Sunil Rodger

Visiting Researcher

s.d.rodger@newcastle.ac.uk

I am an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods social researcher, with particular interests in the accessibility of cities and transport, understandings of mobility and place, and the role of technologies in civic activism and engagement. My research spans sociology, urban studies, disability studies, human-computer interaction, political science, and health.

My PhD was a Digital Civics project, undertaken between Open Lab and the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, and supervised by Professors Janice McLaughlin, David Kirk, Pete Wright, and John Vines. During my PhD, I worked with powered wheelchair users to explore their experiences of mobility and access via ‘go-along’ journeys, and how these experiences might be used in civic conversations to bring about more accessible places. Participants took me on journeys of their choice, during which they captured video and data about their experiences using a custom smartphone-based tool. These data were used in semi-structured interviews reflecting on their experiences, and in subsequent group Skype workshops which facilitated collective sense-making and ideation.

I currently work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University Hospital Freiburg, Germany, and am a visiting researcher at Open Lab where I am involved in the 'Metro Futures' series of projects.