Sensory Transformations: Environments, Technologies, Sensobiographies

This book offers original insights into cultural transformations of the sensory with particular emphasis on environments and technologies, articulating a special moment in the sensory history of urban Europe as people’s relationship with their environment is increasingly shaped through digital technologies.

It is a much-needed addition to Sensory Studies literature with its firmly grounded empirical and theoretical perspectives. It provides radical and impactful food for thought on sensory engagements with urban environments. After reading the book, the reader will have a profound understanding of the original methodology of sensobiographic walking, as well as transdisciplinary and transgenerational ethnographies in different cultural contexts - in this case three European cities.

The book is aimed at a large audience of readers. It is equally useful for social and human scientists and students finalizing their MA degrees or working on their doctoral or post-doctoral work, and essential reading for environmental planners, youth workers, city planners and architects, among others.

Helmi Järviluoma is a Finnish sound, music and cultural scholar and writer. She is Professor Emerita of Cultural Studies at the University of Eastern Finland. As sensory and soundscape ethnographer, Järviluoma has developed the mobile method of sensobiographic walking. Her research and art span the fields of sensory remembering, qualitative methodology (especially regarding gender), environmental cultural studies, sound art and fiction writing. In 2016, she received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council ERC, in order to study Sensory Transformations and Transgenerational Environmental Relationships, 1950-2020 SENSOTRA in the three European cities. Among her 180 publications, co-authored Gender and Qualitative Methods (2003/2010) continues to draw attention. She has written and directed six radio features for the Finnish Broadcasting Company. The Finnish Union of University Professors selected Helmi Järviluoma as professor of the year 2019; 2018 Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, invited her as a member.

Lesley Murray is Professor of Spatial Sociology at the University of Brighton, UK, where her research centres around the social and cultural aspects of transport and mobilities. She has written extensively on gendered and generational mobilities as well as mobile methodologies. Her publications include Children’s Mobilities: Interdependent, Imagined, Relational (co-author, 2019); Mobile methodologies (co-editor, 2010); Researching mobilities: transdisciplinary encounters (co-editor, 2014); Intergenerational Mobilities: Relationality, age and lifecourse (co-editor, Routledge 2017); and Families in Motion: Space, Time, Materials and Emotion (co-editor, 2019). Her most recent research was as principal investigator on a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project (AH/V013122/1) on the immobilities of gender-based violence in the COVID-19 pandemic.