Culture, Space and Place
This research cluster investigates how space, splace and social difference are produced through practices, narratives and emobodied experience.
About our work
The Culture, Space and Place cluster investigates how space, place and social difference are actively and collectively produced through practices, narratives and embodied experience.
Much of our work explores how people live with and manage the stuff of daily life, from the social dynamics of food to the complex governing of waste and energy. However, this focus on the material is inextricably linked with the stories we tell about our lives. Whether researching the ‘weary’ geographies of housing precarity or the vibrant geographies of curiosity and place, through interrogation of emotional and sensory dimensions of diverse lived experience, work in the cluster emphasises how space and place are felt, reproduced and contested as much as inhabited.
To capture these nuances, the cluster employs creative, participatory, and non-representational methodologies alongside more traditional methods. By prioritising storytelling, performance, and the 'imagined' geography alongside the physical, these scholars can address complex, intangible subjects—such as loneliness, safety, and belonging. Ultimately, this synthesis asserts that global challenges, from sustainability to social justice, are most deeply understood when anchored in the local, the tactile, and the narrated experience of the everyday.
Get involved with our work
The Culture, Space and Place cluster is led by Prof Matt Watson (m.watson@sheffield.ac.uk). If you are a member of the School of Geography and Planning and wish to join the cluster, or you work in a related field and wish to collaborate, please get in touch.
