Events

The first seminar set the framework for the series, asking questions about the validity of a sensory studies agenda and its meaning in the UK and international context for understanding urban experience.  It sought to set out a range of different knowledges and practices of the senses in relation to the urban by bringing together established pioneers in sensory studies within their respective disciplines and practitioners working in the realm of urban design.  Dr Tim Edensor, MMU was the Opening Speaker and Max Dixon, Noise Advisor, GLA, and Dr John Levack Drever, Goldsmiths were two Keynote Speakers.

This seminar took place on Wednesday 31st January 2007

A dusk soundwalk of Manchester led by Dr John Levack Drever took place on Tuesday 30th January 2007. You can read about the soundwalk here, watch a slideshow of the walk here (click on Manchester Soundwalk and then click Slideshow), and listen to the soundwalk audio here (click on soundwalking.mp3). With thanks to Dr Duncan Fuller and Dr Kye Askins, Northumbria University and the Mywalks website.

The second seminar seeks to move on from, but be informed by, the more pluralistic understandings of the senses detailed in the previous seminar by focusing on how sensory understandings have filtered into disciplines such as architecture and urban planning.  The specific focus will be on built form and will bring together disparate groups working in areas such as: the relationships between public and private space; buildings and their various uses; the sensory qualities of the material world and their social significance; multi-sensory appreciations of physical urban artefacts; materials and their sensory significance.

This seminar took place on Friday 29th June 2007

This seminar builds on the lessons of the previous seminars by asking questions about the infrastructure that supports urban society.  Topics may include sensory experiences of public transport networks, olfactory responses to waste and its disposal, public toilet provision in urban areas.  Additionally, the role of hidden infrastructures such as CCTV and underground infrastructures such as utilities networks will be considered in this seminar.

This seminar took place on Friday 19th October 2007

This seminar addresses and examines the temporal nuances of the city including a range of sensory taboos that currently help construct specific places, cultures and identities.  Topics may include night and day usages of public spaces including prostitution and street drinking.  Additionally, realms of decay within the city will be explored including historical and cultural meanings of derelict building and urban spaces.  Seasonal aspects of urban green spaces might also be considered in this seminar.

This seminar will take place on Wednesday 30th January 2008 (Contact Tim Edensor to register)

This seminar addresses the question of how the senses compliment each other and will focus on kinaesthetics as well as the interactions of the five senses sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.  Movement through and within the city is the subject of much research but less attention has been paid to the relationships of this movement to the senses.  Topics may include simultaneous use of the senses (for example listening to iPods whilst walking or commuting), cultural dimensions of senses in the city (for example tourists’ sensory responses to the city, or movement through cultural quarters of a city).

This seminar will take place on Thursday 31st January 2008 (Contact Tim Edensor to register)

This seminar will draw together the themes, issues and questions developed in the previous seminars.  It will involve papers from a number of participants who have followed the seminar series through and from a variety of different perspectives.  Additionally, papers will be commissioned to review key cross-cutting themes that have emerged from the previous sessions.  The focus will be on asking what lessons may be drawn for future sensory studies and how the urban experience can be further understood from these perspectives.  Ideas for research proposals and bids will be considered and the possibility of an interdisciplinary conference on ‘sensory production of place’ will be discussed.  An international speaker and a representative of policy and practice communities, identified throughout the series, will be invited to act as critical respondents to the seminar series findings and conclusions.

Seminar 6 details (Wednesday 25th June 2008)