In part enabled by the emergence of the Internet, supermarkets are increasingly seeking to supply the value derived desires of their consumers – both offering web-facilitated delivery services and simultaneously in the ‘real world’ including more regional and seasonal produce on their aisles. Not forgetting the recent response to the horsemeat scandal; re-localising and being more transparent about aspects of their supply chain.

Alternative Food Networks (AFN) foster case-specific infrastructure needs through face-to-face connections between consumers and producers. Concurrent to the shifts seen in the conventional food system; across the UK alternative food networks are seeing a spatial shift – progressively extending their taking place beyond the community scale and expanding into the bioregional space.  This parallel shift represents a convergence of AFN and Conventional food systems into a hybrid space  – a sort of ‘missing middle’ – representing the complex psycho-spatial disconnect between current conventional and alternative food systems and the logistical / supply chain and infrastructure gap that opened-up following the centralisation and rationalisation of the UK food system.

This research takes a multi-modal quantitative approach to examine the ‘fuzzy’ disconnect that is the missing middle; and how convergence across the missing middle space offers opportunities for a transition towards a sustainable UK food sector. It investigates the missing middle not only in terms of the AFN – conventional food system disconnect, but also the need to bridge the logistical / supply chain and infrastructure gaps that make up the missing middle.

Selected Recent Publications:

Rebecca Petzel, Alice-Marie Archer, Rong Fei, Collaboration for sustainability in a networked world, Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 2, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 6597-6609, ISSN 1877-0428, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.04.070(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042810011286) Keywords: collaboration; innovation; sustainability; networks; COINs.

Archer. A (2012) Making Aquaponics Accessible. Schumacher Institute Challenge Paper.

My study will explore the social and individual economic impacts of importing used bicycles in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Used bicycles donated by developed countries have a role in SSA of increasing mobility and accessibility to services. Development organisations aim to empower women and children by providing bicycles that will reduce their journey times, enable heavy load carrying and increase access to education. Bicycles are provided for rural health care workers and are also used as ambulance services. Development organisations aim to improve attitudes towards cycling, increase maintenance and safety skills, and encourage governments to invest in safe cycling infrastructure. The impacts, equity and sustainability of used bicycle distributions are unknown.

The research of bicycles, in the context of transport development, accessibility and mobility, has predominantly been focused in Asia due to its popularity as a transport mode and relatively cheap cost. Characteristics of bicycle ownership in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the activities of the export of used bicycles to developing countries, have not been previously researched. There is also a need for practical applications of methods used in measuring the social impacts of transport developments. Methods will include semi-strucutred interviews, focus groups and a survey of bicycle owners that aims to assess the social and economic impacts to individuals. The study will explore attitudes towards cycling and perception of safety using disaggregated data to identify factors that influence the use of bicycles in sub-Saharan Africa, such as age, gender, income and culture.

Research interests: sustainable transport, transport in the context of development and social equity, active travel, workplace travel plans and cycling.

My project lies within the fields of political and cultural geography. It will explore the ways in which Gypsy Traveller children experience education in Wales. In particular, it will focus on the potential reconstruction of the identities of Gypsy Traveller children in relation to education for citizenship. In doing this, I will explore ideas of citizenship, British identity and multiculturalism and the methods through which these are dealt with in Welsh schools.

My research questions are:

• Does citizenship in education emphasise a singular national identity with which non-mainstream identities cannot easily co-exist?
• Are attempts made to engage Gypsy Traveller children with education in new ways? I.e. mainstreamed with a focus on citizenship
• How do these attempts affect the identities of Gypsy Travellers and in particular those of young people?

The concept of ‘therapeutic landscapes’ has been used by geographers as a way to critically understand how health and wellbeing are related to place. However, applications of the therapeutic landscape concept have often failed to discuss the heterogeneity of elements that come together to produce spaces of health and wellbeing. In order to more critically unpack the heterogeneity of ‘therapeutic spaces’ and engage with their more-than-human constitutive elements, I draw on post-structuralist understandings of space to demonstrate an approach which moves from considering places as inherently therapeutic, but rather instead describes how they emerge relationally co-constituted by a variety of heterogeneous agencies.

I mobilise qualitative research exploring animal-assisted-therapy and care-farming practices and spaces in England and Wales, to discuss how the agency and presence of animal life can often be crucial to the formation of specific therapeutic geographies and the opening up and closing down of therapeutic possibilities. I thus highlight the range of ways in which encounters with animals can shape and reshape people’s health assemblage, producing new bodily capacities, and allowing people to navigate and negotiate a range of difficult life situations. Further, I discuss how interactions with, and around, animals can lead to an increased desire to participate and engage in certain therapeutic processes, overcoming former barriers and perceptions, and actively creating and facilitating a therapeutic engagement with place.

However, when thinking about and discussing the role of animals within therapeutic practices and spaces, there is perhaps a need to ask, for whom exactly are these processes therapeutic? I thus also critically consider the ways in which animals become entangled in certain ‘therapeutic’ relationships with humans within these practices and spaces of care, exploring how care for humans and non-humans can be brought together and framed through more egalitarian relationships of mutualism.

Publications

Gorman, R. 2016. Changing ethnographic mediums: the place-based contingency of smartphones and scratchnotes. Area  (doi:10.1111/area.12320) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/area.12320/full

Gorman, R. 2016. Therapeutic landscapes and non-human animals: the roles and contested positions of animals within care farming assemblages. Social & Cultural Geography (doi:10.1080/14649365.2016.1180424) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649365.2016.1180424

My research will explore the impact of networks on the transition of regions and the embedding of radical innovations within them. The case study region is in Wales, where there are extensive efforts on the part of the Welsh Government and industry to develop the low carbon energy sector. In particular, Anglesey Energy Island is home to two competing energy technologies: nuclear and marine; enabling a comparative analysis of the influence of networks on transitions.

My thesis will seek to understand the relationship, if any, between network and transition theory. Whilst the role of knowledge networks in stimulating innovation has been extensively considered, what is missing in our current understanding is what role or influence these networks have in embedding new technologies. This research will provide an evaluation of the significance of networks in system transition.

Wild boar have returned to the British landscape, through accidental escapes from farms and more furtive, intentional releases by environmental activists. In locations where wild boar are now feral, to use official vernacular, or reintroduced, they are having significant impacts on notions of rurality, identity, and our understanding of the wild. Increasingly, however, this has also fed into wider national debates about environmental planning and the nature of place.

This PhD will use the case of wild boar to explore contemporary discussions around rewilding, biosecurity and environmental governance. Within these, animals are represented in different ways by actors with competing philosophies of nature which assert alternative constructions of landscape, identity and knowledge over others. Specifically, it will explore the ways in which: wild boar challenge accepted notions of place and space; they fit into or transgress the differing metaphysical boundaries and categorisations we apply to non-human others; human actors live with nature, and are included or excluded from governance.

The aim of this project is to investigate new governance challenges arising from low-carbon transition in peripheral communities in and around the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, Wales.

A theoretical framework based on theories of Spatial Justice will be adopted and, with this in mind, the following research questions have been set:

• How do energy transitions interplay with the socio-economic evolution of place?
• How do communities of different status engage with energy practices and innovations?
• How can different communities capacity to adapt to the new energy agenda be increased in times of austerity?
• How do existing governance systems and structures impact upon communities resilience to energy transitions?
• How can theoretical and methodological perspectives for understanding the impacts of low-carbon innovations in vulnerable communities be developed, to inform future innovation and practice rollout?

The study looks at the university networks and how they contribute to the success of academic spinouts. These networks include investors, entrepreneurs, and structures that facilitate network access, e.g. business incubators, science parks.

Pawel’s research focuses on international dimensions of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) – a CO₂ trading scheme – and specifically the move by the EU to include international aviation within this scheme. This extension of the EU ETS can be viewed as unilateral step of the European Union (EU) to regulate a global issue, which sets a new path for environmental governance, bypassing international organisations responsible hitherto for aviation regulation. Important questions therefore arise about the nature of this policy change, how it came about, and the arguments it has generated in policy-making processes on both sides of the Atlantic.

The aim of this research is to analyse the policy-making processes surrounding the process of including aviation in the EU ETS, both within Europe itself, and in the international responses coming from the US and organisations such as International Air Transport Association (IATA) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The research asks what are the differences surrounding aviation pollution policy in the EU and US and how can those be understood in a broader context of multi-level governance?

My research draws upon ethnographic fieldwork to explore the social-spatial relations of seafarers. I seek to explain how the use of assemblage theory in conceptualizing the place of the boat, the sea and the shore can help us to further understand the cultural processes, liminality and inherent mobility of seafarers. Assemblage theory is a form of relational thinking that views place as a whole that can be broken down into separate ontological, experiential, human and non-human components (see McFarlane and Anderson, 2011). These components function in their own right when detached, but the compilation of these parts creates ‘irreducible properties’ that assemble place (DeLanda, 2006). Thinking in terms of assemblage allows us to unravel the concentrations of entwined social and spatial interactions of seafarers and their relationship with their vessel, the sea and the shore. My research, therefore, seeks to identify the tensions and fractures that trigger the realignments of the ship-sea-shore assemblage for seafarers, in addition to further understanding the mobile and liminal lives of this group. Conceptually, my research seeks to situate assemblage within the mobilities field, whilst evaluating its contribution to existing relational thinking. I will draw upon ethnographic experiences to explore the methodological implications of applying assemblage theory empirically.

My research will take a comparative look at assessing the extent to which right-based approaches, such as the right to the city concept can and has been applied to public transport within the context of developing cities.