We're moving into a new phase of the research project now. This also coincides with a change in the team. Kieran Connell, after working as a researcher on the project, has moved to a post at the University of Birmingham researching the history of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Meanwhile Christy Kulz has joined the team as a part-time researcher, while she finishes her PhD (an ethnographic exploration of an academy secondary school in Hackney) at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In April we started the last phase of the repeated group interviews, where we've been able to go back over the first two meetings and ask participants more in-depth questions about the ways they have begun to talk of their areas and experiences with difference. Though we haven't started the formal analysis of our fieldwork yet, going back over the transcripts of the interviews means we can start to see some patterns emerging in the data, and the repeated nature of our research design allows us to explore these patterns further with research participants before we leave the field. Our first forays into reflecting on, elaborating and sharing our emerging findings were at the Association of American Geographers' Annual Meeting in Los Angeles in April. The Living Multiculture project convened two panels, which brought together researchers from related projects.
We presented three papers based on our early findings. Sarah presented a paper discussing how we have developed the ethnographic approach to studying diversity in parks, and some early findings about how physical features of public parks can make emotional connections between people. The paper Katy presented focused on our work in sixth form and further education colleges, and the ways that multiculture is lived by young people sharing space in close quarters, and particularly the felt experience of festive moments organised by one of the colleges. Kieran and Hannah presented some of the project's ethnographic work in cafes, considering how it is that chain cafes, which may appear to be 'non-places' can sometimes function as sites of unremarkable shared moments where everyday multiculture is banal and 'unpanicked'.
We were very pleased that these panels allowed us to develop national and international networks between our work and that of other researchers, from the quantitative based analysis of ethnicity, race and residency patterns that is being conducted by Gemma Catney (University of Liverpool), in the UK and by Richard Wright (Dartmouth College) in the US, different empirical examples of everyday multiculture. Cathy McIlwaine (Queen Mary, University of London) presented her work on migration, transnational identities and citizenship; Christina Maria West (University of Mannheim) addressed changing theoretical and policy engagements with multiculture in Germany; and Alex Rhys-Taylor (Goldsmiths, University of London) presented from his research involving new methodological approaches to studying everyday multiculture, connections and difference. Outside our panels, we met many others working on related research, and we're pleased about the richness these connections will add to our research and analysis as we progress with the Living Multiculture project.