I am a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter and a lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. My field of research is interactivity in interdisciplinary artistic practices. More specifically, I focus on durational performative scores, such as Wolf Vostell’s Yellow Pages, or Alison Knowles Identical Lunch. E.g. Yellow Pages presents the performer with a page from the New York Yellow Pages and suggests that during one month they buy the quantities of groceries indicated in the World War II lebensmittelkarte at the designated grocers. Identical Lunch instructs the performer to have the same lunch at the designated restaurant for up to a year. My investigation focuses on two aspects of performance: the body’s cycles of construction and destruction and the creation of a community on the periphery of sociality. I seek to articulate the ways in which actional, interoceptive and psychogeographic schemes generated by eating and walking intertwine to create complex patterns of individual-communal remembering-forgetting
I have been a member of the Archaeology Subject Area from 2005, specialising in later prehistory: specifically, the Iron Age of Britain and Ireland. Key themes in my research include aspects of identity (exploring the intersection of age, gender, skill and life-courses in prehistoric communities), and relations between people and place, animal communities and objects. I also study the archaeology and anthropology of death and burial: currently focusing on the chariot burials of East Yorkshire. In addition, I have been involved in the recording and analysis of historic farm graffiti in the Yorkshire Wolds, and this has led to an interest in interdisciplinary research involving buildings recording, archival and photographic analysis, combined with oral history. This latter research has provided the inspiration for my involvement in this conference, and I look forward to sharing ideas with fellow researchers on how we might understand time as key to shaping distinct communities, and how we might explore contrasting rhythms of temporality through material culture.
In association with my colleague, Siân Jones, I will also introduce a new collaborative project on Whitworth Park, which aims to explore how urban communities are constituted in space and time, through their material practices. We are also interested in how the intersection of past and present creates connections between communities over time, and how archaeology can act as a site of memory and identity work. I work at the Countryside and Community Research Institute in an ESRC research project on flood memories and community resilience to floods. I completed my doctoral studies in anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in 2010. I am fascinated with the discursive power of the idea of community, as well as with the transformative potential of this concept. I am interested in temporality from several angles. During my doctoral fieldwork along a river in Lapland, I was struck by the stark seasonality of social and ecological life, and the manifold other rhythmical dynamics in which the seasons are embedded. More recently, I have tried to come to grips with the dynamics of memory and remembering, where a past (that is remembered), a present (that sees the remembering) and a future (informed by this memory) are constantly mixed and matched. I am curious to explore the relationships between temporality and community, for instance in collective memory practices, or in the common experience of recurring episodic events, both of which may illustrate ways in which flood memory and community resilience are linked. Franz's Pecha Kucha I have been based in Archaeology at the University of Manchester since 1997. My research has crosscut disciplinary and period boundaries, drawing on archaeology, social anthropology, history, and cultural geography, whilst ranging from the Neolithic to the present-day. The main enduring theme is the relationship between material culture, time, and various forms of identity (community, ethnic, national and diasporic identities). My recent projects have focused on: heritage, modernity and the nation-state; the production of social memory; the experience of authenticity; and the theory and practice of conservation. A new research project, jointly led with Melanie Giles, focuses on the urban public park as an arena in which class, ethnicity, taste, citizenship, health, leisure, memory and place have been produced and negotiated in the past and present. The workshop is an exciting opportunity to explore approaches to the interconnections between time and community. I am interested in how communities are constituted in time and space through material culture and practice. I hope to offer insights into the ways in which community connectivities and time intersect in the form of memory-work. My presentation will focus on how historic objects, monuments and places facilitate forms of community connectivity across time and space, producing a tangible sense of immediate connection to the past and allowing people to negotiate networks of belonging. This will complement the presentation by Melanie Giles on temporalities of practice and the production of community connectivity, which is another important strand in our joint project. Slides from Sian's Lightning Talk Dr Greenhill is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Dr Greenhill has an extensive research and publication list exploring cultural practices of online communities. Dr Greenhill along with Dr Gary Graham is currently researching the changing role of the city, local communities and their use of community news media in the digital age. Both time and space play a major role in the preliminary findings of their research. Thurman (2010) has argued that the advance of the social media/Web 2.0 is eroding away the timeliness, relevance and utility of the local news product. However our research indicates that community news media firms are not a dying breed as predicted by Meyer (2004; 2008), but are evolving over time from product supplier into a multimedia content service provider. In response to the challenges of the internet, many media firms are retaining their community connectivity and therefore influence - for being trusted sources of locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. However, there are concerns that news media organizations are moving online into the (virtual) community space rather than creating their own space. This is potentially detrimental to community connectivity and temporal belonging and raises questions over whether consumers (local community groups) will be willing over time to interact in these spaces or whether they will wish to create/find their own spaces. This paper presents the preliminary findings of research exploring time and the changing role of local communities and their use of community news media in the digital age. Anita's Pecha Kucha Presentation I am a Research Fellow at the ESRC Third Sector Research Centre based at the University of Birmingham, where I am responsible for coordinating a qualitative longitudinal research study of third sector organisations and activities called “Real Times”. The team includes my colleague and co-presenter Andri Soteri-Proctor. By third sector we tend to mean a diverse range of non-profit activities undertaken beyond the market and the state, for example, by charities, social enterprises and less formal community-based groups and associations.
As well as having some practical experience of this ‘field’ of activities (as an employee, volunteer, etc.), I have been able to focus my research over a number of years on what I think of as its contested qualitative dynamics – how it works in practice over time. “Real Times” is partly underpinned by this theoretical imagining, and involves following the challenges, strategies, fortunes and performance of third sector activities as they unfold through time. The research is based around a diverse set of case studies, and in the workshop presentation we aim to provide a momentary glimpse of community-based activities in a couple of these settings. Understanding the interplay of diverse temporalities - for example, around continuity and change; duration, sequence, pace and time expectations; and around memory and anticipation - is a strong feature of the research. We hope to be able to share our reflections on the temporalities involved in community-based action, and to hear other accounts and perspectives of the relationship between time and community. I am a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at Durham University. My PhD thesis is entitled as “Cultural Perceptions of Time and Space: On Negotiating Social Change in Rural Pakistan”. This research aims to investigate culturally perceived notions of time and space in a Pakistani village and to ascertain the extent to which these may have undergone changes in recent decades. The study will examine how the community has adapted to new temporal and spatial models, and determine the extent of such adaptations due to social change. I am particularly interested in the workshop’s themes related to community participation, self-reliance and resilience and sustainable community environments, places, spaces and institutions. Time is an important aspect of human experience which appears to be a universal phenomenon. In order to understand any cultural characteristics, it will be imperative to recognize the temporal organization of the community, essentially with reference to spatial models. Since culture is a process and change is inevitable so the changing models of time provide an insight into the mechanism of any socioeconomic change taken place in the community. Taking into account the community’s sensitivities to its culturally perceived models of time and space will help increasing the willingness of the community to actively participate in development programs to achieve sustainability.
I am in the first year of an MRes in Social and Cultural Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University. My studies so far have focused on heritage walks around Manchester, critiquing official narratives and seeking alternative routes. I am also really interested in blurring the boundaries between academia, activism and my professional life. I founded and facilitate The LRM (Loiterers Resistance Movement) a Manchester based interdisciplinary collective of artists, activists and academics interested in psychogeography, social justice and public space. It is a not-for-profit community group which curates walks and other events which reframe the neo-liberal city as a site of subversive play and critical engagement. The LRM seeks to unravel the myriad stories that contribute to the city and the historical, political and economic forces that shape space. Our work is also interested in emotional responses; how places make us feel and how active participation can positively transform its development. Our conception of history is rhizomatic and thus the derive is our favoured tool for exploration. The city is also a sensory experience and walking offers a direct connection to the ghosts under the pavement. I have worked as a Community Development Officer for the past eleven years and have been employed by GMCVO (Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation) since November 2007. My role involves providing training, consultancy, information and one-to-one support to a wide range of groups, specifically community hubs i.e. places that generate social capital. Morag's Pecha Kucha Presentation Audio: Professor of Archival Studies and Director of the Information Management and Preservation MSc programme. I have written extensively on archival and historical topics. My most recent publications include an essay on ‘Brussels Sprouts and Empire’ for a book on the philosophy of gardening and another on the place of trust in archival discourse. The principal users of archives, both locally and nationally, are a genealogist, whose motivation are little explored but seems to encompass a search for identity and temporal belonging within a connected community. What do such intensions mean in our plural urban society? Is it simply a curious nostalgia or is there a genuine desire for identity that is located in more than present time? The use of archives has long been recognised as raising significant questions about the sense of time. Contemporary archival literature posits a view that archives are always in a ‘state of becoming’, because their interpretation is always influenced by the present, by location and the user’s perspectives and interests. If this is the case then it raises fundamental questions about what is meant by concepts of authenticity, accountability, veracity and trust that are not trivial, particularly when set in the context of events such as the war in Iraq or the decision to close local libraries. In democratic societies it can be argued that the archive acting fiduciarily and protected by the rule of law is an essential bulwark for our liberties as it holds the evidence to call those in authority to account.
I was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton (at Warwick from autumn 2011), working on a project with Prof. Graham Crow which is part of the AHRC-funded Connected Communities research programme entitled ‘Conceptualisations and meanings of "community": the theory and operationalisation of a contested concept'. I have a long-standing interest in urban and community studies, particularly the complex relationships between global processes of socioeconomic change and local contexts of lived experience. My contribution to this workshop will consider the problem of time in relation to community through exploring the topic of ‘rethinking regeneration and prosperity in a time of economic crisis and resource depletion’. My talk will draw on policy debates on regeneration in the UK, as well as empirical research on lived experiences of recent regeneration schemes in the case study of Walker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The notion of ‘time’ will be explored firstly in relation to the short historical memories of city planners about the limitations of past regeneration policies, tracing a wider historical sociology of regeneration policies and practices in the UK. Secondly, the notion of time will be explored through critically analysing assumptions of economic growth and progress embedded in dominant models of arts-and-property-led regeneration in the context of an era of uncertainty, recession and environmental crisis. I argue that regeneration policies should be broadened to focus on the wider picture of employment, public services, sustainable living environments, diversity and social inclusion, and community life.
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