Museums Supporting Community Wellbeing Before and After UK Lockdown. Museum and Society 18(3), pp. 314–318. doi: 10.29311/mas.v18i3.3506.
Gentry, K. and Smith, L., 2019. Critical heritage studies and the legacies of the late-twentieth century heritage canon. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(11), pp.1148-1168.
Gillespie, H.E., 2020. Imperialism, Identity, and Image: Looking at Colonial Objects in English Museums. The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, September, 11, p.2.
Hilling, J.B. 2016. The history and architecture of Cardiff Civic Centre : black gold, white city. Cardiff: University Of Wales Press.
Huhn, A. and Anderson, A., 2021. Promoting Social Justice through Storytelling in Museums. Museum and Society, 19(3), pp.351-368.
Janes, R.R. 2022. The Value of Museums in Averting Societal Collapse. Curator: The Museum Journal 65(4). doi: 10.1111/cura.12503.
Jones, S and S Leech. 2015. Valuing the Historic Environment: A Critical Review of Existing Approaches to Social Value. London: AHRC.
Lloyd, J. and Steele, L., 2022. Place, memory, and justice: critical perspectives on sites of conscience. Space and Culture, 25(2), pp.144-160.
Morse, N., 2019. The social role of museums: From social inclusion to health and wellbeing. In Connecting museums (pp. 48-65). Routledge.
Museums Association 2022. Decolonising-museums – Campaigns. Available at: https://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/decolonising-museums/.
Oztig, L.I., 2022. Holocaust museums, Holocaust memorial culture, and individuals: a Constructivist perspective. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, pp.1-22.
Pastor Pérez, A., Barreiro Martínez, D., Parga-Dans, E. and Alonso González, P., 2021. Democratising heritage values: A methodological review. Sustainability, 13(22), p.12492.
Pearson, Michael and Sharon Sullivan. 1995. Looking After Heritage Places: The Basics of Heritage Planning for Managers, Landowners and Administrators. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press
Preziosi, D. and Farago, C., 2019. General introduction: What are museums for?. In Grasping The World (pp. 1-10). Routledge.
Scott, C.A. 2016. Museums and Public Value. Routledge.
Smith, A. 2018. Paying for parks. Ticketed events and the commercialisation of public space. Leisure Studies 37(5), pp. 533–546. doi: 10.1080/02614367.2018.1497077.
Smith, G.S., Messenger, P.M. and Soderland, H.A., 2017. Heritage values in contemporary society. Routledge.
Stephenson, J. 2008. “The Cultural Values Model: An Integrated Approach to Values in Landscapes.” Landscape and Urban Planning 84 (2): 127–139
Turk, A., Tierney, S., Wong, G., Todd, J., Chatterjee, H.J. and Mahtani, K.R., 2022. Self-growth, wellbeing and volunteering-Implications for social prescribing: A qualitative study. SSM-Qualitative Research in Health, 2, p.100061.
Ünsal, D., 2019. Positioning museums politically for social justice. Museum Management and Curatorship, 34(6), pp.595-607.
Hailwood, Elena
My PhD research is multi-sited ethnography of a 9-week secondary school mindfulness programme called ‘dot b’. Such programmes are becoming increasingly popular in the UK, however, to date there has been almost no research examining their social and cultural significance. The programmes have developed from psychological interventions using mindfulness for clinical adult populations and are widely seen as preventative interventions for mental ill health. Beyond this, mindfulness is thought to improve concentration and cognitive functioning and therefore to have potential benefits for attainment and behaviour.
Yet, despite widespread interest in mindfulness, little is known about the content of mindfulness programmes, how they are implemented in practice and how they are interpreted by teachers and students. A core premise of my research is that the programmes do not simply impart a neutral ‘technique’ for stress relief, but prescribe particular values around the ‘self’ and (the meanings of) ‘mental health’, through which children come to understand themselves. My research examines the discourses surrounding the ‘self’ and ‘mental health’ within dot b and how these are taken up, modified and contested by teachers and students in practice. The method involved ethnographic research conducted at a teacher training course and two schools; interviews conducted with 2 course developers and 15 dot b teachers; 4 focus groups with students and 4 student interviews.
Headington, Joshua
My research is an inquiry into, and a critique of the current social discourse of museums, in collaboration with the National Museum of Wales. Some of the central questions my research aims to address, include:
- Of what do museum’s speak when they speak of ‘society’?
- What are the principal determining factors that have influenced the contemporary societal discourse of museums?
- What is the ‘social purpose’ of museums?
- What can be said to constitute ‘social engagement’?
- Can the social practice of museums be said to verify their societal discourse?
Henry, Kyle Richard
Though the term “Zero-Hours Contracts” (ZHCs) has been around since the early 1990s, it is now used to refer to all employment in which the employer does not guarantee any minimum hours of work. While this means that the term will cover a great variety of employment forms and practices, much of the public and political discourse tends to pivot on an assumption that ZHCs are uniform in nature. My doctoral work seeks to correct this view based on research from two institutional case studies in the UK higher education sector. It is hoped that the findings can make a timely contribution to the debate and assist in providing effective policy solutions to one of the key labour market issues of our time.
Holley, Josie
The aim of my research is to conduct a psychosocial exploration of the lived experiences of young adults’ with wellbeing concerns. Using multi-modal and participatory research, the study aims to give voice to young people, and to examine how the cultural, environmental and social resources within Wales may be better mobilised to reflect young peoples needs. Finally, through identifying places and activities within the community which may be ‘therapeutic’, I hope to make a contribution to psychosocial and relational understandings of wellbeing, and to the literature on therapeutic spaces.
– What is the subjective lived experience of, and understandings of ill/wellbeing amongst young adults?.
– How do young adults foster wellbeing within their unique affective, interpersonal and material assemblages?.
– How might the cultural, environmental and social resources in Wales be mobilised to promote young adults’ wellbeing within communities?
Hunt, Miriam
My name is Miriam Hunt and I am a PhD student working with Cardiff University and the National Museum Wales. I am interested in how museums make themselves accessible and relevant to disabled people, from how visitors move around exhibition spaces to how disabled people are represented or absent in stories about our history.
Discourses about the nature of disability have changed radically since the 1960s, shifting from a medical perspective focussed on cure to the influential social model, which is concerned with barriers to inclusion disabled people face from the built environment and social structures.
Museums, on the other hand, have changed the way in which they relate to their visitors. The curator role is no longer considered in terms of imparting universal truths to visitors, but instead encouraging complex discussions around multiple understandings of the world and supporting diverse learning styles. Part of this is looking to communities who have historically been underrepresented in visitor numbers, including disabled people.
My research sits at the intersection of these dynamic discourses.
John, Zoe
The PhD will explore the production and management of violent situations and identities, drawing from thinkers such as Erving Goffman and Randall Collins. Using the case of mixed martial arts fighting (MMA – a sport combined of practices such as kickboxing, Wrestling and Brazilian jiu jitsu) to elicit this topic, the study consists of three interrelating themes.
The first theme will focus on the strips of interaction in MMA’s ‘ethnographic places’ to elicit how ‘definitions of the situation’ relating to violence is organised and sustained. The second theme, the ‘fighting self’, takes interest in the strips of interaction through which being an MMA fighter are ‘done’, but also how they situate their self as violent, or not. The third aim draws upon the management and performance of the gendered sporting self, but also how the gendered body affects ‘doing’ fighter.
The research design is qualitative and ethnographic and will consist of several methods including participant observation, individual interviews, and analysis of online videos and comments. The sample will be gender balanced between men and women involved in MMA’s spaces, including coaches, competitive MMA fighters with varying skill status (amateur to professional), as well as non-competitive members of the MMA clubs.
Johnson, Eleanor
The starting point for my Master’s research was the increasing privatisation and marketisation of residential care for the elderly in the UK. Anxiety over the ability of the residential care sector to promote elders’ quality of life has been expressed by the public, the media and within academia. The research reflected upon this anxiety in terms of wider literature concerning morality, emotion and work, considering whether declining conditions of service in the sector could be seen to rest upon a wider conflict between economic rationality and morality.
The research was conducted using a case study design which focused on one residential home, employing document analyses, participant observation and in-depth interviewing. An examination of the company’s discursive attempts to construct, manage and demarcate its employees’ emotional labour was carried out alongside an exploration of the carers’ own interpretations of, and enrolment in, the care-giving role. A consideration of the potential economic and emotional consequences of these occurrences was a key focus of the inquiry.
The study found that carers, encouraged by the company, naturalised their emotional labour. This had widespread consequences – from justifying the economic devaluation of the carer’s work to leaving her vulnerable to emotional over-involvement and client aggression. One positive consequence, however, was that the carer’s sincere identification with the care-giving role allowed her to uphold the rights of those within her care, even when these were in conflict with the economic motivations of her employers.
My PhD research intends to examine the care sector in greater depth, principally focussing on what it is that makes a residential home work to provide care which is socially valuable to both carers and the cared-for. By means of ethnographic research in several private residential homes, in-depth interviewing with carers and document analyses, I aim to consider the impact which factors such as training, institutional ethos, staff turnover, supervision, shift organisation, cost of care, engagement and reward, and physical layout have upon care-giving.
Jones, Nikki
My PhD is concerned with the evaluation of the Foundation Phase in Wales, 10 years on from its initial implementation in Wales. The Foundation Phase is a Welsh Government flagship policy, which heralds a radical approach to early years education. Influenced by the reported success of programs in Reggio Emilia, Scandinavia and New Zealand, it is a child-centred, developmental approach which emphasises the importance of active, play-based, experiential learning.
My research will build on an extensive independent evaluation of the Foundation Phase which identified 12 pedagogical principles and made 29 recommendations to improve delivery, many of which were incorporated into the Welsh Government Foundation Phase Action Plan. My PhD will seek to examine the implementation of the Foundation Phase ten years after its initial roll out, and five years after the first evaluation and subsequent implementation of the Action Plan. It will evaluate changes in delivery and practice utilising many of the research tools and methods from the original evaluation in some of the same case study schools and settings. It will also explore why the Foundation Phase has seemingly had a limited impact on closing the attainment gap between particular groups of learners and identify factors associated with success.
Kerpen, Scott
My research explores queer(-ing) masculinity across South Wales and South West England. I consider how commodified and commercialised representational forms, critiqued for celebrating identities that assimilate with mainstream ideals around gender and sexuality, are reproduced, resisted and redefined through the digitally mediated cultures and practices of young men who have sex with men, and trans* and non-binary identities assigned male, aged between 18 and 25. In light of recent tensions between binary and non-binary gender and sexual identities, my project is committed to difference. I do not assume that any identity is more or less valid or inherently privileged or less subversive as identities mean and do different things for different people. Through adopting an unstructured and participatory approach, producing data with participants, I consider how gender and sexual identities, whether binary or non-binary, emerge from a variety of experiences, desires and anxieties that cannot be reduced to universal experiences, motives or effects.
Kreishan, Emyr
Dual and multiple heritage Welsh identity is enjoying a period of greater exposure in mainstream discourse, yet remains a little explored area within the extant scholarship on contemporary Wales. It is therefore this project’s aim to inquire into the perceptions and experiences of dual and multiple heritage Welsh people. This project utilises a wide range of accounts, taken from qualitative interviews with dual and multiple heritage Welsh adults from across the country and pertaining to several topics of their experiences of Wales and Welshness,
The project employs constructivist grounded theory to analyse participants’ accounts of Welsh identity and contemporary Welsh society from their standpoints as dual and multiple heritage Welsh people. This is with aim of identifying emergent themes and conceptualisations from the accounts and then using these to address core questions concerning Welsh identity and cosmopolitanism in contemporary Wales. The project hopes to build on existing research and scholarship into broader concepts of Welsh identity by contributing to the knowledge and understanding of dual and multiple heritage Welsh identity.
Latchem, Julie
Brain injuries can cause catastrophic impairments which leave profound implications for patients, their families, health and social care. Many people with brain injuries undergo a period of rehabilitation, a future orientated process which looks to maximize function, physically, cognitively and socially whilst minimising medical complications.
Positive relationships between patients, families and health care professionals are fundamental to good care. These relationships however can become extremely strained during rehabilitation as efforts to control the future, to influence the outcome of injury, and to shape the identity and care of a patient with brain injury has to be negotiated within a situation of extreme medical uncertainty.
Using the concept of `futures’ as a lens this research explores the challenges in negotiating the triad of patient, family and professional relationships generated by the `not yet’ (Adam and Grove 2007) but imminent aspects of care and treatment in the present.
This research seeks to answer:
How are the futures of people with severe brain injury, their families and HCPs shaped and negotiated during rehabilitation through:
a) Day to day interaction
b) Organisational process and practice
c) Policy
What constitutes positive relationships in brain injury rehabilitation?
What challenges and tensions arise in the relationships between patients, their families and HCPs during the rehabilitative process, what causes them, and how are they resolved?
Selected Recent Publications:
Latchem, J. & Greenhalgh, J. (2014). The role of reading on the health and wellbeing of people with neurological conditions: A systematic review. Aging and Mental Health. Early online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2013.875125
Latchem, J. & Kitzinger, J. (2012). What is important to residents with neurological conditions and their relatives in long-term neurological care settings. [Online]
Available at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/resources/Long_Term_Care.pdf
Latchem, J., Kitzinger, J. & Kitzinger, C. (2015). Physiotherapy for vegetative and minimally conscious state patients: family perceptions and experiences. Disability and Rehabilitation. Early Online pp. 1-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/09638288.2015.1005759
Latchem, J. & Kitzinger, J. (2015). Breaking down barriers: the importance of good relationships. Nursing and Residential Care 16(12), pp. 512-514.
Mathlin, Robert
My research aims to understand how people connect to green spaces and footpaths through their identity. Of particular interest is how the landscape is shaped by the individual and how the individual is shaped by the landscape. Whilst still in the very early stages I plan to use multimodal and sensory methods to gather data.
This research also contributes to the Ramblers Cymru Paths for People project. This project is about making sure footpaths aren’t lost and local communities know the rights they have over footpaths whilst increasing accessibility.
Nascimento, Christina
Fuel poverty affects around 30% of households in Wales, over a third of which contain an older person aged 65 years and over. Older people are particularly susceptible to fuel poverty and are disproportionately affected by its consequences especially in terms of respiratory illness, cardiovascular events, and excess winter deaths. As well as its negative effects on health, fuel poverty can severely impact on many aspects of quality of life.
My research aims to explore the types of poverty and disadvantage that may exist in older households experiencing fuel poverty in Wales. I am particularly interested in food poverty, benefit uptake, and cognitive function in these households.
Nisa, Henna
My project will explore the inter-generational lived experiences of Pakistani women as daughters, doing daughterhood, in terms of family culture, education, employment and marriage.
It will look at the ways in which gender, class and ethnicity impact the daily life of Pakistani women and how factors such as patriarchy, religion, family values and practices may act as barriers to progression for women. It will also seek to understand the ways in which these processes are negotiated or changed as Pakistani women try to become agents of their own destiny.
This projects aims to recognise the complexity of family life and identity of Pakistani women as daughters, as most literature tends to present them as a homogenous group with similar experiences of gender, education, marriage, employment and family life.
In a rapidly changing gender landscape, this project also addresses a gap in literature as it is unique in its style of exploring experiences of being a daughter in a Pakistani family through the use of creative methods.
Pierce, Adam
The commitment to the expansion of Welsh-medium education has been a key policy agenda for the Welsh Government, highlighted most recently in their Welsh Medium Education Strategy (WAG 2010).
There is no doubt that Welsh Medium education has played a crucial role in the successful revitalization efforts of the Welsh language, particularly across the compulsory education sector (primary and secondary phases). Yet, the progression of WM education and provision availability has not been as successful, and remains very limited across the Higher Education sector.
The establishment of Y Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol in 2011 has attempted to tackle this issue by its commitment to develop and increase WM opportunities to students across all universities in Wales, and thus seeks to increase the number of students who undertake their degree courses, partly or entirely through the medium of Welsh.
However, the lack of literature and research that focuses exclusively on the relationship between the Welsh language and HE and HE participation clearly justifies the need to further explore this under-researched and under-developed field. As of yet the demand for Welsh medium higher education has not been systematically investigated, and so this PhD will aim to address this deficit.
I am particularly interested in exploring the linguistic progression of Welsh-speaking students from the secondary phase to the HE sector – and more crucially to identify and explore the key factors that might influence students’ decisions to study their HE courses through the medium of Welsh.
The investigation will comprise of a mixed-method approach:
- Quantitative secondary data analysis of large-scale datasets including the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the National Pupil Database (NPD).
- Longitudinal qualitative research by following a sample of Welsh speaking sixth form students as they make their decisions regarding HE and Welsh Medium Higher Education.
Focus Groups/Interviews with Welsh-speaking university students undertaking their degree, either partly or entirely through the medium of Welsh, and those who are studying through the medium of English.
Poletti, Chiara
The first part of this study aims at understanding the interactions and communications processes through which civic issues such as hate speech and freedom of speech are framed online.
Powell, Rhian
As household income and home ownership rates increase, more people are having to decide how their assets will be distributed following their deaths. The focus of this research project is to explore the dilemmas which arise when people think about leaving an inheritance. The research is about the ways in which testators seek to balance competing rights and obligations between the self, the family, charitable organisations and the state. This research will be an intra-generational study which will explore whether potential dilemmas are approached differently depending on the testator’s gender, ethnicity and religion. This study should provide an insight into how the relationship between civil society, the state and the individual is regarded.
Read, Simon
My research examines how older people are portrayed in popular discourse, particularly television, radio and online / printed media, and whether this cultural representation extends any influence on the attitudes and behaviours of health care staff. The study uses a mixed methods approach incorporating a quantitative media consumption survey and qualitative semi-structured interviews with NHS and social care staff, as well as discourse analysis of cultural texts that health care staff commonly engage with. It is expected that the study will provide critical insight into the social and cultural influences that may explain the delivery of quality care or the lack of dignified care in the health sector, as well as assessing the potential to accommodate messages from the media discourse of older people into more effective dignity training or campaigns.
Selected Recent Publications
- Hillman A., Tadd W., Calnan S., Calnan M., Bayer A. and Read S., Risk, governance and the experience of care. 2013, Sociology of Health and Illness [In press]
- Tadd W, Hillman S , Calnan S, Calnan M, Bayer A and Read S., From right place – wrong person, to right place – right person: dignified care for older people. 2012 HSRN/SDO supplement of the Journal of Health Services and Research Policy [In press]
- Calnan,M, Tadd, W, Calnan, S, Hillman, A, Bayer A and Read S ‘I often worry about the older person being in that system because often they – they’ve got more needs, are more vulnerable’: Providing dignified care for older people in acute hospitals Ageing & Society. [Accepted for publication]
- Tadd, W; Hillman, A; Calnan, S; Calnan, M; Bayer, A; Read, S. Right place – wrong person: dignity in the acute care of older people. Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, 2011; 12(1): 33- 43
Roberts, Erin
This study aims to understand those complex social practices that shape energy consumption; how they are emplaced in geographical settings, and how they’ve evolved through time (both through individual life-courses and generational time), informed by sunk investments in domestic infrastructures, and habitual behaviours. I will be employing innovative (narrative, longitudinal and visual) research methods to aid people to think reflexively about the ways they use energy.
This study is linked to the ‘Energy Biographies Project’, and is sponsored by the Welsh Government (Climate Change and Water Division) and Cardiff University’s Sustainable Places Institute. As I am a Welsh speaker, and I will be conducting my fieldwork in North-West Wales, information about my research will be available in both Welsh and English.
Ruet, Eve
My work is looking at notions of culture, identities and communities in artistic practices in Wales. I am interested in photography practices in particular. For this purpose, with a qualitative research method; I conducted semi-structured interviews with photographers and curators involved in photography exhibitions in publicly funded galleries in Wales. This study is not only taking a micro approach but is completed by a thorough macro analysis of the policy context too. This research aims to contribute to works around identities and communities in the fields of cultural sociology and sociology of the arts.
Scott, Hannah
I am interested in the mental health and wellbeing of older adults, and the factors that influence this. My PhD will examine how social class impacts on the ability of people with dementia and their carers to live well. I aim to use a qualitative research methodology, which will include in-depth interviews and a potential ethnographic approach. The PhD will form part of the IDEAL study (Improving the Experience of Dementia and Enhancing Active Life), a longitudinal study spanning several UK universities, charities and clinical research networks.
Shin, Hyo Eun
I am interested in the multiple ways in which migrants as both local and transnational actors participate in and contribute to the (re)production of cosmopolitan cities as part of global restructuring processes. The research project is inspired by an emerging research agenda in migration studies which draws on sociological and anthropological studies of migration and transnationalism as well as discussions of urban transformations and spatialities in human geography and urban studies. With its comparative perspective, the project seeks to contribute to an empirically grounded understanding of the varying and dynamic relationships between international migrants and the cities of their (temporary) sojourn in a multiply connected but unequal world.
During my fieldwork in Seoul (2015/16) I am affiliated with the Institute of Globalization and Multicultural Studies, Hanyang University (ERICA campus, http://multiculture.hanyang.ac.kr).
Selected Recent Publications
Yi, H. and Shin, H. 2014. Conclusion: Border crossers as potentialities in globalising societies [German]. In Chang-Gusko, Y. et al. eds. Unknown diversity – Insights into the history of Korean migration to Germany [German]. Cologne: DoMiD Documentation Centre and Museum of Migration in Germany.
Scheffer, T. and Shin, H. 2010. The case in the case-system. In Scheffer, T. Adversarial Case-Making – An Ethnography of English Crown Court Procedure. Leiden: BRILL Academic Publishers, pp. 219-249.
Scheffer, T. and Shin, H. 2008. Book Review – Fighting for Political Freedom. Law and Politics Book Review 18(10), pp. 871-876.
Stevens, Rhiannon Jane
My research will investigate how young people from unskilled households fare in gaining employment in local contexts of poor work and job shortages. The aim of this research is to evaluate different projects run by the People in Work Unit to discover the impact these programmes have had on individuals and in terms of a ripple effect in the wider community.
Some of the research questions for this project include:
- What careers do people go into from community development?
- Did those people who were engaged in the different projects become inspirational to others?
- Are these projects successful in creating or breaking self-image?
- What is the impact on Self Fulfilling Prophesy?
- Does a whole community approach create a cultural tipping point for cultural change in the value of education?
- Do people have aspiration without knowledge?
Whitehouse, Kimberley
COVID-19 severely impacted the global population resulting in numerous national lockdowns and millions of deaths. The subsequent lockdowns forced the population to stay indoors, resulting in declines in mental health, financial instability, and fear of infection. Current research is beginning to explore the impacts of COVID-19 and the lockdowns, but little to no attention is focused on children’s experiences.
This project will explore children’s and young people’s experiences of the lockdown in the United Kingdom and begin to understand how they made sense of the situation. I aim to use creative methods to collect data, allowing children to express their thoughts and feelings creatively. This method was chosen as it is child-friendly and encourages children to express their views in their own words, in the hope to minimise misinterpretation but also highlight their voices in conversations about moving forward with the coronavirus.
Whitfield, Elenyd
I will explore the subject of Reflexivity and ageing in relation to ‘personhood’ and the construction of the ‘self’ in late modernity. I will research the effects of the ‘reflexive imperative’ in the context of ageing, looking at cultural requirements around the performance of ‘choice’, autonomy, self-management and independence. Within this, I will explore issues such as stigma, consumption as identity performance, and social class.
Williams, Joseph
The ethnographic study of a homeless shelter.
How space and place is created, used and known by members of the scene.
Looking at movements and the motivation for going and staying.
Wolf, Som
I intend to explore current environmental social movements within the UK, and how nature relatedness may relate to the formation, and embodiment, of ecological identities.
I intend to investigate the consequences of ecological identities on pro-environmental behaviour, and possible ramifications for urban centres where green spaces are not evenly distributed.
Sociology is a core social science. It is essential to the understanding of human behaviour and the wellbeing of citizens, generating useful knowledge and a diagnosis of our condition that informs policy and public understanding. Doctoral students on the sociology pathway will benefit from a distinctive combination of leading-edge theoretical work, empirical study, policy context, and methodological innovation and expertise.
The Sociology pathway sits within the interdisciplinary School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Sociological research here achieved a position in the top three in the UK 2014 Research Excellence Framework. The pathway offers significant research expertise in a range of fields including:
- culture, identity and transformation;
- place, space and mobilities;
- work and labour markets;
- biographical and narrative analysis;
- the sociology of knowledge and expertise;
- studies of health,
- illness and wellbeing;
- big data sociology and social media analysis; and
- aspects of sociological theory.
Cardiff University is also a recognised centre of excellence in the development of quantitative, qualitative and mixed sociological research methods.
The School of Social Science at Cardiff University has a vibrant research culture, and research students are a vital part of it. The School has a strong track record of international, peer-reviewed publication; it hosts several major disciplinary and methods-focused social science journals. Students on the sociology pathway routinely engage with staff and students from other disciplines and engage with the wide range of research centres, research groups and other forums hosted by the School. The School supports and organises a series of doctoral cohort events including an annual PGR dinner (a social event and celebration of doctoral accomplishment); an annual doctoral student conference (including paper sessions and poster competition); the student-run Postgraduate Café, and various reading groups which meet once a month to discuss a range of topics related to social research, politics and culture.
Students on the ‘1+3’ route follow the interdisciplinary Masters in Social Science Research Methods, and are provided with a thorough theoretical and practical knowledge of how to construct effective research studies, of the variety of data collection methods available to the social scientist, and of the principal methods of analysing social scientific data. Students on the sociology pathway also take the subject-specific, compulsory module Advanced Concepts in Contemporary Sociology. Subject-specific training and student development continues throughout the doctorate with a wide range of reading and discussion groups, roundtable sessions, seminar series, and data analysis workshops.