Research Group: Economy, Governance and Culture 

Supervisor(s): Dr Bradley Garrett

Recent scholarship on urban subversions in the city has posited, in the context of increasing corporate control over cities, a parallel need for people to be more creative in the ways they resist forms of control over actions and behaviours, especially in eroding public space. Many of these subversive practices involve a re-working of urban aesthetics that creates ruptures in transmissions of anticipated narratives. Often these subversive activates are quickly co-opted, leaving practitioners in a perpetual state of re-imagination and re-invention.  

This call is for a PhD researcher actively interested in working on issues surrounding the use of new technologies and tactics in processes of corporate narrative disruption. Candidates will have an interest in soussurveillance, ad-busting, graffiti, parkour, base jumping, yarn bombing, deployment of temporary autonomous zones or some sort of direct action that reconfigures urban aesthetics. Proposed projects will be expected to have theoretically-driven and methodologically robust practice-based components.

The student will join the Economy, Governance and Culture Research Group. The Group on the interfaces between economic geography and political and cultural geographies. The Group has three overlapping themes: evolution and change in economic geography; practice and culture; and governance and politics.

Candidates must have or expect to gain a first or strong upper second class degree, in an appropriate discipline, not necessarily Geography. Details on how to apply are available from Julie Drewitt, emailgeog-pgr.fshs<στο>soton.ac.uk. Informal enquiries may be made to B.Garrett<στο>soton.ac.uk. For the latest information on postgraduate opportunities within Geography and Environment, please visit our website at http://www.southampton.ac.uk/geography/postgraduate/research_degrees/studentships.page?

Interviews: February 2015