Filmbike
Since the reports of a global “bicycle boom” in the pandemic year 2020, I have started to observe what happens in initiatives that promote sustainable urban mobility. This new line of research has so far included participant observation in Vienna’s lively bicycle advocacy scene, meetings with cyclists and cycling activists in other cities of Europe and southeast Asia, and experiments with visual methods.
politics of cycling in INDONESIA
What is the history of bicycles in Indonesia? Who cycles in Indonesian cities? Which bicycle advocacy groups exist? I discuss these questions in the video podcast PolGov Talks by Pardes Indonesia, in an interview by Bayu Dardias, lecturer in political science at the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
WOMEN ON THE MOVE in vienna
This short film Women on the Move was recorded in 2022 and edited in 2023, by Helen Vaaks in collaboration with the cycling school FahrSicherRad and the social organisation Caritas Wien. I now use the film as a prompt in elicitation interviews with the trainers, learners and funders of cycling courses to discover their perspectives on what it means to cycle.
roles of urban activists
The ritual of the Ghostbike is organised in Vienna every time a cyclist dies in traffic. In the Horizon MSCA project Performing as the expert: urban activists’ roles and identities online and offline, I collaborate with geographer Christoph Fink to investigate which roles urban activists perform, how they choose a role, and how performed roles are perceived by politicians, lobby groups, and publics.
Sections of this research have been supported by research assistants Anna Egger and Hans Magnus Gielge and filmmaker Helen Vaaks.
