The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have a research group on Transport and Health. I have been along to many of the great seminars that the group organises and I was thrilled to be asked to give one on my work into run-commuting. I will be talking to the title of ‘Run-commuting: towards understanding an emergent mobility’ and will essentially be giving an overview of why run-commuting should be studied, my research into it so far, and where I hope to take it in the future.
It will take place next, Tuesday 10 March at 12:45 – 14:00 in Jerry Morris Room B, 15 – 17 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SH. More information can be found here. The seminar will be audio recorded and I will upload the slides and a summary soon afterwards. But first of all, I’ve got to make them! This will be my first ever seminar and I’m really looking forward to it, if a little bit nervous. If you’d like more details about what I will be talking about, do ask, but the abstract is below.
Run-commuting: towards understanding an emergent mobility.
Run-commuting is a transport practice emerging in many ‘developed’ cities across the world, in which people are choosing to lace up their trainers in order to run to/from work. In many ways it is a curious and difficult practice to pin down and understand; traversing the boundaries of sport, leisure, fitness and transport. Yet it is this slippery nature, the ability to defy distinct categorisation, which makes it such an interesting and valuable topic to study. Run-commuting not only provides insights into emerging transport practices, but challenges, stretches and asks us to look once again at our understandings of transport, sport, running and mobility. Run-commuting is also, hitherto, unresearched or accounted for.
This seminar will draw on a small study into run-commuting to provide an initial overview of the practice. In order to do so, I will adopt a Cresswellian understanding of mobility that seeks to get to grips with the brute facts, representations and experiences of run-commuting, which combine to provide the basis for an initial assessment of its potential as a transport mode. That study could only go so far however and there are still many questions and challenges to be understood about run-commuting. These serve as a springboard from which I will outline the intended trajectory of the project as it continues and grows; detailing the frameworks I will use, questions I will ask, the methods utilised and outcomes I hope to achieve. The seminar will conclude with a few brief points regarding what I deem to be the value of engaging with run-commuting and similar practices for the study of transport.
Jographies 