Geoff Bright | Manchester Metropolitan University (original) (raw)

Papers by Geoff Bright

Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies

Article published in Edinost, an online and printed free newspaper, a laboratory where artists, a... more Article published in Edinost, an online and printed free newspaper, a laboratory where artists, academics and citizens can create collectively a framework for a new antifascism, hosted and edited by Alessio Mazzaro,

Here, guest editors N. Geoffrey Bright, Helen Manchester, and Sylvie Allendyke (formerly Sarah Dy... more Here, guest editors N. Geoffrey Bright, Helen Manchester, and Sylvie Allendyke (formerly Sarah Dyke) introduce this special issue of Qualitative Inquiry on space, place, and social justice in education. They explore how the thematic focus originated in a series of informal and formal discussions that came together in an international research seminar that took place in Manchester, United Kingdom, in summer 2012. That event considered how qualitative inquirers in education research are currently deploying the "spatial turn" in social theory to respond to a global context of increasingly asymmetrical power relations. Uniquely, that is, the Manchester seminar called for a discussion that articulated theoretical interrogations of space and place to practical approaches aimed at doing social justice in education and education research. Picking up topics raised by the contributing authors and relating them to their own work, the editors explore the connections, divergences, and novel productivities that are evident in the theoretical and practical approaches adopted, noting their fruitfulness for an ongoing practice of "entanglement" in which research, as an aspect of living justly, might reside.

Journal of Working-Class Studies

This article reflects on a series of ‘Ghost lab’ events (Bright 2019) with local people where cre... more This article reflects on a series of ‘Ghost lab’ events (Bright 2019) with local people where creative memory work – stimulated by songs, films, and readings from a pack of what we have called a ‘Community Tarot’ cards (our main focus here) – was used to register aspects of what, following Gordon (2008), we are calling a ‘social haunting’ of former coal-mining communities in the north of England and the valley communities of south Wales. The events were part of a joint 2018-19 research project called Song lines on the road – Life lines on the move! (On the Road for short) that sought to share two independent strands of longitudinal, co-produced, arts-based research in which we have developed approaches aimed at amplifying how living knowledge flows on in communities even when the shocks and intensities of lived experience defy articulation and representation. During the last decade or so both of us have worked with artists to co-produce research projects that enable young people and...

Drawing on research in de-industrialised coal-mining communities in the north of England, this ar... more Drawing on research in de-industrialised coal-mining communities in the north of England, this article focuses on how experiences of some young people might be approached through a notion of precarity linked to the idea of a ‘social haunting’ of the coalfields. Concentrating on data gathered in the period after the 2010 change of UK government, the article considers how localities suffering under the impact of ‘austerity’ measures have also witnessed moments of vivid, carnivalesque resurgence linked to celebrations of the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in April 2013 and of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1984–1985 UK miners’ strike during 2014–2015. These celebrations mark a watershed in the cultural and affective life of the communities, one aspect of which relates to how young people with very different educational trajectories have become involved alongside each other in those events as a result of their different experiences of precarity.
Keywords: precarity; youth; coal-mining areas; social haunting

Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies

Article published in Edinost, an online and printed free newspaper, a laboratory where artists, a... more Article published in Edinost, an online and printed free newspaper, a laboratory where artists, academics and citizens can create collectively a framework for a new antifascism, hosted and edited by Alessio Mazzaro,

Here, guest editors N. Geoffrey Bright, Helen Manchester, and Sylvie Allendyke (formerly Sarah Dy... more Here, guest editors N. Geoffrey Bright, Helen Manchester, and Sylvie Allendyke (formerly Sarah Dyke) introduce this special issue of Qualitative Inquiry on space, place, and social justice in education. They explore how the thematic focus originated in a series of informal and formal discussions that came together in an international research seminar that took place in Manchester, United Kingdom, in summer 2012. That event considered how qualitative inquirers in education research are currently deploying the "spatial turn" in social theory to respond to a global context of increasingly asymmetrical power relations. Uniquely, that is, the Manchester seminar called for a discussion that articulated theoretical interrogations of space and place to practical approaches aimed at doing social justice in education and education research. Picking up topics raised by the contributing authors and relating them to their own work, the editors explore the connections, divergences, and novel productivities that are evident in the theoretical and practical approaches adopted, noting their fruitfulness for an ongoing practice of "entanglement" in which research, as an aspect of living justly, might reside.

Journal of Working-Class Studies

This article reflects on a series of ‘Ghost lab’ events (Bright 2019) with local people where cre... more This article reflects on a series of ‘Ghost lab’ events (Bright 2019) with local people where creative memory work – stimulated by songs, films, and readings from a pack of what we have called a ‘Community Tarot’ cards (our main focus here) – was used to register aspects of what, following Gordon (2008), we are calling a ‘social haunting’ of former coal-mining communities in the north of England and the valley communities of south Wales. The events were part of a joint 2018-19 research project called Song lines on the road – Life lines on the move! (On the Road for short) that sought to share two independent strands of longitudinal, co-produced, arts-based research in which we have developed approaches aimed at amplifying how living knowledge flows on in communities even when the shocks and intensities of lived experience defy articulation and representation. During the last decade or so both of us have worked with artists to co-produce research projects that enable young people and...

Drawing on research in de-industrialised coal-mining communities in the north of England, this ar... more Drawing on research in de-industrialised coal-mining communities in the north of England, this article focuses on how experiences of some young people might be approached through a notion of precarity linked to the idea of a ‘social haunting’ of the coalfields. Concentrating on data gathered in the period after the 2010 change of UK government, the article considers how localities suffering under the impact of ‘austerity’ measures have also witnessed moments of vivid, carnivalesque resurgence linked to celebrations of the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in April 2013 and of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1984–1985 UK miners’ strike during 2014–2015. These celebrations mark a watershed in the cultural and affective life of the communities, one aspect of which relates to how young people with very different educational trajectories have become involved alongside each other in those events as a result of their different experiences of precarity.
Keywords: precarity; youth; coal-mining areas; social haunting