Friday 26th June 2026, 9am-1.30pm BST

Hybrid Event: You are welcome to join us either at 91快活林 or online.

An MS Teams link will be sent to all online ticket holders before the event.

Detailed programme below or download pdf

This half-day research symposium focuses on the more-than-human mobilities of living in and on the sea in any form. Building on current themes of water, oceans, and coasts we invite participants to share research about the mobilities of living in and on the sea. From worm casts built from shifting sands, to limpets and their home scars, seaweed holdfasts, oil rigs, seagrass, boats, weather, bridges, migrations, myths and stories this interdisciplinary day will explore the tensions between mobility and anchorage within a fluid environment.

The symposium extends Cemore鈥檚 focus on Climate Emergency to more-than-human thinking about the sea, for a rich multi-disciplinary gathering. The name Being at Sea also indicates the shifting uncertainties of working with fluid boundaries in our constantly changing political, technical, social and environmental emergencies.

The event will combine online talks from two external mobilities scholars Maria Borovnik (NZ) and Mimi Sheller (USA)) with short papers from an interdisciplinary range of mobilities scholars at Lancaster, as well as a session on creative methods in which artists, writers and designers will speak to the theme of 鈥榖eing at sea鈥� in relation to their work.

The symposium builds upon a successful networking event on 鈥楽eaweed Mobilities’ that we held in Barrow-in-Furness last November which brought together artists, scientists, environmentalists and the Arts Organisation, Deco Publique. See: /cemore/seaweed-mobilities-day/.

PROGRAMME

SESSION 1

9.00 – 9.30: Lynne Pearce & Jen Southern: Introduction – Wet and Dry Ontologies of Seaweed

9.30 鈥� 10.00: Maria Borovnik: Gazing at the Sea, Longing to be Elsewhere: When seafarers stay at sea for too long

10.00 -10.10:  Nathan Jones: Unsecurities Lab and the Sinking of the Felicity Ace

10.10-10.20: Serena Pollastri: A seascape epistemology for urban futures that move with the water

10.20 Discussion

10.30 Break

SESSION 2

11.00 Debbie Yare & Jen Southern: Rogue touch and turbidity: conversations with the intertidal zone

11.10 Ellie Barrett: Nature鈥檚 Way of Working Stone: Collecting the coastline with a child

11.20 Louise Mullagh: Reading the Sands: Walking, Data, and Repertoire Knowledge in Morecambe Bay

11.30 Amy Dickson: Seaweed Transfer, 2025. screening

11.40 Jamie Jenkinson: Jelly Beach + TERRA screening & publication

11.50 Discussion

12pm Break

SESSION 3

12.30 Jo Carruthers: Nature’s Play, Micro-Mobilities and Soft Fascination

12.45 Abi Lafbery: From Sea Gooseberries to Sewage: More-than-human Entanglements in Outdoor Swimming

1pm Mimi Sheller: Theorizing from Caribbean Seas: tidalectics, mangroves, and sacred passages

1.30pm Join us for Lunch (in person only!)

Session 1

Lynne Pearce & Jen Southern: Introduction: Wet and Dry Ontologies of Seaweed

Introducing the theme of Being at Sea we will investigate the more-than-human mobilities of seaweed, in both its wet and dried state, in order to extend existing understanding of infrastructure. In contrast to definitions which presume that infrastructure to be inanimate and supremely functional — built by humans in order to serve humans — our more-more-than human approach argues for its potential vitality and, by implication, its need for protection.

Lynne Pearce is Professor of Literary and Cultural Theory at the University of Lancaster and co-Director (Humanities) of Cemore. She was instrumental in establishing the field of Mobility Humanities, and since 2012 has published extensively in Mobilities and Cultural Geography. Her most recent book is 鈥楤ritains Changing Roadscapes: Mobility, Place, Attachment, Loss鈥�.

Jen Southern is an artist, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and digital media, and co-Director of Cemore at 91快活林. She specialises in site-specific and participatory digital art, focussing on more-than-human mobilities. She collaborates with artists, technologists, participants and natural systems to produce live installations that combine material and digital experience.

Maria Borovnik: Gazing at the Sea, Longing to be Elsewhere: When seafarers stay at sea for too long

Objectified and normalised as 鈥榤aritime labour鈥�, seafarers are expected to efficiently move large vessels filled with commodities across the globe. This talk offers a contrasting perspective by positioning seafarers as sentient human beings. The focus is on affects, dreams and memories seafarers engage in while facing the unpredictability and (im)mobilities of life at sea.

Maria Borovnik is a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research interests lie in the intersection of mobilities, development and maritime geographies with a strong focus on seafarers; she is currently exploring the consequences of the crew change crisis experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nathan Jones: Unsecurities Lab and the Sinking of the Felicity Ace

Unsecurities Lab is a workshop format using immersive art works to engage teams of specialists in foresight on topics of high complexity. This talk focuses on our most recent cycle: SUNK COSTS, based on an artwork about a container ship that set on fire, taking thousands of luxury electric cars to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. 

Nathan Jones is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art (Digital Media) at 91快活林, and co-editor of the art-language-technology publisher Torque Editions. His work experiments with models for contemporary art as a research environment.

Serena Pollastri: A seascape epistemology for urban futures that move with the water.

This talk will reflect on the tensions between the inherently fluid nature of water and the permanence and rigidity of the hydraulic infrastructures that shape our cities. Drawing from a 鈥榮eascape epistemology鈥� (Ingersoll, 2016) I will speculate on amphibious and regenerative approaches as a radical alternative for adaptive urbanism.

 Serena Pollastri is a Lecturer in Urban Futures at ImaginationLancaster at the School of Art (Architecture) and a co-founder of the Coastal Collective. Her practice-based research is concerned with developing and applying design methods and approaches for regenerative coastal futures, particularly through collaborative, hands-on approaches.

Session 2

Debbie Yare & Jen Southern: Rogue touch and turbidity: conversations with the intertidal zone

The sea shore is changing rapidly at Red Bank, in an area that was once salt marsh. Searching for complexity rather than clarity we will discuss creative and mobile approaches to participatory research with the rich interactions of rock, algae, mud, barnacles and shrimps as they start to take hold in this evolving ecosystem.

Debbie Yare’s art practice moves with, and is shaped by the more-than-human Morecambe Bay, where she lives. Recent work has considered salt marsh ecology, coastal change, the archive, and seaweed. She works between and across media with interests in video, photography, writing, drawing, performance and socially engaged practice.

Ellie Barrett: Nature鈥檚 Way of Working Stone: Collecting the coastline with a child

This presentation traces entanglements between sculpture making, maternal care and embodied experiences of water and the shore. An ongoing collaboration with my four-year-old daughter introduced the practice of collecting as an artistic method, which draws together Henry Moore鈥檚 sculptural making processes alongside young children鈥檚 knowing and becoming via engagement with coastal landscapes.

Ellie Barrett is a sculptor, writer, researcher and artist-mother with a specialism in socially-engaged sculpture. She is currently working with the Henry Moore Foundation to develop a new early years鈥� programme; and Burnley Civic Trust and Blaze Arts on a public realm commission, co-produced with young people in Burnley.

Louise Mullagh: Reading the Sands: Walking, Data, and Repertoire Knowledge in Morecambe Bay

Data-driven accounts of place have a particular authority, but the sand of Morecambe Bay expose their limits. The channels shift, the tides move faster than a galloping horse and no dataset can keep pace. This presentation explores what walking reveals that data cannot; embodied, mobile, repertoire knowledge of place.

Louise Mullagh is Lecturer in Performance and Place at 91快活林. Her research explores how embodied, sensory encounters with place produce forms of knowledge that data-driven approaches cannot replicate. Working on and around Morecambe Bay, she uses walking as both methodological and theoretical practice to argue for the value of repertoire knowledge in an increasingly datafied world.

Amy Dickson: Seaweed Transfer, 2025.

16mm film transferred to digital video 

Seaweed collected in Morecambe produces an image on 16mm film using Phytography – a specific cameraless technique developed  by artist and filmmaker Karel Doing in 2016.

Amy Dickson is an artist who works with experimental film, video and live performance. She is co-director of the arts organisation Jwllrs – a free alternative art school in Morecambe with a program of contemporary art exhibitions, talks and events. Amy is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Arts.

Jamie Jenkinson:Jelly Beach + TERRA

Sharing two quite different works 鈥� Jelly Beach, an improvised smartphone video, from an ongoing beach walks series; and TERRA, a research/metaphor heavy performance collated into print from a series intended to diffract our nuclear coastline 鈥� in conversation with Morecambe Bay.

TERRA, publication, 2026

Jamie Jenkinson is an artist, researcher and educator from Morecambe. Co-founder of alternative art school Jwllrs, Morecambe; and associate lecturer on MA Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, London. 

Session 3

Jo Carruthers: Nature’s Play, Micro-Mobilities and Soft Fascination

This paper attempts to weave together a passage about Margaret’s visit to the seaside from Gaskell’s North and South, Schiller’s theory of the ‘play drive’ (spieltrieb), and human experience of the micro-mobilities of the natural environment. Drawing on Attention Restoration Theory and the specific idea of ‘soft fascination’, I will present work in progress that argues that it is the micro-mobilities of (green and) blue spaces that produces restorative experiences for humans within the more-than-human natural environment, and especially the seaside.

Jo Carruthers teaches in English literature with an interest in place and mobilities. Her books include Sandscapes: Writing the British Seaside and Anticipatory Materialisms in Literature and Philosophy 1790-1930. She is working on a long-term project on the texture of roughness and its relation to the aesthetics of class in the nineteenth century. 

Abi Lafbery: From Sea Gooseberries to Sewage: More-than-human Entanglements in Outdoor Swimming

My research attends to the relations between wetsuits and whales, sea gooseberries and sewage and plastics and planets. In this talk, I will discuss the rich more-than-human encounters of swimmers in the NW coast and Lake District, and the implications of these for swimmers鈥� understandings of flora, fauna, water, weather and pollution.

Abi Lafbery鈥檚 Phd explored how outdoor swimmers develop feelings of connections to their bodies, sense of selves and the outdoor swimming assemblage. She is particularly interested in how the practice of outdoor swimming can contribute to wider conversations about how to live well as part of a multispecies community in crisis. 

Mimi Sheller: Theorizing from Caribbean Seas: tidalectics, mangroves, and sacred passages

Caribbean theorists, writers, and artists have contributed key concepts that draw on the sea. This talk will consider how critical mobilities theory interacts with ideas of tidalectics, mangrove thought and the relational theory of the undersea as a sacred space of crossings and transmotion. 

Mimi Sheller is the Dean of The Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA. She was founding co-editor of the journal Mobilities, founding co-director of Cemore, and past President of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility. She helped to establish the 鈥渘ew mobilities paradigm鈥� and is considered a key theorist in the interdisciplinary field of mobilities research and in Caribb

]]> /cemore/jeremy-rifkin-planet-aqua-recording/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 11:56:29 +0000 /cemore/?p=10604 On February 26^th 2026, CeMoRe hosted the 10^th Anniversary John Urry Lecture online, delivered by 鈥榲isionary鈥� thinker and policy consultant, Jeremy Rifkin.聽 Jeremy presented on his latest book, Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe (2024), while also weaving in arguments from his 22 bestselling books (translated into more than 35 languages) about the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment.聽 The event was opened by 91快活林鈥檚 Vice Chancellor, Professor Steve Decent, and Jeremy鈥檚 talk was followed by a Q&A that was opened with comments from Professor Bron Szerszynski.

We are delighted to share a recording of this event. Please note that the recording began a short a couple of minutes into the proceedings, and so the video starts mid-way through Prof Decent鈥檚 opening remarks.

A summary of the book is provided below and :

鈥淲hat would happen if we suddenly realized that the planet we live on appeared eerily alien, as if we鈥檇 been teleported to some other distant world? That frightening prospect is now. Our planetary hydrosphere, which animates all life on Earth, is rebelling in the wake of a global warming climate, unleashing blockbuster winter snows, biblical spring floods, devastating summer droughts, heatwaves and wildfires and deadly autumn hurricanes, wreaking havoc on ecosystems, infrastructure, and society. While fossil fuels lit the fuse, it鈥檚 the hydrosphere that鈥檚 ringing the death knell.

鈥泪苍&苍产蝉辫;Planet Aqua, Jeremy Rifkin argues that we have misjudged the very nature of our existence and to what we owe our lifeline. We have long believed that we live on a land planet when in reality we live on a water planet, and now the Earth鈥檚 hydrosphere is taking us into a mass extinction as it searches for a new normal.鈥�

tells the unfolding story of road journeys by car with a focus on the shifting cultural, social, political, and economic landscapes of Britain,

The book balances journeys past, present and future with a myriad of quirky and fascinating photographs encompassing the 鈥榳onder and poignancy鈥� of life on the road and also relays 鈥榯he full agony鈥� of conveyer belt motorway driving and overhead digital gantries.

It is billed as 鈥榓 must-read for anyone fascinated by the journeys we make by car鈥� and is published by Routledge.

The motivation behind the book is a lifetime of driving by the author, specifically the long and often not-so-winding road between her current home in the Highlands of Scotland and the south-west of Cornwall where she was born and grew up.

Drawing on her trusted road diaries and photographic archive dating back to the 1990s, the book centres on a route which follows the A85, A82, M8, M74, M6, M5, A30 and Cornwall鈥檚 narrow country lanes demonstrating the 鈥榮heer variety and idiosyncrasy鈥� of Britain鈥檚 road network.

The book is also concerned with how mundane change on the road makes its presence felt, the author arguing that this often depends upon the 鈥榶ardstick鈥� of the human life as travellers compare the road today with what it was like formerly.

Alongside the 鈥榥ew arrivals鈥� to the British roadscape, Professor Pearce captures significant departures including the disappearance of the roadside cafes, filling stations, phone boxes, lay-bys and snack bars associated with twentieth century motoring.

She reflects on why people develop powerful attachments for particular routes and roadside landmarks such as a significant group of 鈥榟omecoming鈥� trees on the Cornish border or a favourite and time-evasive service station (Taunton Deane).

This, in turn, relates to one of the book鈥檚 key findings – how change on the road can result in profound disorientation for drivers and other road users.

While this may begin as bodily disorientation (taking the wrong turning, getting lost on a once-familiar route), it can also provoke a powerful emotional response.

This is evident in many of the forum posts on the website of the 鈥楽ociety of All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts鈥� [SABRE] that the author draws upon frequently in her case studies.

Change on the road, as in other mundane environments, maps onto change in the human life course, and for road enthusiasts these frequently become entangled.

Along the way, the author identifies seven categories of change that have made their presence felt on Britain鈥檚 roads over the past 30 years – including the transformation of the driver-passenger experience as a result of the re-scaling of vehicles (what she refers to as 鈥榓utobesity鈥�), and the impact of extreme weather as the result of climate change.

She notes that the latter is probably the book鈥檚 most consequential research finding.

Weather events (in particular, landslips resulting from heavy rain) have made driving in the UK (and especially in Scotland) so much more unpredictable, while extreme heat can make long journeys much more uncomfortable.

Academically, the book addresses long-standing geographical debates on place, place-attachment and aesthetics, as well as the unique properties of 鈥榡ourneying鈥�, and is aimed at those working in geography, sociology history, and literary and cultural studies.

However, its autobiographical case studies, historical route descriptions, photographic archive, and general accessibility mean that it should also be of interest to road enthusiasts and the general reader.

Reflecting on the experience of writing the book, Professor Pearce observes that it was the proverbial 鈥榣ifetime in the making鈥�, grounded in a 40-year relationship with Britain鈥檚 roads.

鈥淒uring that time, I鈥檝e seen the gleaming white concrete of Britain鈥檚 new motorway network discolour and decay, even while the mundane features of the twentieth-century A-road (phone boxes, lay-bys, snack bars, roadside cafes), and the habits and routines associated with them, slowly fade from view,鈥� she says.

鈥淒ay to day, these transformations are imperceptible, but every so often we mark the change and, in the process, reconnect with landmark moments in our own lives as well the social and cultural milieux to which we have belonged.鈥�

Lynne Pearce is a Professor of Literary and Cultural Theory in the School of Arts at 91快活林 and Co-Director (Humanities) of CeMoRe (91快活林鈥檚 Centre for Mobilities Research). Her recent publications include Drivetime (2016) and Mobility, Memory and the Lifecourse (2019).

is published by Routledge on 6 February, 2026 and retails at 拢155 (hardback) and 拢36.79 (ebook). A paperback will follow next year.

]]> /cemore/john-urry-lecture-2026-jeremy-rifkin-on-planet-aqua/ Tue, 27 Jan 2026 11:53:50 +0000 /cemore/?p=10549 The Annual John Urry Lecture was established to commemorate the life and work of one of Lancaster鈥檚 foremost researchers, leading sociologist and co-founder of the ‘mobilities paradigm’, following his untimely death in March 2016.

Please join us online on Thursday 26th February, 2026, for the 10th Anniversary John Urry Lecture, which will be delivered by leading global thinker Jeremy Rifkin. 

Jeremy will present his latest ground-breaking book, ‘Planet Aqua’, in which he argues that we have misjudged the very nature of our existence. We have long believed that we live on a land planet when in reality we live on a water planet, and now the Earth鈥檚 hydrosphere is taking us into a mass extinction as it searches for a new normal.

Six thousand years ago, urban hydraulic civilizations began to arise around the world. Today we find ourselves, amidst that legacy, trapped in a massive commercial juggernaut of hydropower superdams, artificial lakes, reservoirs, and ubiquitous water infrastructure that鈥檚 collapsing in the throes of a rewilding hydrosphere.

The great reset, says Rifkin, is rethinking the waters as a 鈥渓ife source鈥� rather than a 鈥渞esource鈥� and learning how to adapt to the hydrosphere rather than adapting the hydrosphere to us. Rifkin takes us into a new future where we will need to reassess every aspect of the way we live 鈥� how we engage nature, pursue science, govern society, conceptualize economic life, educate our children, and even orient ourselves in time and space on our water planet: Planet Aqua.

The event is free but please .

The event will start at 4.30pm (GMT/11.30am EST)

Date

Thursday 26 February 2026 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM (UTC+00)

Location

Online event access details will be provided by the event organiser

Please join us for this year鈥檚 CeMoRe Winter Webinar at which Catharine Coleborne (Professor of History, Newcastle, AU) and Kaya Barry (Senior Lecturer in Geography and Art, Griffith, AU) will be presenting on their recent research. Although focusing on different periods in Australasian history, their research shares a common interest in the im/mobilities of the disenfranchised.

Catharine will speak to her recently published book, Vagrant Lives in Colonial Australasia: Regulating Mobility, 1840-1910 (Bloomsbury, 2024; pbk, 2025)

Kaya will reflect upon the findings of her ARC-funded research project, 鈥楳omentarily Immobile: the Futures of Backpacking and Seasonal Farm Workers鈥� with a short paper entitled: 鈥楿nseasonable Mobilities: practices of farming, weathering, and labour migration鈥�.

Following the presentations, our two discussants, Katie Pickles (Professor of History, Canterbury, New Zealand) and Giovanni Bettini (Senior Lecturer, Lancaster鈥檚 Environment Centre and CeMoRe Associate Director) will share their thoughts and questions, after which we will open up the discussion to our online participants.

When:                   Friday 30 January 2026

Time:                    9.00-10.30am GMT (UK) (PLEASE CHECK YOUR TIME ZONE)

Chair:                     Lynne Pearce

Contact                 L.Pearce@lancaster.ac.uk

TEAMS LINK:

November 14^th 2025 was wet and windy. We met in a car park on Walney Island near Barrow and then gathered on the beach in an area where honeycomb worms have built structures that mussels, cowries, and seaweeds have settled in.  The experts amongst us pointed out the variety of seaweeds there. At 11am an eerie siren sounded, the nearby BAE Systems testing their 鈥楶ublic Nuclear Safety Alert鈥�. We paused to consider other potential environmental alerts. On our way out we noticed a piece of a sargassum that is invasive in the UK and a small Kelp with holdfast knotted with fishing line and epiphytes.

The afternoon was hosted at Art Gene in Barrow and began with Lynne Pearce introducing mobilities research and how it is relevant to seaweed, Jen Southern鈥檚 tour of photographs of the Morecambe Bay seaweeds and the infrastructures they grow on, followed by an illuminating Q&A with Michele Stanley, a seaweed expert from the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

5 artists shared their rich as diverse works with seaweed: Amy Dickson, Jamie Jenkinson, Debbie Yare, Miranda Hill and Maddi Nicholson. They invited us to eat seaweed picked around this coast and consider its proximity to nuclear power stations; to watch films of dancing porphyra; to observe how quickly seaweed anchors on newly introduced rocks in a tidal zone; and invoke the rights of seaweed alongside the rights of water. At the end of the day we collaboratively wrote a seaweed mobilities manifesto as a record of our thoughts and conversations.

Themes included the resilience of seaweed, and its vulnerability to climate change. The mobilities within its own life cycle, how its spores anchor on substrate, and how it is mobile around the world through shipping and as food. We honoured the history of women working with seaweeds, particularly Kathleen Drew Baker known as the 鈥楳other of the Ocean鈥�, whose research led to a renewal of Japanese commercial seaweed production.

鈥樷�� there is so much exciting work being done on and with seaweed. I already knew it was super important in an ecological point of view, but seeing it through each others eyes and the way people are working with it, really installs some hope. The sense that seaweed isn’t just a resource but a storyteller. Hearing marine scientists and artists side-by-side helped me realise mobility, currents, tides, migration, shapes every strand of it. That connection between science and creativity has stayed with me.鈥� (participant feedback)

In September 2025 we welcomed Ole B. Jensen to Cemore and the School of Arts in Lancaster, and he very kindly agreed to present a paper on his forthcoming book. We are now very happy to share the recording.

Mobility Injustice by Design 鈥� reflections over design as an agent of power and social change

Based on a forthcoming book and current work-in-progress this presentation focus, on how injustice in relation to mobility both can be the intended result of design and policy decisions as well as unintentional consequences of design. The presentation shortly describes this within the areas of aging populations, unhoused, and disability. The theoretical framework connects design, bodies, and injustice to the overarching theme of mobility. The presentation critically discusses the role of design in everyday life and offers a tentative theory of design as something ontologically manifest in everyday life via the notion of  鈥榯he made鈥� as well as it discusses design鈥檚 potential as agent for social change via re-thinking it as something that can be 鈥榬e-made鈥� and even 鈥榰n-made鈥�.

20 June 2025

On an exceedingly hot Friday in June, colleagues from near and far gathered together in the Charles Carter Building at 91快活林 for CeMoRe鈥檚 Summer Symposium:  a regular fixture in the CeMoRe diary for several years now.

With a new director — Jen Southern聽 – at the helm, this was originally conceived as an 鈥榠n house鈥� event: an opportunity to reach out to聽 colleagues whose work may speak to mobilities research, either directly or indirectly聽 (hence the decision to simply title the event聽 鈥楳aking Connections鈥�).聽 Given Jen鈥檚 own interests, the CfP nevertheless indicated a particular interest in creativity /聽 mobile methods and the 鈥榤ore-than-human鈥�: suggestions which was taken up in several of the papers (see website for a full list of abstracts and speaker bios).

 As it turned out, the Symposium evolved into a much larger — and decidedly extra-mural — event than we had originally intended  owing to the coincidence  of several visitors to the Centre at this time. Jason Finch ( Abo Akademi, Turku, Finland) was here as a Visiting Scholar; Kate Moles (Cardiff) had been examining a mobilities-related PhD in Sociology the previous day;  and Lucia Quaquarelli and Adrien Frenay (Paris Nanterre, France) were in Lancaster as  invited guests following CeMoRe鈥檚 reciprocal participation in a CRPM seminar in Paris  last November.

These visitors were given the opportunity to present longer-form papers at the start of the afternoon (although Kate Moles regrettably had to withdraw at the last minute due to illness) and — as ever — it was inspiring to hear about mobilities research (and mobilities communities) elsewhere in the world.

The rest of the afternoon was divided into  two 鈥�7 x 5鈥� panels (i.e., 14 speakers speaking for 5 minutes each), which one of our online participants likened to speed-dating!  In the time-honoured tradition of  CeMoRe鈥檚  lunchtime 鈥榮tand-up鈥� sessions initiated by  former director, Monika Buscher, speakers were strictly bound to the five-minute rule courtesy of a squawking cockerel alarm on Jen Southern鈥檚 phone. This  resulted in an exhilarating showcase of contemporary mobilities-related research from across multiple disciplines, and with variable agendas. I did, nevertheless, spot a  recurrent concern with the power of discourse and the imagination to  shape our mobility futures —  for better and  for worse.  Although this event was not recorded, the abstracts and bios are archived on the CeMoRe website which means that readers can share in our quick-fire 鈥榝estival of ideas鈥� (and contact the speakers) if they so wish.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in this  event — both in-person and online — and especially those (aside from the visitors mentioned above) who made the effort to travel to Lancaster for this memorable day.  In these exceedingly challenging times for Higher Education in the UK,  it was heartening to see colleagues still finding the time to engage in the research and creative practice that they love and taking  inspiration from the mobilities paradigm.

Lynne Pearce

CeMoRe Co-Director (Humanities)

Please register here for tickets for online and in person attendance:

An opportunity to get together with mobilities researchers from Lancaster and further afield, to share our research, celebrate success, and maybe spark some new collaborations.聽

We look forward to welcoming guest mobilities researchers Lucia Quaquarelli and Adrien Frenay from Universit茅 Paris Nanterre, France; Jason Finch, 脜bo Akademi University, Finland; and Kate Moles, Cardiff University, UK. 

If you can’t make it to Lancaster please join us online to hear this exciting range of quick fire presentations sharing new mobilities reserch!

Symposium Schedule

Charles Carter Building, Room A15, 91快活林.

12  – 1pm Sandwich Lunch

1pm Welcome 鈥� Jen Southern

1.10 Panel

Lucia Quaquarelli and Adrien Frenay (Universit茅 Paris Nanterre, France)
Shaping space in literary mobilities. 鈥淓space, D茅placement, Mobilit茅鈥�: inter-weaving narratives, space, and place from the perspective of mobility. A CRPM鈥檚 Research Project

Jason Finch (脜bo Akademi University, Finland)
Musical Railway Representations via Mobile Methods: Louis Jordan, James Brown, and YouTube

Kate Moles (Cardiff University, UK)
Swimming in Compromised Times and Places

2pm 7 x 5 minute presentations

Lynne Pearce: The Road that Keeps on Giving

Muren Zhang:聽 Driving into the Impasse: Affective Adjustment and Backward Hope in Never Let Me Go (East China Normal University)

David Tyfield: A Chinese-inspired Civilisational Turn: E-Mobility鈥檚 Uneven Remaking of Space-Time and Beyond

Gerry Davies & Sait Toprak: Migrations, a mail art exhibition

Giovanni Bettini: Climate Borderscapes 鈥� borders, (im)mobilization and justice in the climate emergency

Bruce Bennett, Maryam Ghorbankarimi, Emma Rose: Site-seeing: making films with refugees

Nicola Spurling: Follow the Auto/biography

2.50 short break with tea/coffee

3.10pm 7 x 5 minute presentations

Monika Buscher: Changing Mobilities

Colin Pooley:聽 Approaches to the study of past virtual mobility

Artist A & Artist B: Hauling with Intent

Xiao Geng: The Writing of Plant Mobility in 20th-Century British Literature

Rodanthi Tzanelli: Environmental imaginaria in the age of extinction: three biostyles of radical mobility

Serena Pollastri, Suzana Ilic : Doing research with water and sands: reflections on engaging with the fluidity of coastal environments.

Jen Southern: More-than-human mobilities and infrastructures

Abstracts

1pm Panel

Lucia Quaquarelli, Adrien Frenay

Universit茅 Paris Nanterre

Shaping space in literary mobilities. 鈥淓space, D茅placement, Mobilit茅鈥�: inter-weaving narratives, space, and place from the perspective of mobility. A CRPM鈥檚 Research Project

The presentation will introduce the international project 芦Espace, d茅placement, mobilit茅禄, supported by the research centre CRPM-Centre de Recherches Pluridisciplinaires et Multilingues at the University Paris Nanterre, which aims to explore the relationship between space (urban and non-urban) and narratives through a transdisciplinary approach and from a mobility perspective. Two ongoing research strands within the project will then be presented: one focusing on a recent Italian literary corpus of 芦 narrazioni mobili 禄 and the other dealing with mobilities as literary tools and functions in the 19th century French novel.

Jason Finch

脜bo Akademi University, Finland 

Musical Railway Representations via Mobile Methods: Louis Jordan, James Brown, and YouTube 

Heard on the move via a smart phone, music originally recorded in the mid-twentieth century can be reinterpreted in novel ways that contain elements of co-production. My talk examines this activity using research frameworks drawn from mobility humanities, urban cultural studies and the history of media. In a recent conference paper developed as part of the ongoing research project 鈥楾wentieth-Century Railway Imaginations: Building the Mobility and Infrastructural Humanities鈥� (R91快活林LIMAGE), I considered the media and technological landscape of the period from the end of the Second World War until the mid-1960s, when this music was created and within which it was first consumed. In that environment, the dominant recording medium was the vinyl record. Popular music then was consumed at home using physical recordings such as records playing at 78, 45 and 33鈪� rpm, but also, through the juke box, in public places, as well as being heard perhaps more than in any other way over the airwaves via the radio. At the end of the period, in the United States, television in particular markets and as syndicated coast to coast becomes a factor. While the earlier paper concentrated on two pieces of music, 鈥楥hoo Choo Ch鈥橞oogie鈥� and 鈥楴ight Train鈥�, using critical infrastructure studies to put them into dialogue with the crisis of passenger rail which America experienced during the postwar decades, my talk in Lancaster will instead consider media production and consumption in the broadcast era (1940s鈥�1970s) alongside the methodological and social affordances of current (2020s) technology. 

Kate Moles

Cardiff University, UK

Swimming in Compromised Times and Places 

Abstract: Water allows us to think about and with mobility; it ebbs and flows, runs and seeps, collects and disperses, evaporates and pools, erodes and deposits. Access to water – to drink, for sanitation, and for leisure – offers ways to see social inequalities and to think about interconnections, vulnerability and complexities. More specifically, water moves us to consider environmental and non-human assemblages and swimming, as a method and as a social practice, provides insight into how movement, and blocked movement, invites us to think about the world today and the world becoming. Swimmers immerse themselves in polluted, risky, grey, brown, green waters as well as the blue idyllic that is often portrayed. Making sense of their practice and their accounts of where they swim and why, allows us to consider how we might go about swimming ethically in shifting and compromised times and places. 

2pm  7 x 5 minute Presentations

Lynne Pearce 

Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Cemore Co-Director, 91快活林.

The Road that Keeps on Giving 

Even the most mundane of roads, and roadscapes, delivers a wealth of knowledge aside from the 鈥榮ystem of automobility鈥� (Dennis and Urry 2009) in which it is enmeshed. The linear space of the road – and the fact it is often (though not invariably) apprehended from a moving vehicle and at speed — gives rise to transient and hence unique configurations of human and non-human forces. These afford novel insights into how, inter alia, road-users of different kinds orient themselves in space and time (including memory) via idiosyncratic landmarks, form powerful but paradoxical attachments to vanishing places, and participate in the production of everyday kin/aesthetics. Most importantly of all, the road demonstrates how change manifests itself in familiar and notionally unremarkable environments as well as the mechanisms by which change becomes visible. This is a snapshot of some of the topics addressed in my forthcoming book — Britain鈥檚 Changing Roadscapes: Mobility, Place, Attachment, Loss —  which I shall expand upon in this brief presentation, together with some signposts to where my road research is heading next: for example, a case-study capturing how roads — and the experience of driving them — are dramatically impacted upon by weather, including the consequence of climate change. 

Muren Zhang

East China Normal University

Driving into the Impasse: Affective Adjustment and Backward Hope in Never Let Me Go 

In Kazuo Ishiguro鈥檚 Never Let Me Go (2005), driving does not mark the possibility of freedom or forward movement. Kathy鈥檚 driving, often unmoored from destination or urgency, enacts a form of affective adjustment rather than escape. What unfolds is not a linear progression, but a spatial and temporal impasse 鈥� movement that suspends transformation while sustaining attachment to what has already been lost. Mobility in this context does not open the future; it manages the present. Drawing on Lauren Berlant鈥檚 account of impasse and Heather Love鈥檚 concept of backward hope, I read this mode of mobility as part of the novel鈥檚 affective biopolitical logic: not a refusal of the system, but a technique of staying within it. 

Dr Muren Zhang is Associate Professor of English Literature at East China Normal University. Her research interests include affect theory, mobility studies and contemporary British Literature and Culture. She is the author of Neo-Victorianism, Empathy and Reading (Bloomsbury, 2022). 

David Tyfield

Lancaster Environment Centre, Cemore Associate Director, 91快活林

A Chinese-inspired Civilisational Turn: E-Mobility鈥檚 Uneven Remaking of Space-Time and Beyond

Gerry Davies & Sait Toprak

Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts, 91快活林 / Dokuz Eyl眉l University, Izmir, Turkey

Migrations, a mail art exhibition

The exhibition invited artists to respond to the following theme, submitted by post in 2025: Movement and mobility are features of developed organisms, they are also means by which creatures, including we, orientate ourselves in and across the world. Today people and populations shift and change location for opportunity or leave under pressure. Archaeology tells us that pre-history saw radiating flows from Africa toward new lives East and West. And our futures will be rich with new Migration. While there remain few migratory peoples today, the migratory movement of critters, of birds, land animals and sea creatures continue.  Migrations mysterious and essential, large and small: wildebeest move for pasture, zooplankton up for food and down for safety, but sand dunes migrating, who knew? Artists are migrants. We live, move, work, communicate and trade within flows of migrating information. Geographically and digitally our ideas and work travel. In the street, on the kitchen table or a screen, in the studio or workshop, we encounter each other. You are coming the other way with something new; I take it up, pass it on. Whether actual or virtual, migrants exchange, collaborate and offer aid, ideas and support through shared mobility and movement. We offer the idea of Migrations freely and in the plural. Interpret it as human, animal, mineral, biological, geographic, gendered, geologic, spiritual or cultural. The effect might be close or far, the scale, visibility and impact global, local or microscopic.

Giovanni Bettini

Lancaster Environment Centre, Cemore Associate Director, 91快活林.

Climate Borderscapes 鈥� borders, (im)mobilization and justice in the climate emergency

This intervention introduces the notion of 鈥榗limate borderscapes鈥�, which brings work on borderscapes (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013, Brambilla and Jones 2019, Krichker 2021, Pe帽a 2023) into dialogue with the emerging climate mobilities framework (Boas et al 2022). The concept of climate borderscapes recasts the focus of debates on climate migration away from the spectre of a feared 鈥榗limate exodus鈥�. Instead, it foregrounds more pressing questions on how climate change may intersect with current processes of borderization (Mbembe 2019) and expulsion (Sassen). The risk is an intensification of forms of forced mobilisation and immobilization 鈥� often mirroring racialised lines 鈥� to which growing segments of the Majority World are exposed. The notion of climate borderscapes offers insights into the territorialization of sovereignty, borders, justice, and political subjectivities amidst the ongoing climate emergency, opening space to challenge dominant regimes and proposing alternative visions.

Bruce Bennett, Maryam Ghorbankarimi, Emma Rose

Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts, 91快活林.

Site-seeing: making films with refugees 

This presentation discusses a film-making course we ran in Spring 2023 and then again in 2024 for asylum seekers residing鈥痠n the local area.鈥疻orking in groups鈥痷nder our supervision, the participants devised, shot鈥痑nd edited a set of short films, and at the end of the course they presented their films on stage at the local independent cinema to a public audience. 

Many of the participants had been鈥痶ransported to temporary housing in鈥疞ancaster鈥痑nd Morecambe鈥痠n Northwest鈥疎ngland鈥痶hrough the Home Office National Dispersal Scheme鈥痺hile their asylum claims were being processed, some only a few weeks previously, and so one of the functions of this course was to allow them to investigate their new home (however temporary it would prove to be). 

In this presentation we outline the principles behind the design of this participatory project, discuss the work produced by the filmmakers, and reflect upon its effectiveness. 

Nicola Spurling

Sociology Department, Cemore Associate Director, 91快活林.

Follow the Auto/biography

3pm 7 x 5 minute Presentations

Monika Buscher 

Emeritus Professor, Sociology Department & Cemore, 91快活林

Changing Mobilities 

Why is it so hard to change mobility systems even as natural, political, and social systems are collapsing? What can we do? These questions are at the heart of a book I have co-authored with Greg Marsden, due out in 2025. In this presentation I give a glimpse of our research and conclusions. Many analysts suggest a crisis of imagination, and it can, indeed, seem easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But we find that there is nothing natural about this, it is a crisis manufactured by powerful people and interests. Part of their strategy is suppression of a vibrant world where alternative mobilities are not just imagined but made real against huge odds. We argue that mobile methods can help infrastructure resistance and allow these alternatives to take hold and spread. 

Colin Pooley

Emeritus Professor, Lancaster Environment Centre & Cemore, 91快活林 

Approaches to the study of past virtual mobility. 

Virtual mobility is usually associated with the internet age and the rise of social media. It is a term often applied to distance learning, but can also apply to any media through which people make connections and learn about distant places. My research has been using a large collection of letters written by a young lady in Toronto to her pen friend in north Lancashire. They began corresponding in 1946 and continued until 2013. Pen pal correspondence was common in the mid-twentieth century and the Toronto correspondents wrote to at least 40 different pen pals scattered all over the globe. Through these she made connections, swapped personal information and learned about distant places and cultures. Letters were not the only way in which virtual mobility took place in the past, but I argue that they could provide a dense network of interaction long before the internet age. 

Artist A & Artist B

University of Central Lancashire / Independent Artist

Artist A & Artist B: Hauling with Intent

鈥楢rtist A & Artist B鈥� is the collaborative name for Dr Jackie Haynes and Dr Heather Mullender-Ross. Since 2020 they have developed a series of multimedia, performance-based and mobilised artforms under the project title 鈥楽tatement of Intent鈥�. Their respective art practice-based PhDs focussed on the German Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters, and the wider legacy and contemporary relevance of Merz, Dada and Fluxus. They are currently working on a 7鈥� vinyl recording of shanty songs reflecting on their project (A-Side) and the working terms and conditions of the contemporary artist (B-Side). The forthcoming songs, accompanying exhibition and live event will inform a co-written book chapter fuelled by the creative exchanges and collaborative strategies of Raoul Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters, during their period of enforced exile. Both Statement of Intent and the book chapter seek to illuminate the work of both sets of collaborators by asking, what forms of art practice can articulate ideas arising from persistence, non-fixity and the pooling of skills and ideas?  

Xiao Geng

College of Foreign Languages, South-Central Minzu University 
Visiting Professor, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge 

The Writing of Plant Mobility in 20th-Century British Literature 

This paper explores the concept of botanical mobility in British literature, examining how plants鈥攂oth literal and symbolic鈥攖raverse geographical, cultural, and metaphorical boundaries across key literary works. Focusing on texts from the Romantic era to postcolonial narratives, the study analyzes how authors such as John Keats, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, etc employ botanical imagery to interrogate themes of colonialism, ecological interconnectedness, and human displacement. By tracing the movement of plants as symbols of migration, hybridity, and resilience, the essay reveals how flora in literature often mirrors socio-political dynamics. Drawing on ecocritical and postcolonial frameworks, the paper argues that botanical mobility serves as a narrative device to critique power structures and envision ecological solidarity. Ultimately, it contends that British literature鈥檚 engagement with plant life transcends mere pastoral aesthetics, offering a radical reimagining of nature鈥檚 role in shaping identity and resistance. 

Rodanthi Tzanelli

School of Sociology & Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK 

Environmental imaginaria in the age of extinction: three biostyles of radical mobility 

Abstract: Environmental imaginaria is my own umbrella term, as featured in my last monograph, which explored different schools of critical thought, travel style and artistic creativity addressing planetary crises, and especially those triggered by climate catastrophes (Tzanelli, 2025). It refers to multiple sites, physical, virtual and audiovisual, which preserve traces of actual and imagined species and habitats extinct or at risk of extinction. The spectrality of these sites is conducive to imaginaries of loss, ecocide but also hope and hospitality extended to more-than-human life.  

Rather than discussing the sites themselves, I focus on three styles of human mobility enacted in and through them, each of them corresponding to the moving subject鈥檚 radical habitus: posthuman countertravel (Tzanelli, 2017, 2025), planetary drifting (Szerszynski, 2018), and last-time travel (McGaurr and Lester, 2018).  Each of these styles relates to the mobile subject鈥檚 attitude towards climate change (catastrophist, gradualist and denialistist – Urry, 2016). Not only each style imprints attitude as their (post-)biopolitical signature, but it also situates them within different arguments in the 鈥楥ritical Zone鈥� (Latour, 2018). 

Serena Pollastri, Suzana Ilic

Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts / Lancaster Environment Centre, 91快活林

Doing research with water and sands: reflections on engaging with the fluidity of coastal environments. 

The seashore is an elusive and arguably arbitrary border between sea and the coast: it moves with the rhythms of the tides and through sudden shifts caused by storms, winds, erosion and sediment accretion. In intertidal saltmarshes this border becomes blurred and frayed, as it seeps through the pockets of vegetations that exist in the wet spaces between water and land.鈥� 

These areas are also site of intricate entanglements between human and non-human animal communities whose lives are affected by water, its movements, and its often-unpredictable effect.鈥� 

Drawing from the experience gained in a recent project of design and deployment of nature-based solutions in intertidal zones, this contribution reflects on the importance of situated knowledge in coastal areas. Specifically, it argues for incorporating鈥痜luidity鈥痠n research and design methods that fully embrace the dynamic nature of the shore 鈥� and resist the temptation to fully rely on computational models and predictions.鈥� 

Jen Southern

Cemore Director, Lancaster Institute for Contemporary Arts, 91快活林

More-than-human mobilities and infrastructures

This presentation introduces the mobilities and anchoring of seaweed as a site for study of relational more-than-human mobilities. This research collaboration with Prof. Lynne Pearce focusses on relationships between seaweed archives and seaweed in the wild to explore mobility and infrastructure. I will start by looking at the discoveries of phycologist Kathleen Drew-Baker that led to modern methods of Japanese Nori cultivation. Then, through an introduction made by artist Debbie Yare, I focus on the close observational work of W.B. Kendall found in Barrow Archives. As railway engineer, geologist, and seaweed collector his work offers a useful example to explore connections between surveys, collections and engineering infrastructures.

Deadline: 28 April 2025

Exhibition Dates: 13 May-27 May 2025

Exhibition Place: Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA)

Contact: saittoprak01@gmail.com

Curators: Sait Toprak & Gerry Davies

Submission Address: Sait Toprak & Gerry Davies, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA). 91快活林. Lancaster. LA1 4YW. England. United Kingdom

• All submitted work will be exhibited
• No technical limitations
• Work should be about 鈥楳igrations鈥�
• No artwork will be returned to participants

M91快活林L ART: MIGRATIONS

Movement and mobility are features of developed organisms, they are also means by which creatures, including we, orientate ourselves in and across the world. Today people and populations shift and change location for opportunity or leave under pressure. Archaeology tells us that pre-history saw radiating flows from Africa toward new lives East and West. And our futures will be rich with new Migrations

While there remain few migratory peoples today, the migratory movement of critters, of birds, land animals and sea creatures continue.  Migrations mysterious and essential, large and small: wildebeest move for pasture, zooplankton up for food and down for safety, but sand dunes migrating, who knew?

Artists are migrants. We live, move, work, communicate and trade within flows of migrating information. Geographically and digitally our ideas and work travel. In the street, on the kitchen table or a screen, in the studio or workshop, we encounter each other. You are coming the other way with something new; I take it up, pass it on. Whether actual or virtual, migrants exchange, collaborate and offer aid, ideas and support through shared mobility and movement.

We offer the idea of Migrations freely and in the plural. Interpret it as human, animal, mineral, biological, geographic, gendered, geologic, spiritual or cultural. The effect might be close or far, the scale, visibility and impact global, local or microscopic. Over to you now!