Mobile Network

Seminar series

The Seminars will consider the current and probable future patterns of social life and communication developing through the next century, and the role physical travel will (and should) play in sustaining and developing those patterns. In particular, the seminar series will various economic, technological, social and political changes are transforming the significance and development of different forms of mobility.. The organisers of the seminar series are John Urry, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University and Frances Hodgson, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds.

All enquiries should be addressed to: Frances Hodgson, tel: +44 113 3431793.

The seven planned Seminars are as follows:

1. The changing economic, social and political context of different modes of transportation

2. The impact of new communications technologies upon the nature of physical transportation systems

3. The importance of rights to travel versus rights to a sustainable environment within emerging forms of contemporary citizenship

4. The impact of different modes of mobility upon the nature of social capital within different ‘communities’

5. The pleasures of different modes of travel – especially speed and slowness – and the social and cultural processes which reinforce such pleasures

6. Transport and space: looking at the relationship between transport systems, urban form and neighbourhood and communities;

7. Future developments of transport systems, especially in the light of technological, economic and cultural changes.

Background Papers

Seminar dates

The seminar series starts on June 2001 and will finish on March 31^st 2003. The first seminar will be held in September 2001, hosted by Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds. Other seminars will be held in Lancaster, Bristol, Manchester, London and Edinburgh to encourage greater participation, particularly by research students. Further dates and venues to follow.

Who is involved?

The Seminars will have a ‘core’ membership of around 10-15 participants from the MOBILE NETWORK (see below) with a number of invited guests from the academic, industrial and the policy world attending particular Seminars. The maximum number of participants in any one seminar will be around 20.

We will also ensure that participants in each Seminar cover a range of senior and more junior colleagues and intend to invite those who have an interest in the particular area under discussion. The MOBILE NETWORK already contains early-career academics but we would also hope to collaborate with the Transport Visions Network at Southampton University.

Research users

The Mobile Network will form an interactive partnership with users of research findings and resources. The participants in the seminar series will use their existing extensive contacts with users of research to invite interested parties to the seminars. We will also work to ensure representation from socially excluded and transport users groups at appropriate seminars. We intend to invite the users that we think are most appropriate to the seminar topic. In addition we will inform the user groups of the seminar series and invite them to keep abreast of the discussions and to comment on those discussions using the web site. We also intend to invite the DETR to host one of the seminars at their offices in London.

How are they organised?

Each seminar will last a day and include an opportunity for informal discussion over lunch and afterwards. Prior to each seminar the organisers, in collaboration with the invited guests, will prepare multi-media based background material which will be placed on the web site to be read in advance of the seminars by the seminar participants.

Facilitators and rapporteurs will be appointed for each and summaries of the seminar debates will be placed on the WEB so that the material becomes immediately available to participants and to others with whom contacts are made in the UK and abroad. We will also publish more formally in journal special editions.