Professor Monika Buscher

Professor Emertia

Profile

Monika Büscher is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, and Associate Director in the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University. She co-edits the book series Changing Mobilities.

Monika currently leads research on decarbonising transport, disaster mobilities and ethical, legal and social issues of IT innovation in a range of different projects.

Most recent publications

Büscher, M., Cronshaw, C., Kirkbride, A., Spurling, N., 2023. Making Response-Ability: Societal Readiness Assessment for Sustainability Governance. Sustainability 15, 5140. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15065140

Büscher, Monika; Clark, Julie; Colderley, Rosslyn; Kirkbride, Alistair; Larty, Joanne; McCulloch, Shona; Moody, Emma; Mullis, Elizabeth; Phillips, Ian; Vaudrey, William; Willshaw, Kate 2022 Cumbria 2037: Decarbonising Mobility Futures. Leeds: DecarboN8 Research Network

Büscher, Monika and Cronan Cronshaw. 2022. The Little Book of Societal Readiness. ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University. ISBN 978-1-7397133-2-4

Cabalquinto, E.C.B., Büscher, M., 2022. Between existential mobility and intimacy 5.0: translocal care in pandemic times. Media, Culture & Society 01634437221119295. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221119295

Boersma, Kees, Monika Büscher, and Chiara Fonio. 2022. ‘Crisis Management, Surveillance, and Digital Ethics in the COVID-19 Era’. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 30 (1): 2–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.12398.

Academic collaborations

Honorary Doctorate Roskilde University, Denmark

Member of journal editorial boards:

Mobilitieshttp://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmob20

Applied Mobilitieshttp://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rapm20

Frontiers: Disaster Communicationshttp://journal.frontiersin.org/journal/communication/section/disaster-communications

Further Information

Monika's theoretical orientation builds on phenomenology, pragmatism, ethnomethodology, workplace studies, science and technology studies, feminist theory, non-representational theory. Public sociology, participatory design, computer supported cooperative work, design studies and service design furnish epistemologies and methodologies for engagement with stakeholders.

The book series Changing Mobilities, which I edit together wih Peter Adey, invites contributions that address the empirical realities of changing mobilities and opportunities to inform design, policy and social change.

Please contact me at m.buscher@lancaster.ac.uk

Twitter @mbuscher

Research Interests

My Guidance and Feedback Hours are Mondays 10:30-11:30 and Tuesdays 11:30-12:30. I'm also happy to consider offering bespoke meetings outside my Guidance and Feedback Hours. Please book an appointment using this link.

My research explores the digital dimension of contemporary ‘mobile lives’ with a particular focus on:

everyday practices, especially distributed collaboration, collective intelligence, digital urbanism
relational, affirmative ethics, IT ethics, informational mobilities and informational self-determination
mobile, disclosive and 'inventive' methodologies
co-production of research, policy, socio-technical innovation

My work combines social research with design and innovation. It involves close engagement with diverse collaborators from industry and diverse stakeholder organisations. It is interdisciplinary, experimental, engaged ‘public sociology’ designed to explore and shape socio-technical futures.

Current Teaching

Disasters, why do things go wrong?
MA Mobilities, Society and Change
Media in a Global Age

PhD Supervisions Completed

Lixiong Chen - Between Participation and Paternalism:A Study of Weibo-based Networked Crisis Communication in China between 2010 and 2019

Cosmin Popan - Utopias of slow cycling. Imagining a bicycle system

Satya Savitzky - ‘Icy Futures’: Carving the Northern Sea Route

Paula Bialski - Becoming Intimately Mobile

Paula's Thesis has been published: Becoming Intimately Mobile. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Paula now works at Leuphania University

Jen Southern - Comobility: Distance and Proximity on the Move in Locative Art Practice

Jen now works at Lancaster University

Lucy Kimbell - An inventive practice perspective on designing

Lucy works as a an artist, service designer and scholar. http://www.lucykimbell.com

Research Overview

Monika’s research explores the digital dimension of contemporary ‘mobile lives’. She combines qualitative, often ethnographic studies of everyday practices, social theory and design through mobile, experimental, ‘inventive’ engagement with industry and stakeholders. An analytical orientation to intersecting physical and virtual mobilities, blocked movements and immobilities of people, objects and information drives this work. Monika’s most recent research brings this perspective to the informationalization of large-scale multi-agency emergency response, which raises opportunities and challenges around social media-based public engagement, agile and ‘whole community’ approaches to disaster response, data sharing, data protection and privacy.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in working with PhD candidates in the areas of sociology, media studies, mobilities research, science and technology studies and have particular research interests in: Mobilities, mobile technology, mobile media Science, technology, responsible research and innovation Digital media and online cultures Design, art, creativity Disaster, crisis, security

Selected Publications

Mobile methods
Buscher, M., Urry, J., Witchger, K. 2010 London : Routledge. 206 p. ISBN: 9780415492416.
Book

Collective intelligence in crises
Buscher, M., Liegl, M., Thomas, V. 2014 In: Social collective intelligence. Springer p. 243-265. 23 p.
Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Privacy, security, liberty: ICT in crises
Buscher, M., Liegl, M., Perng, S. 2014 In: International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. 6, 4, p. 76-92. 17 p.
Journal article

Peripheral response: Microblogging during the 22/7/2011 Norway attacks
Perng, S., Buscher, M., Halvorsrud, R., Wood, L., Stiso, M., Ramirez, L., Al-Akkad, A. 04/2012 In: Proceedings of the 9th International ISCRAM Conference – Vancouver, Canada, April 2012.. Academic Publishers 11 p.
Chapter (peer-reviewed)

SoRADash - Societal Readiness Assessment interactive dashboard & integrated web tools for optimising transport decarbonisation innovations
03/04/2023 → 29/09/2023
Research

GCRF: Gridding Equitable Urban Futures in Areas of Transition (GREAT) in Cali, Colombia and Havana, Cuba
01/04/2020 → 30/06/2024
Research

DecarboN8-An Integrated Network to Decarbonise transport
01/09/2019 → 31/08/2022
Research

ISF: DecarboN8 - An Integrated Network to Decarbonise Transport
01/09/2019 → 31/08/2022
Research

ISF: DecarboN8 - An Integrated Network to Decarbonise Transport
01/09/2019 → 31/08/2023
Research

H2H Project - Phase 1
18/03/2019 → 08/09/2019
Research

Configuring ethical AI in healthcare
01/01/2019 → 31/12/2021
Research

isITethical? Exchange: Responsible Research for ICT Innovation in Disaster Risk Management
02/01/2018 → 31/07/2018
Other

SODA Plus: Realizing Data Together
01/07/2017 → 31/12/2019
Research

Cyber Security of the Internet of things
28/02/2016 → 31/08/2019
Research

ISF: Mobile Utopia 1851 - 2051
01/02/2016 → 31/12/2016
Research

FP7: SecinCoRe: Secure dynamic cloud for information, communication and resource interoperability....
01/05/2014 → 30/04/2017
Research