The Concordia Mobilities Research Network (MRN) is dedicated to the critical and creative investigation of the multiple meanings of “mobilities” across the humanities, social sciences, fine arts, and the sciences.
The Concordia Mobilities Research Network (MRN) is dedicated to the critical and creative investigation of the multiple meanings of “mobilities” across the humanities, social sciences, fine arts, and the sciences. Mobilities, as a term, encompasses the large-scale movement of people, objects, capital and information across the world, as well as more local processes of wireless, networked communications, daily transportation, movement through public space, and the travel of material things within everyday life. Recent developments in communication and transportation infrastructures, along with new social and cultural practices of mobility, have elicited a number of new research initiatives for understanding the connections between these diverse movement-forms.
Located in Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, the MRN evolved out of Mobile Media Lab (MML, www.mobilemedialab), a co-located hub for research/creation and critical investigation into mobile media. Since 2005 the Lab has embraced a variety of intellectual and creative activities including a production space located in the C-Pod space at Concordia; a journal ‘wi: journal of mobile media’; symposia and guest lectures; art events; and research projects. It has the joined together researchers and students from Concordia and York University and has fostered significant ties to other Canadian labs, including the Mobile Art Lab (OCAD), researchers at Royal Roads University (Victoria) and groups at international institutions, such as MMU (Malaysia) and IN3 (Spain). The MRN expands the activities of the Lab, and centres some of these activities at Concordia. It continues its ties to our York partners, and will foster new linkages internally (at Concordia) to those working on the social, physical, geographical, virtual and cultural aspects of mobility and movement, including researchers in geography and art education.
