SEARCH using keywords/tags or full text search.
Dr Laura Watts
Laura Watts worked in Sociology until June 2010.
This page is displayed as a record, please note that the information may be out of date.
Sociology: Research Fellow
Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe), Centre for Science Studies, Mobilities.Lab
Current Teaching
Laura Watts has now left Lancaster for IT University of Copenhagen
Research Interests
futures; ethnographic writing; science studies; feminist technoscience; anthropology of technology; high-tech industry; landscape; prehistoric archaeology.
Donna Haraway once wrote of making knowledge: "What if the study and crafting of fiction and fact happened explicitly, instead of covertly, in the same room, and in all the rooms?" This question weaves through my work.
"...I feel I am working at an interface between high-tech futures, ethnographic evidence, and creative writing.
"...How are futures made in everyday practices in high-tech industries, and subsequently materialised in artefacts and infrastructures in the landscape? And, of course, how do artefacts, and the temporalities and topographies of landscape 'kick-back' at those futures. How do futures get done differently in different places?
"...I'm also concerned with the effect of different methods of communication on how knowledge is made. Different styles of writing use evidence in different ways: archaeologists reconstruct places, ethnographers weave accounts, novelists imagine stories. How do methods of writing resist or promote particular forms of knowledge (in academia and in industry). How do different writing approaches, as part of an apparatus for making knowledge, make the world differently? And might different writing methods create the possibility for making different knowledges, and different futures?
"These ongoing interests have evolved from my experiences working with so many of my colleagues here at Lancaster and elsewhere, and from working inside and alongside the telecoms industry for over decade, in a variety of roles from design to business strategy, to a writer exploring narrative in mobile media spaces."
For more information see my project website at www.sand14.com
Publications
Watts, L. and Lyons, G. (2010) Travel Remedy Kit: Interventions into Train Lines and Passenger Times, in Buscher, M. Urry, J. and Witchger, K. (eds.) Mobile Methods, London, Routledge. [view book (amazon.co.uk)|download draft]
Watts, L. (2008) The Future is Boring: Stories from the landscapes of the mobile telecoms industry, in 21st Century Society: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences (special issue on Future Matters: Futures Known, Created, Minded), 3(2), pp. 187-198. [download article (informaworld) | download draft]
Watts, L. (2008) The Art and Craft of Train Travel, in Journal of Social and Cultural Geography (special issue on Spatial Technologies/Technological Spaces), 9(6), pp. 711 — 726. [download article (informaworld) | download draft]
Watts, L. and Urry, J. (2008) Moving Methods, Travelling Times, in Society and Space (Environment and Planning D), 26 (5), 860-874. [download article (pion) | download draft]
Watts, L. (2005) Designing the Future: Fables from the mobile telecoms industry, in Glotz, P., Bertschi, S. and Locke, C. (eds) Thumb Culture: the meaning of mobile phones for society, Piscataway NJ, Transcript Verlag/Transaction. [view book (amazon.co.uk) | download draft | preview book (googlebooks)]
I also have numerous papers, podcasts, and other writings published online: see mypersonal website,and search ePrints under my name.
Project Links
Current and archived projects, news, blog, podcasts, online papers, are available via my personal website at www.sand14.com
Latest updates (RSS / delicious)
All the latest news, publications, and performances from ongoing projects.
Relocating-innovation Mailing List
For information and updates on the relocating-innovation project please join the mailing list.
Relocating Innovation: Places and material practices of future-making
How do arrangements of persons and things designated as 'new' come into being? To address this question critically requires illuminating the politics of innovation, in an era where the 'new' is treated as an unquestioned good. It requires as well moving outside of familiar areas of research. Ongoing Leverhulme-funded research project with Lucy Suchman and Endre Danyi.
A Future Archaeology of the Mobile Telecoms Industry
From a record of its places, materials, and practices, what futures does a mobile telecoms industry foretell? What futures does it construct for itself? And, what other futures may be reconstructed from those fragments of evidence? Doctoral research project, completed 2007.
Travel-Time Use in the Information Age
A journey is both translation and transition. It is an effect, a performance, in which a journey and a traveller are made. Travelling takes effort: bodies, train carriages, newspapers, luggage, brakes, sandwiches, motorway bridges and so on, must work to create moments of departure and arrival. EPSRC research project at Centre for Mobilities Research, and Centre for Transport & Society at University of the West of England, completed 2007.
Eprints Publications Repository and Bibliographic Database
Laura Watts has 11 selected publication records listed on this webpage. Use links to access abstracts and full text where available. View all records to sort by date, type and title. For all ePrints records go to http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk
Watts, Laura (2009) Future archaeologies : method and story. In: Society of Museum Archaeologists Conference, 2009-11-05, Winchester, UK. (Unpublished)
Watts, Laura (2009) OrkneyLab: an archipelago experiment in futures. In: ASA09 (Anthropological and Archaeological Imaginations: Past, Present and Future), 2009-04-06 - 2009-04-09, University of Bristol. (Unpublished)
Watts, Laura and Urry, John (2008) Moving Methods, Travelling Times. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26 (5). pp. 860-874. ISSN 0263-7758
Watts, Laura (2008) Orkney: Landscapes of Future Resistance. In: 4S/EASST 2008, 2008-08-20 - 2008-08-23, Erasmus University Rotterdam. (Unpublished)
Watts, Laura (2008) The Art and Craft of Train Travel. Social and Cultural Geography, 9 (6). pp. 711-726. ISSN 1464-9365
Watts, Laura and Lyons, Glenn (2007) Travel Remedy Kit: Interventions into Train Lines and Passengers. In: Centre for Transport & Society Seminar, 2007-11-18, University of the West of England, Bristol. (Unpublished)
Watts, Laura (2006) Travel Times (or Journeys with Ada). In: Travel-Time Use: Developing a Research Agenda, 2006-01-01, UK Department of Transport. (Unpublished)
Watts, Laura (2005) Designing the future: fables from the mobile telecoms industry. In: Thumb Culture: The Meaning of Mobile Phones for Society. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, pp. 225-234.
Watts, Laura (2005) Manga, Myths, and Magic: Playing with the future in the mobile telecoms industry. In: Mobile Media, Mobile Youth, 2005-09-30, Film and Media Studies, University of Copenhagen. (Unpublished)
Watts, Laura (2005) Towards an Archaeology of the Future. In: 4S (Society for the Social Studies of Science) Annual Conference, 2005-10-20 - 2005-10-22, Pasadena California. (Unpublished)
Associated Keywords: Creative writing, Ethnography, Science, technology and society, Sociology
View all research activities, ePrints, news and events associated with Laura Watts.
View Staff Profiles
Find staff personal pages in Sociology and other Faculty departments:
Research & Publications | Current Students | News and Events |
Save this page:
Del.icio.us
Digg It
Reddit
Facebook
Stumble It!