CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON

‘GENDER, EMOTION, WORK AND TRAVEL: WOMEN TRANSPORT WORKERS AND PASSENGERS PAST AND PRESENT’

22nd and 23rd June 2007, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, London

Papers are welcome on any aspect of the conference theme. Proposals, no longer than 250 words in length, should be submitted by 15th December 2006. Postgraduate attendance and participation is particularly welcome.

RATIONALE

The purpose of this conference is to examine research on the theme, ‘gender, emotion, work and travel, women transport workers and passengers, past and present’, from different modal, disciplinary and national perspectives and to stimulate dialogue on comparative themes that will illuminate gendered patterns in the lives of women. By initiating a gendered and emotional dimension to the discussion of travel and work, new ideas and approaches have the capacity to alter the face of both history and contemporary aspects of transport studies. In other words, the marriage of transport, work and gender analysis can bear scholarly fruit by making profitable connections.

As academics and practitioners have already demonstrated, concerns of culture, class, gender and race are not only important to new perspectives on social and economic history, but also have major significance for new developments in sociology, geography, anthropology, planning and urban studies. These concerns have directly and indirectly influenced the production and consumption of travel at both the corporate and individual level. Women’s transport and travel history and the study of the gender dimensions of contemporary mobility are relatively new fields, with the first major publications emerging in the 1990’s and subsequently. As yet this scholarship has been situated in different modes of travel and frequently within national contexts. These narratives are at different stages of development and very little comparative or cross-cultural research has been done. Further theoretical approaches that link gender with concepts and models from business, history and the research that already exists suggest that women’s entrepreneurship and participation in the service economy complicate the study of transport and travel which has only recently moved from production to consumption. There are many opportunities for bringing together diverse avenues of research and this conference will stimulate new ideas and perspectives.

REGISTRATION COST:
The cost of registration will remain modest and the Conference Organisers hope that some funding will be available to support postgraduate attendance.