Andrew Hickey | University of Southern Queensland (original) (raw)

Books by Andrew Hickey

Pedagogy is foundational to cultural studies. From the very outset cultural studies positioned pe... more Pedagogy is foundational to cultural studies. From the very outset cultural studies positioned pedagogy as significantly more than just formalised and institutionally-centred activations of teaching and learning. For cultural studies, pedagogy is witnessed in the social practices, relationships, routines and life-ways people engage in the living of lives.
This collection presents accounts of pedagogy that move beyond simple (and simplistic) articulations of pedagogy as occurring solely within the classroom. Taking pedagogy beyond formal institutional settings The Pedagogies of Cultural Studies seeks to look again at the implications of pedagogy by (re)opening for consideration pedagogy as something fundamental to the disciplinary formulations of the discipline. Evident not only in the objects of study prefigured by cultural studies but also in the practice of the discipline itself, pedagogy mediates the formations of cultural studies’ disciplinary terrain. The Pedagogies of Cultural Studies seeks to look again at the deep-held assumptions that guide cultural studies in order to explicate the signature pedagogies that shape the discipline and provide the foundation for its disciplinarity.

This edited book works through possibilities for mobilising the SOSE and HPE curriculum areas for... more This edited book works through possibilities for mobilising the SOSE and HPE curriculum areas for social betterment and community participation. Each chapter author presents new ways of looking at the curriculum to generate effective participatory social engagement.

This book presents a cultural studies approach to reading the popular representations of teachers... more This book presents a cultural studies approach to reading the popular representations of teachers, schools and schooling in the mass media. It argues for a critical approach in dealing with the politics of representation in play, and works through a reading of print, film and television images of education.

Book Chapters by Andrew Hickey

Embodied and Walking Pedagogies Engaging the Visual Domain: Research, Creation and Practice, 2018

Using Tim Ingold’s (2011) assertion that walking provides the opportunity for “mobilising all of ... more Using Tim Ingold’s (2011) assertion that walking provides the opportunity for “mobilising all of our senses of smell and touch as well as vision” (42) this chapter presents a series of three case studies that explicate the role walking plays as an embodied, but deeply reflexive point of encounter. A series of walking case examples, drawn from the authors’ collaborations, are used to argue a case for a walking method that takes account of the sensory, liminal, but ultimately uncertain encounters walking provokes. We outlay within this chapter what Anita Sinner et al (2006) have identified as a “localised and evolving methodology” (p. 1224) that positions walking as central to its conduct. The act of walking opened opportunities for encounters that otherwise would not have been possible, and in taking this cue from the case examples, we connect walking with the possibility of the liminal; of being on the threshold. We will position walking as that which is quintessentially in-between, a space of disruption and uncertainty, but from which might emerge a “topology for new tasks toward other places of thinking and putting to work” (Lather, 1997, p. 486).

This past decade has seen an increasing focus on the effects and proliferation of incivility, aca... more This past decade has seen an increasing focus on the effects and proliferation of incivility, academic bullying, workplace harassment and similar other disruptive workplace behaviours within the university (Fogg 2008). Yet despite this growing awareness and charting of the costs of these behaviours - both individual and organisational - it remains that the maltreatment of academics, formulation of flawed and ineffective policy responses and the maintenance of organisational structures that encourage negative interpersonal behaviours remain entrenched (Giroux 2014; Chatterjee and Maira 2014). Within current contexts of tight funding climates, the questioning of the role of higher education within wider social contexts and epistemic changes in the shape and function of the university-as-institution, the university has become a space of outright competition and destructive interpersonal encounters.
Yet, the university remains a place of desirable employment and creativity. This chapter turns attention to charting the use and usefulness of testimonio writing as a possible method for recording experiences from the contemporary university in an effort to identify the pleasure that remains in academic labours. Rather than miring its concerns in the further diagnosis of, or lament for, the state the contemporary university finds itself in, this chapter will seek to explore testimonio as a method for recalling the authors’ experiences of academic life as a space of jouissance. In short, testimonio will be exhibited as a method of utility for excavating a sense of the individual via the production of collegial personal narratives that seek insight into the pleasurable aspects of the university, now. In charting the idios kosmos of the authors’ personal experiences of the university via testimonio, a sense of the affective, personal and inner experiences of the contemporary university as a site of collegial possibility will be uncovered.

Pedagogy is foundational to cultural studies. At the very outset cultural studies positioned peda... more Pedagogy is foundational to cultural studies. At the very outset cultural studies positioned pedagogy as significantly more than just formalised and institutionally-centred activations of teaching and learning. For cultural studies, pedagogy is witnessed in the social practices, relationships, routines and life-ways that people engage in the living of lives. This collection presents accounts that move beyond simple (and simplistic) articulations of pedagogy as occurring solely within the classroom. Taking the Self, the disciplinary formations and institutional settings of cultural studies as its sites of activation, The Pedagogies of Cultural Studies seeks to look again at the implications presented by pedagogy and the foundation that pedagogy provides for doing cultural studies. Evident not only in the objects of study prefigured by cultural studies but also in the practice of the discipline itself, pedagogy mediates cultural studies' disciplinary terrain and the signatures that shape its conduct.

What does it mean to engage the community? In an era when the very idea of community is fraught w... more What does it mean to engage the community? In an era when the very idea of community is fraught with contestation (Bauman 2007) and definitional slippery-ness, how might the work of formal institutions like local governments engage that which is necessarily plural, diverse and not always immediately present to the eyes of the outsider? What might the nature of this engagement be and how might the politics of representation- around what is considered community and how this comes to be- frame the very construction of community itself? This chapter explores these questions from the perspective of projects undertaken by the Community Development and Facilities branch of a large regional council located in south-east Queensland, Australia, and the collaborations between this branch, a sociologist-researcher and the community undertaken through 2011-2012. These projects sought to pin-down what community meant to the work of the community engagement professionals of the branch, and in the process charted the contested terrain through which community engagement work navigates. This chapter will highlight the mechanism by which conceptualisations of community were deployed by the branch, the role that active, field-based research evaluation plays within this and some new ways of working that local governments might assume as ‘brokers’ of community.

This chapter will propose a ‘critical ethnography of the everyday’ in the hope that such a method... more This chapter will propose a ‘critical ethnography of the everyday’ in the hope that such a methodology- as a personal aesthetic- might reinvigorate democratic participation in our globalised, late-capitalist world. Such an approach carries a dual purpose; firstly, the reclamation of a sense of self via agentic social action, and secondly, the writing-back to a cultural dynamic that is currently unbalanced in terms of the way public dialogue is produced and mediated. It is contended that the contemporary cultural landscape of the global West is one in which the ability to speak is held increasingly by those few who possess an agency derived from their positioning as beneficiaries of the global economic-political complex. In conjunction with this, it will be argued that public space becomes the battle ground upon which cultural ‘logics’ and ‘sense’ are mediated according to corporatised pronouncements that serve specific interests whilst masquerading as shared.
I will propose that through acts of a purposeful flanerie, a critical ethnographic citizenry might engage and offer alternatives to the concerns of those multitudes of interest-ridden language games present in contemporary social contexts. To do so, I will suggest that nothing is as it might seem on first appearances in our late-capitalist, global networks, and that in this age of the image, a citizenry empowered through a critical aesthetic for engaging those ‘on-the-run’ constructions of identity and ‘being’ that demarcate and order collective understandings, a hope to rebalance the score in the interests of democratic participation might be realised.
What is proposed in this chapter is a research practice intended for the everyday. It works through the mobilization of the emancipatory concerns of critical ethnography (borne of the academy) writ public. But rather than being an all-encompassing language game by its own construction, such a practice seeks to incorporate the positionality of the citizen-as-critic in dialogue with the image-scape of public space. Hence, it is suggested that such an approach functions as an aesthetic from which ‘living critically’ might develop. This isn’t a methodology that is ‘tried on’ when needed, but a way-of-being as reflexive, conscious and critically minded.
The chapter will draw on evidence sources derived from the author’s own ‘critical ethnographies of the everyday’ and also combine this with resistant, community centred approaches to critique drawn from the work of activists including Bill Talen, Ron English and others in order to demonstrate how such a method might connect to more democratic participation in public culture.

This chapter builds on earlier work that explores the operation of the streetscape as host for pu... more This chapter builds on earlier work that explores the operation of the streetscape as host for public pedagogies. Using the signs and symbols presented in the street by the mass- communication complex, this chapter charts a critical process for ‘being’ in the street.

This chapter argues that the iPod and similar digital accoutrements of youth operate as a simulac... more This chapter argues that the iPod and similar digital accoutrements of youth operate as a simulacrum of 'youth-ness'. Represented in the mass-communication networks of contemporary Western locales, ‘youthness’ maintains a set of specific thematic tropes repeated throughout the cultural network. Using the iPod as a symbolic representation of youthful ‘hipness’, ideas of youth-ness as commodified through mass communication networks are deconstructed.

Papers by Andrew Hickey

This report outlines findings from this study of the region’s young people. In particular, focus ... more This report outlines findings from this study of the region’s young people. In particular, focus was given to identifying the ways that young people engage with services designed to support their own personal development and connection to their communities, and the perceptions young people have of life within the Toowoomba region. Within this, the data captured for this study highlighted that young peoples’ awareness of the opportunities available varied, and that perceptions of initiatives and services aimed at further supporting young peoples’ participation in community- formation remain, in some instances, ill-informed. In particular, the findings outlined in this report highlight that: • the ways that services are provisioned vary across the region; • the provision of opportunities for young people to participate as active members of the community require a more cohesive and planned agenda of inter-agency collaboration; • the ways that young people participate in initiatives and engage as active members of the community requires cognisance of the diverse backgrounds, lifestyles and interests that young people hold, and that; • the ways that young people are envisioned and conceptualised as a group requires attention in order to shape more positive representations of young people as integral members of the community. Using themes derived from the analysis of a dataset comprising interview, focus-group and documentary material, along with a comprehensive review of policy documentation from Local and State government levels, the findings outlined in this report identify that: • The meaningful engagement of young people in decision- making requires more than tokenistic consultation and engagement of young people in limited areas of focus. • The provision of services aimed at the support of young people would benefit from greater inter-agency collaboration and coordination. It emerged as a major theme in this study that those service providers currently working with young people in the Toowoomba region are ‘stretched’ (in some cases beyond capacity). Although a sector-wide challenge, the ‘separation’ experienced by the region’s service providers between policy directives and funding compacts and the day-to-day realities of service provision represent a major hurdle to effective service delivery and sustainable practice. • Young people do hold the capacity to contribute to decision-making and the formation of their communities, but are rarely afforded the opportunity to meaningfully do so. Further, providing young people with the skills and capacity to develop their own awareness of issues affecting their community, and opportunities to engage in directing their futures is crucial. • More can be done to shift, particularly negative, preconceptions of who young people are. Prevailing stereotypes of young people do exert an influence on how young people engage-with and are received-by their communities.

How is it that a group of young people, encountered in a program designed to remedy behaviour iss... more How is it that a group of young people, encountered in a program designed to remedy behaviour issues and disengagement from schooling, can be found to be engaged (and engaging) learners? What does it mean for these young people when the ‘regular’ classroom becomes a site within which they cannot effectively engage in learning? More intrinsically, what might it mean for these young people, and the communities within which they live, when the prospects for those who leave formal education early will likely include extended periods of unemployment, increased probability of reliance on government assistance and a greater likelihood of social exclusion (The Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth, 2000; Flint, 2011; Deloitte Access Economics, 2012)? Informal Learning in the Secondary School: Behaviour Remediation Programs and the Informal Learning Environment as a Space for Re-engagement (hereon Informal Learning in the Secondary School), sought to respond to these questions. Drawn from e...

Social alternatives, 2015

New Perspectives on Education for Democracy, 2021

Embodied and Walking Pedagogies Engaging the Visual Domain: Research, Creation and Practice, 2018

Social alternatives, 2015

New Perspectives on Education for Democracy, 2021

Journal of Educational Administration and History, 2021

Journal of Academic Ethics, 2021

A growing body of literature critical of ethics review boards has drawn attention to the processe... more A growing body of literature critical of ethics review boards has drawn attention to the processes used to determine the ethical merit of research. Citing criticism on the bureaucratic nature of ethics review processes, this literature provides a useful provocation for (re)considering how the ethics review might be enacted. Much of this criticism focuses on how ethics review boards deliberate, with particular attention given to the lack of transparency and opportunities for researcher recourse that characterise ethics review processes. Centered specifically on the conduct of ethics review boards convened within university settings, this paper draws on these inherent criticisms to consider the ways that ethics review boards might enact more communicative and deliberative practices. Outlining a set of principles against which ethics review boards might establish strategies for engaging with researchers and research communities, this paper draws attention to how Deliberative communication, Engagement with researchers and the Distribution of responsibility for the ethics review might be enacted in the day-to-day practice of the university human ethics review board. This paper develops these themes via a conceptual lens derived from Habermas’ (The theory of communicative action. Volume 1: Reason and the rationalization of society, 1984) articulation of ‘communicative action’ and Fraser’s (Social Text, 25(26), 56–80, 1990) consideration of ‘strong publics’ to cast consideration of the role that human ethics review boards might play in supporting university research cultures. Deliberative communication, Engagement with researchers and the Distribution of responsibility provide useful conceptual prompts for considering how ethics review boards might undertake their work.

Producing Pleasure in the Contemporary University, 2017

The SAGE Handbook of Critical Pedagogies, 2020

This chapter extends a consideration of the ‘place’ of critical pedagogical practice by contempla... more This chapter extends a consideration of the ‘place’ of critical pedagogical practice by contemplating, specifically, the ways that dialogue provides a foundational context for critical pedagogical engagements. The argument outlined in this chapter will suggest that it is at the moment of the pedagogical encounter – that is, at the point of dialogic interaction – that a sense of the Other finds meaning. I suggest that it is through the act of engaging the Other that a space in-between educator and educand opens as a site of critical interrogation and interactivity. This is a space traversed by dialogue, and via the shared interaction that dialogue enables, the figuration of an inter-relationality borne of- the-moment materialises. Dialogue provides the terrain upon which this shared moment of encounter finds activation and purpose.

Pedagogy is foundational to cultural studies. At the very outset cultural studies positioned peda... more Pedagogy is foundational to cultural studies. At the very outset cultural studies positioned pedagogy as significantly more than just formalised and institutionally-centred activations of teaching and learning. For cultural studies, pedagogy is witnessed in the social practices, relationships, routines and life-ways that people engage in the living of lives. This collection presents accounts that move beyond simple (and simplistic) articulations of pedagogy as occurring solely within the classroom. Taking the Self, the disciplinary formations and institutional settings of cultural studies as its sites of activation, The Pedagogies of Cultural Studies seeks to look again at the implications presented by pedagogy and the foundation that pedagogy provides for doing cultural studies. Evident not only in the objects of study prefigured by cultural studies but also in the practice of the discipline itself, pedagogy mediates cultural studies’ disciplinary terrain and the signatures that sh...

In 2011, a partnership between the Community Development and Facilities Branch of the Toowoomba R... more In 2011, a partnership between the Community Development and Facilities Branch of the Toowoomba Regional Council and Dr Andrew Hickey from the University of Southern Queensland commenced exploring the uses of social research in local government community development practice. The branch had identified a need for developing richer accounts of communities located within the Toowoomba region local government area, and although significant economic and demographic datasets were available via in-house and external providers, including the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census of Population and Housing (2011, 2006) and Council’s own ‘Community Profile’ (2011) and ‘Community Atlas’ (2011) socio-demographic maps, the analyses of community drawn from these accounts could not provide Branch staff with a complete picture of the communities they were working with. Branch staff sought a sense of the qualitative aspects of living within community and set about attempting to identify the relation...

Using Tim Ingold’s (2011) assertion that walking provides the opportunity for 'mobilising all... more Using Tim Ingold’s (2011) assertion that walking provides the opportunity for 'mobilising all of our senses of smell and touch as well as vision' (42) this chapter presents a series of three case studies that explicate the role walking plays as an embodied, but deeply reflexive point of encounter. A series of walking case examples, drawn from the authors’ collaborations, are used to argue a case for a walking method that takes account of the sensory, liminal, but ultimately uncertain encounters walking provokes. We outlay within this chapter what Anita Sinner et al (2006) have identified as a 'localised and evolving methodology' (p. 1224) that positions walking as central to its conduct. The act of walking opened opportunities for encounters that otherwise would not have been possible, and in taking this cue from the case examples, we connect walking with the possibility of the liminal; of being on the threshold. We will position walking as that which is quintessenti...

On the 24th August 2016, the culminating performance of Opera Queensland’s ‘Project Rossini’ prod... more On the 24th August 2016, the culminating performance of Opera Queensland’s ‘Project Rossini’ production of The Barber of Seville was held at Toowoomba’s Empire Theatre. The performance was the last in a series of 8 performances across Queensland between July and August 2016. This report outlines an evaluation of the Toowoomba production of The Barber of Seville. Of particular focus are the intentions that underpinned the tour and Opera Q’s commitment to ensuring that regional performers and audiences were engaged as an integral component of the performance. Further to this, the approaches taken by Opera Q for considering the place of the performing arts (and opera specifically) within the regional performance landscape, and the role that regionally based performers and audiences provided as a foundation for touring performing arts productions offer added points of consideration. The lessons drawn from the approach deployed by Opera Q have resonance broadly for touring creative and p...

Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 2021

Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 2018

Cultural Studies, 2017

ABSTRACT Using Frank Kermode’s (1967. The sense of an ending: studies in the theory of fiction wi... more ABSTRACT Using Frank Kermode’s (1967. The sense of an ending: studies in the theory of fiction with a new epilogue. Oxford: OUP) formulation of ‘the End’ as its conceptual marker, this paper takes aim at pronouncements of cultural studies’ demise. In recent years, it has become fashionable to declare cultural studies as in decline, if not irretrievably lost. In drawing on this conceptualization of ‘the End’ to define the current status of cultural studies, attention will be given to how narratives of demise and decline claim a position of speaking-for the discipline whilst reifying selective moments of cultural studies’ past as markers of a ‘high point’, a halcyon moment from which the current malaise is contrasted. Arguing that this is a troubling dynamic, this paper works through the formulations that selected crisis narrative present to outline how these narratives gain dimension. The argument then moves to problematize the positioning of selective originary points within cultural studies’ past to propose that a far more speculative appraisal of these halcyon moments might be drawn upon. Such ‘speculative recognition’ of the past does not seek to dismiss cultural studies’ histories, nor position these within simplistic generational divisions, but does seek to question the significance selective originary moments hold in defining prescriptions for the discipline’s future.

Studies in Higher Education, 2021

A growing literature base exploring the limitations on young people in contemporary societies has... more A growing literature base exploring the limitations on young people in contemporary societies has emerged in recent years (Roche 1999; Malone 2007; Woolley 2006; Tomanovic 2012). Much of this draws attention to the opportunities young people might have for actualising a sense of agency and identity (Phillips 2010; Hickey and Phillips 2013), with specific reference made to the role that social settings play in limiting or enabling young people to participate as active citizens (Wolley 2006; Hopkins 2013).

What hasn't emerged to date however is a conceptualisation of the way that constraint features as a theoretical tool for understanding young peoples’ active citizenship, and more particularly how constraints around youth and childhoods might be mediated via walking as an act of critique and resistance. Constraint has been theorised within the literature of leisure studies (Godbey, Crawford and Shen 2010) and tourism (Fliescher and Pizam 2002), and provides a useful lens for understanding the experience of youth in contemporary Western societies. When considered against the mobile and liberatory opportunities walking provides, new possibilities for considering childhoods, child agency and actualisation emerge.

To situate this analysis, experiences drawn from a large scale community arts initiative ‘The Walking Neighbourhood’ (Hickey and Phillips 2013, Phillips and Hickey 2013), a collaboration between a group of young people, community arts workers, academic researchers and participating community members will be used as an evidence base for exploring the ways young people came to negotiate and establish social geographies of a major urban space via walking as active citizenship. What developed from this project however was not a total emergence of young people’s agencies- a simple inversion of existing age-based power relations- but a heightened awareness of just how entrenched views of young people are, the constraints placed on young peoples’ expression, and the structural dynamics of a society that positions young people (and adults) in very specific ways.

Via a discussion around the role that walking-as-method played within this project, some observations on the ways that young peoples’ identities, agency and actualisation were formulated will be broached.

The act of ‘engaging community’ draws on a number of assumptions around whom and what the communi... more The act of ‘engaging community’ draws on a number of assumptions around whom and what the community is and how engagement initiatives might be enacted. Local government authorities charged with the responsibility of engaging with communities require a codified evidence-base for designing and delivering engagement projects that connect with the often multifarious and agonistic needs of those communities they work with. This was the case for the Community Development and Facilities Branch of the Toowoomba Regional Council, and in partnership with the presenter, a sociologist-ethnographer based in an Australian regional university, went about developing a sequenced professional development program that up-skilled staff in field‐based qualitative research approaches for evaluating community needs and engagement planning. While the Branch had a strong stock of demographic and statistical data at its disposal, it lacked insight into the affective and relational aspects of the experience of community; of what it meant to be in the community. ‘Community Evaluation and Assessment’ was a 12-module program that introduced contemporary theory on community engagement and set about applying a range of interpretivist ethnographic research techniques for developing community engagement program design and delivery. At its core was a concern for gathering views of community that might inform targeted engagement initiatives, whilst also developing an iterative and growing stock of knowledge around who the community is and how it is that Council might best work with the region’s communities. As an ongoing program, the larger project from which the ‘Community Evaluation and Assessment Program’ grew is now consolidating the initial dataset gathered from a schedule of events and initiatives run by council to, in effect, evaluate the use of qualitative research findings in local government engagement programs. This presentation will chart the initial outcomes of this project and the use of qualitative research in Local Government settings.

Teaching is perhaps the quintessential embodied scholarly act. Particularly in Cultural Studies, ... more Teaching is perhaps the quintessential embodied scholarly act. Particularly in Cultural Studies, with its concern for understanding material practices inherent within cultures, engaging with others through pedagogical exchange and negotiating ideas is as much a physical activity as it is an intellectual one. Yet, in the rush toward online modes of delivery in teaching and learning that most Australian Universities have embraced in recent years, the nature of this embodied scholarly act has changed. What does it now mean to teach and learn materially, even in the disembodied realm of the Web 2.0 world? What are the futures of existing face-to-face modes of pedagogical address and what is to become of Cultural Studies’ ‘signature pedagogies’? What are the implications for pedagogy as a material practice itself? This panel will explore, from the perspectives of scholars working within the discipline of Cultural Studies in Australian universities the experiences of engaging contemporary Cultural Studies pedagogies as material practice.

Although as Goggin (2012) notes the shift to online modes of teaching and learning can now be ‘ta... more Although as Goggin (2012) notes the shift to online modes of teaching and learning can now be ‘taken for granted’ in many higher education institutions, the affective dimensions of renegotiating one’s own practice and the reconceptualization of the role of the pedagogue in the online domain continue as significant markers for what is possible in Cultural Studies teaching and learning. Beyond the technical dimensions of Web 2.0 modes of delivery, what is at stake is a reframing of Cultural Studies’ ‘signature pedagogies’ (Shulman 2005). In particular, the stark contrasts experienced between those immediate challenges of (re)negotiating content and pedagogies online and those often more comfortable and familiar face-to-face modes of delivery highlight more than just the technical considerations of the shift in delivery mode itself. This relocation of teaching and learning is as much a process of re-orienting the Self as pedagogue. This paper will explore the transition to online teaching and learning undertaken by one Cultural Studies pedagogue in a regional university in Australia. It will chart a journey from initial resistance to a realisation that online pedagogies in cultural studies may offer affordances that synchronous, face-to-face modes of delivery do not, and in doing so, will uncover the ‘pedagogies of possibility’ that exist in the deployment of a critically embedded, online Cultural Studies pedagogy.

In the excitement and dynamism that marks current scholarship on cultural pedagogy it is perhaps ... more In the excitement and dynamism that marks current scholarship on cultural pedagogy it is perhaps easy to forget that culture has always taught. This indeed is one of the core purposes of culture, understood as cultural studies scholars and others in the humanities might. But it has occurred that with the metonymy of schooling-as-education in the public consciousness, we often bypass the pedagogical effects culture presents and miss the often times deliberate and always significant curricula it works from. It is the formation of the cultural logic- those core bases upon which we come to know and be- that is at stake. This knowledge, of how to be cultured, is arranged pedagogically and presented with the sort of intent that formal curricula find articulation, so much so that to wander a street, engage in conversation, view television or simply negotiate a life as a member of a society are deeply educative acts. In this presentation I will explore what such a cultural pedagogy might mean in a late-capitalist and connected world of flows and transmissions, whilst positing some lessons from critical pedagogy and cultural studies for how cultural pedagogies might be engaged and understood. We learn from culture, yet it is the shaping of it and the concomitant pedagogies that accompany this that matter.

This presentation explores the democratic and participatory potential resident within 'sensory' e... more This presentation explores the democratic and participatory potential resident within 'sensory' ethnographic research. The first section in this presentation explores the scope of the field of new digital technologies that contribute to more complex forms of research. In particular, the ways by which 'the visual' has come to present useful possibilities for researchers wanting to create more authentic experiences of the sites they explore will be considered. The presenters will detail their six-stage process for conducting sensory ethnographic research work, with each of these stages presenting an opportunity for the application of new research approaches. The second section of this presentation provides insight into pragmatic considerations for the conduct, analysis from, and dissemination of ethnographic work, and argues for a move beyond (and away from) textual reportings. Inclusion of the 'sensorium' in ethnographic work, as Sarah Pink (2006) has termed it, provides the provocation for a reconsideration of the ways such work might be undertaken and reported.

Research in the humanities has variously received criticism for its obtuse and inaccessible langu... more Research in the humanities has variously received criticism for its obtuse and inaccessible language (Reizs 2010), benign claims for action (Lather 2007) and authorial positionality (Jameson 1990, Denzin and Lincoln 2005). Perhaps worst amongst these criticisms is the suggestion that scholarly, academic work is irrelevant to the world outside of academe. Institutional shifts in the way academic work is both produced and recognised have similarly paralleled these wider societal critiques, with institutionally mandated changes in the way academic work is conducted and recorded centred broadly around notions of performance and accountability. What results from this changed terrain is the need for a reconsideration of the way that scholarly work (particularly that in the humanities) is undertaken and what purposes it seeks to serve. In this paper, an approach to cultural studies research that attempts to re-engage the ‘ordinary’ (that original site of investigation for cultural studies scholars) for the ‘ordinary’ by making a case for critical, de-centred accounts of the everyday will be presented. This paper will chart why the emancipatory imperatives so often promised in humanist academic work must be realised and will suggest an ethic for a research mentality that moves both beyond and between institutionalised agendas for producing academic work