| Thesis proposals 2. Culture and Society | Researchers | Research Group |
|
Constructing spaces of resistance.
We propose to conduct an ethnography of the new modes and tactics of political and social resistance emerging in the present day through the lens of event studies (Getz; Richards; Quinn). Social and political resistance movements can be characterized as innovative in terms of their rhetoric and collective mobilization. Nowadays they produce a plethora of creations with collective representations and displays based on the synchronization of crowds for specific visual, emotional and symbolic effects. These include demonstrations featuring coloured shapes; the occupation of large strategic infrastructures; human chains hundreds of kilometres long; small localized and networked displays of specific slogans and messages; massive festivals, and the saturation of landscapes with symbolic colouring. Since the national authorities may have opted to prosecute political and social leaders, the requirement of anonymity has led some social movements to organize and plan events in new ways through new dramaturgies of collective celebration and resistance. Some movements also draw upon technology to design and direct protests.
We will welcome research projects that engage in what these new forms of resistance and disobedience, their rhetoric, narratives, design, actions and reactions, and technological appropriations tell us about the use and appropriation of the political, symbolic and public space more specifically. |
Mail: acolombo@uoc.edu
|
IdentiCat |
|
Critical event studies. Events as drivers of social change (or transformers) in the context of socially uncertain times.
Events such as festivals, carnivals, congresses, sporting events, demonstrations and contemporary rituals are analysed in a field of research called 'Event Studies'. Nowadays this area of study expands and moves from business and policy to socially, culturally and contextually driven approaches (Getz; Richards; Quinn; Smith). This situation offers academics the possibility of addressing events as contemporary social activities, with effects and actions, but also as drivers which shape and transform societies. We have been working on different aspects related to traditions, gender, sustainability, inclusion, social relations and networks as well as liminality.
Therefore, we offer guidance for research from a critical perspective, relating to events and their consequences or potential for our society. We expect research projects to be based on social science methodology. Proposals should employ a qualitative methodology, but we also offer the possibility of working with quantitative measures. We encourage, therefore, those candidates who want to examine the role of contemporary events in our society.
The candidate will be able to join the discussion generated in the framework of the recent EU-financed research project HERA, entitled “Festivals, events and inclusive urban public spaces in Europe” (2019/2022)
|
Mail: acolombo@uoc.edu
|
IdentiCat |
|
Bodies, affections and technology.
Life is made up of encounters – encounters that may determine the course of one's life. This knowledge forms part of the most basic wisdom of any human being and, in fact, of any living being. From the standpoint of posthumanist thought, bodies are conceptualized as an assembly of different elements that give rise to organisms that go beyond the skin covering them.
From this standpoint, we propose researching human encounters with digital technologies (and also with robots and artificial intelligence) to understand some of the effects of these encounters/assemblies on the ways we relate to others (humans and non-humans), on constructing ourselves as subjects and on thinking of ourselves as humans/posthumans.
N.B.: This thesis supervision will be carried out in Catalan or in Spanish.
|
Mail: fnunez@uoc.edu
|
MEDUSA |
|
Neoliberalism in 'gendered academia': subjectivization processes and resistance This line provides two sublines of research:
|
Mail: avayreda@uoc.edu |
MEDUSA |
|
Ecologies of the imagination Thinking is training for the imagination, producing possible images of that which is not apparent, obvious or immediate. In an immediatist present that cancels out all imagination, apart from the apocalyptic, what imaginaries do we have, today, to enable new emancipatory visions of the present, past and future? |
Mail: mgarcesma@uoc.edu |
MUSSOL |
|
The neoliberal transformation of academe in the case of humanities and the social sciences: effects and resistance The impact of neoliberal politics and practices has been causing the most significant transformation of contemporary science and academe since the mid-twentieth century. Neoliberal academic policies have been putting more emphasis on the creation of commercial value than in achieving social wellbeing or knowledge; the use of patents has been encouraged more than the open dissemination of knowledge and private investment has been promoted in universities and research projects, to foster those lines of research with greater commercial application and, therefore, prospects of a financial return. Existing literature on these matters focuses on natural or "hard" sciences, such as the biomedical field, whilst areas such as the humanities and the social sciences have been studied far less. In this line of research, we seek to analyse, firstly, this almost unexplored terrain, based on specific cases such as those of the "digital humanities" and, additionally, identify and study initiatives or experiences of resistance – in terms of both content and organization – in and outside of the academic sphere. |
Mail: eaibar@uoc.edu |
MUSSOL |
|
Visual culture and society The present proposal invites PhD candidates interested in exploring the role of visual culture in contemporary society. This includes an examination of photography, the visual and performing arts, film and video, and electronic media, focusing on the historical foundations of visuality as well as theories of visual culture and aesthetics. Candidates are invited to explore the role of visual culture in society in connection with:
|
Mail: acreus0@uoc.edu |
|
|
Mutations of doubt: from methodical doubt to agnotology
Modern thought and science placed doubt at the centre of its method of access to truth and knowledge. Today, new forms of doubt have emerged, often systematically produced and with powerful actors behind them, which are directly aimed at generating confusion, controversy or ignorance. In the case of scientific knowledge, studies in agnotology have analysed and documented numerous cases of systematic production of doubt, to generate uncertainty or ignorance about what we already know (climate change, the hole in the ozone layer, the effects of tobacco, etc.), which are at the root of so-called denialism. But phenomena such as fakes news, the rise of conspiracy theories, or the collapse of the imagination, are also examples.
From a philosophical approach, we propose to investigate these new forms of doubt and ignorance, their casuistry and their conceptual and socio-political implications. We want to analyse what kind of transformations are currently taking place in the regimes of truth/falsity and in the relations between knowledge, ignorance and truth, based both on theoretical studies and on the analysis of specific cases or areas.
|
Mail: eaibar@uoc.edu Mail: mgarcesma@uoc.edu |
MUSSOL |
|
Relational infrastructure and inequality
Research proposals to study how more homogeneous or mixed interactional spaces impact on social trajectories and cultural and subjective experiences.
Study of inequality from the point of view of the impact of relational infrastructures, social interactions and social capital, this proposal is open to research projects studying the implications, in terms of social trajectories (inequality) and subjective experience, of school and urban segregation and desegregation, uniform and diverse leisure, linguistic or youth cultural spaces, and any institutionalised space where social closure and openness can be studied. The focus is not only on rigid and porous social and symbolic borders, but on the way interactions and social ties develop on more homogeneous and diverses spaces, and the impact this have on inequality and subjective experiences. Projects can be either quantitative or qualitative, using a wide arrange of methodological stragegies (surveys, ethnography, netowrk analysis, interviews).
|
Mail: rmartinezsa@uoc.edu
Mail: igonzalezbal@uoc.edu
|
IdentiCat |
|
Youth cultures, styles and tastes Research projects focusing on either particular youth cultures and styles or the way different youth styles are relationally defined, with the aim to understand how cultural and social hierarchies are articulated.
Youth cultures can be studied through either quantitative and qualitative methodological strategies, and be focused on particular styles or on the relational links between them; on contemporary or historical cases; and in a single place or with a broader geographical scope. The focus, however, should be relational and structural, in the sense of studying how the social and symbolic borders reproduce or reconfigure social hierarchies linked not only to class, gender or linguistic, national and ethnic identifications, but also toughness, popularity, coolness, authenticity, fashion and others.
|
Mail: rmartinezsa@uoc.edu
|
IdentiCat |
|
Critique of techno-digital reason
This line of research critically studies the reason that governs our current time: technodigital reason. By technodigital reason we understand the economic, behavioural and ideological logic that centres contemporary time, marked by the mutation from homo machina to homo data, a fact that represents a second stage of the so-called big tech capitalism or data capitalism. This line of research aims to create a space for thought in the field of governmentality studies, providing new critical perspectives on the contributions of foundational authors such as Michel Foucault and contemporary authors such as Mariana Mazzucato and Evgeny Morozov, focusing at all times on the forms of control that the ideology of data exerts on the modern being, homo sapiens.
|
Mail: igozalo@uoc.edu |
MUSSOL |
|
Technoscientific activisms: Collective action with, against and beyond the burden of proof From collectives of patients suffering from a rare illness to mobilisations against the disastrous effects of the implementation of particular infrastructures, the last decades have seen many groups and collectives irrupting in the once sacred spaces and activities of science and technology production: From participatory engagements of lay people in expert-driven processes – e.g. citizen science – to the articulation of counter-expertise and evidence-based activism – e.g. the work on affected communities, concerned groups, embodied health and environmental justice activisms to engage in conversations with experts –, many of these practices and activities are not only transforming the who and the how of technoscientific production, but also its spaces and outputs. Interestingly, the attention to these techno-scientific activist practices has led scholars in Science and Technology Studies and Actor-Network Theory approaches to develop interesting ethnographic and controversy mapping inquiries into how these accounts have created new grounds for alternative conceptualisations of collective action: (1) going beyond the all-too-human and usually male-dominated heroic narratives of political struggles: showing the variegated roles animals, devices, ecologies, atmospheres, the Earth, ancestors, and a range of other eventful beings play in different forms of political action; and (2) considering the conceptual challenges that the interesting ‘activations’ of science and technology these agents engage in might entail to received understandings of collective action. Following this trail of thought, we welcome PhD proposals interested in developing conceptual and ethnographic studies of different repertoires of ‘technoscientific activism’ (counter-expertise, translation, issue publics, cosmopolitics, and self-experimentation), paying minute attention not only to the complex distributions and attributions of agency they entail, but also to the particular relations these forms of collective action have with the burden of proof and different forms of ‘truth politics.’ |
Mail: tomcriado@uoc.edu |
CareNet |
|
Fraud and Integrity in Current Scientific Research
The analysis of scientific fraud and misconduct can shed light on some fundamental aspects of science. For instance, the historical evolution of scientific fraud, from traditional "epistemological" manipulation —fabrication or falsification of data— to current "post-production" varieties —aimed at enhancing the impact of publications—, reflects dramatic changes in how science is evaluated and organized. We seek research proposals willing to analyze some of the most distinctive traits of this new emerging style of scientific misconduct and link them to structural changes in the organization, funding, and evaluation of contemporary science. Various methods can be used: from quantitative studies on "retractions" to qualitative analyses of specific cases. We aim to pay special attention to some recent notorious cases of alleged misconduct in Spanish science and how they have been dealt with by academic and governmental institutions, the media, and colleagues.
|
Mail: eaibar@uoc.edu |
MUSSOL |