Current Postgraduate Students
Dr Robert Shaw
(email at robert.shaw@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
2004 - 2007: BA(Hons), Geography, Durham Unviersity.
2007 - 2008: MA, Research Methods (Geography), Durham University.
2008 - 2012: PhD, Geography, Durham University.
2012 - Present: Teaching Fellow, Geography, Durham University
Research
I completed a PhD in geography at Durham Unviersity in May 2012, and have been working at Durham as a teaching fellow since October 2012.
My research interests lie in urban and social geography, exploring the experience of daily life in an urban and socical context. In particular, my current interest is in exploring the ideas of 'Night' from a social-cultural perspective, as a way of opening up new understandings of various urban and social phenomena.
In my PhD, I looked at the 'night-time-economy' of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In particular, I was interested in the ways in which the governance of different parts of the night-time city was used to shape experience - through the shaping of subjectivities - of the urban night. As such, I looked at services and sectors which interact with the alcohol and leisure industry, such as street-cleaning, fast-food selling, and taxi services, and the work of the NE1 Business Improvement Distrcit. During my PhD, I developed an increasing awareness of the limiations of the night-time-economy framework for understanding the urban night. Instead, I attempted to develop a theoretical background using the work of Gregory Bateson, Felix Guattari, Non-representational theory and actor-network theory to rethink the relationship between forms of governing the night-time city.
I'm now interested in developing new ways of exploring the relationship between 'night' and society. In particular, I want to explore how our experience of the home is conditioned by night. After all, people spend most of their time at home during the night; and most of their nights at home. What about the night at home makes it a space of rest and relaxation - and what makes it a space of stress, fear and isolation? Can we identify aspects of the rhythmic night or the phenonmenological night which push towards either of these understandings of home?
At the same time, I retain an interest in the ways in which affect is used to control subjectivities in urban contexts. In particular, how are ways of using cities imagined and what gap exists between these imaginings and actual experience of the city?
Selected Publications
Books: sections
- Shaw, Robert (Forthcoming). Cleaning Up the Streets: Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Night-Time Neighbourhood Services Team. In Everyday Urban Infrastructures. Desai, R, Graham, S & McFarlane, C
Essays in edited volumes
- Shaw, Robert (2010). Buses. In Encyclopedia of Urban Studies. Hutchinson, Ray London: Sage.
Journal papers: academic
- Shaw, Robert (Accepted). “Alive after five” Constructing the neoliberal night in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Urban Studies
- Shaw, Robert (2010). Neoliberal Subjectivities and the Development of the Night-Time Economy in British Cities. Geography Compass 4(7): 893-903.