Welcome to the C-MUS Blog

The Centre for Mobilities and Urban Studies (C-MUS) at Aalborg University is a trans-disciplinary research collaboration between mobility researchers from the Humanities Faculty, Social Science Faculty and the Engineering and Science Faculty at Aalborg University. In this blog you will find everything related to C-MUS.

Mobilities Design - C-MUS Presents at MIT

17.05.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed, Mobilities Design Group

Monday May 13 PhD Student Ditte Bendix Lanng and Professor Ole B. Jensen presented their thought on ‘Mobilities research – towards a new research field’ at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. The abstract for the presentation was the following: Contemporary society is marked and defined by the ways in which mobile [...]

The Meaning of Moving 8 - Concordia Calling

17.05.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed

The meeting of European and Pan American Mobilities research communities Today I want to diverge a bit from the earlier blog posts with their relative theoretical and methodological points in order to address the recently held 4th Pan American Mobilities Network Conference at Concordia University, Montreal (May 8-11 2013). Elsewhere on the C-MUS Blog you [...]

C-MUS delegation presented at the Differential Mobilities Conference

12.05.2013 • By Maria Quvang Harck Vestergaard • Uncategorized

It is Sunday morning in rainy Montreal and I am sitting on my bed looking back at a wonderful conference on “Differential Mobilities” organised by the Pan-American Mobilities Network and the Cosmobilities Network and hosted at Concordia University in Montreal. This year we have been a large delegation from C-MUS who participated in the conference [...]

The Meaning of Moving 7 - Metaphors and Mobilities Research

30.04.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed, Uncategorized

As promised in my blog post MM2 I want to return to the issue of metaphors. The issue of metaphors in research is a rather old one, but I think still worth pondering on. If you think about it, quite a lot of our everyday communication relies on the uses of metaphors and these are [...]

The Meaning of Moving 6 - Visual Mobilities Research

23.04.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed

I want to address the issue of photography as mobile method and reflect a bit on the ‘visual turn’ within social science and mobilities research (I will write about photos only even though much more could be said about video and camera surveillance). The reason why this occupies me now is partly that I had [...]

The Meaning of Moving 5 - Paradigm or Turn?

15.04.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed

Today I want to reflect upon one of the descriptors used when thinking about mobilities research. Often we find the research field described as a ‘turn’ or a ‘paradigm’. I suppose one take on this is simply to ignore the difference, or more pragmatically use the terms interchangeable. This, however, is not the kind of [...]

Mobilities Design Group Mission Statement

08.04.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • Mobilities Design Group

C-MUS MOBILITIES DESIGN GROUP Mission Statement Paper Aalborg University 2013 Background Contemporary society is marked and defined by the ways in which mobile goods, bodies, vehicles, objects, and data are organized, moved and staged. These developments and their relations to social, cultural, economic, technological and architectural realms have been vigorously researched at the trans-disciplinary Centre [...]

The Meaning of Moving 4 - Issues and Troubles

08.04.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed

Today I want to touch upon an issue that many social scientists are struggling with. Namely how to research and write on topics that are personally interesting and committing, at the same time as to keep the proper ‘distance’ and not fall into a trap of idiosyncratic and subjective philosophy. Personally I have always liked [...]

The Meaning of Moving 3 - Mobilities Design

02.04.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed

As mentioned in various publications I believe that the social sciences engaged with mobilities are not sufficiently sensitive to the physical, material and spatial dimensions of mobilities. Obviously there are differences since geographers may get closer to this than say sociologists. However, on a general note there is a lack of more precise understanding of [...]

The Meaning of Moving 2 - 'Staging Mobilities'

18.03.2013 • By Ole B Jensen • C-MUS Newsfeed

Today I want to say a few things about my new book ‘Staging Mobilities’ (Routledge, 2013). In particular I want to speak to the idea of working with a general metaphor. In so doing I have been much inspired by Erving Goffman and his notion of seeing the social ‘as drama’ (see Goffman (1959) The [...]