Dr Robin Smith
Job Title: Qualitative researcher, Evaluating the Foundation Phase project
Institution: Cardiff University
Email: smithrj3@cf.ac.uk
Telephone: 029 208 70330
Role: Robin is a member of the WISERD local knowledge in context (KliC) team and works on the Local Knowledge, Spatial Practice and Urban Patrol Project. Rob is Co-Editor of Qualitative Researcher and the convener of the BSA Urban Theory and Research Study Group.
Biography
Robin is an active member of the School of Social Sciences, where he received his undergraduate degree. He also received his training in qualitative methods and ethnography at Cardiff University and his PhD in 2009. He has taught sociology, social theory, social policy and anthropology and teaches introductory and advanced qualitative methods at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is a member of the Ethnography, Interpretive Analysis, and Culture (ECIA) and Culture, Imagination and Practice (CIP) research groups and also the SOCSI Social Theory Forum.
PhD Thesis: ‘The Social Actor in the Landscapes of Regeneration?’ (Cardiff University: 2009) (Supervisors: Dr. William Housley and Dr. Bella Dicks)
Robin’s doctoral research entailed an Interactionist analysis of the negotiation, interpretation, and accounting of the regenerated landscape of Cardiff Bay. The research employed ethnographic methods alongside, visual analysis, and photo-elicitation interviews analysed using membership categorisation analysis (MCA). Claims made related to the construction and replication of the ‘smooth narrative’ of regeneration and the identification of common sense geographies within the contours of ‘Cardiff Bay’.
Research Interests
Robin’s central interests are concerned with the documentation and analysis of social settings, interaction, and accounts. His work is informed by Symbolic Interactionist and Ethnomethodological understandings of social order and organisation; in particular Goffman’s notion of ‘interaction order’. Substantively his research interests coalesce around empirical approaches to the social organisation of urban spaces and street-level practice. His research interests are summarised below:
- The ordering of public space
- Identity, interaction, accounts
- Spatial and mobile practice
- Sociology as social practice
- Urban theory
- Membership Categorisation Analysis
- Ethnography
Current Research
Current research involves the ethnographic documentation of a number of urban street based professionals whose roles are understood as mobile and spatial practices relating to forms of ‘care and repair’ (both material and social) in the city centre. Working with Dr. Tom Hall as part of a series of qualitative projects designed to investigate the production and application of local knowledge in context, the program of fieldwork involves participant observation with a range of diverse patrols such as outreach services attending to vulnerable adults (rough sleepers, street drinkers, sex workers) street cleansing crews, and Police Community Support Officers.
The analysis focuses upon the practices employed in the process of the various patrols and how they each entail a form of embodied knowledge of the city centre produced by engagement with and within it. In documenting and analyzing spatial practices we use on traditional ethnographic methods alongside visual analysis and contemporary GIS/GPS techniques and seek to provide a critical commentary on mixed-method approaches to understanding and representing the practice of urban patrol.
Click here to view Robin’s official Cardiff University bio page
Publications
Journals
Hall T, Smith R, 2011, ‘Walking, Welfare and the Good City’ Anthropology in Action 18(3) pp 33-44 (Available here)
Smith R, 2011, ‘Goffman’s Interaction Order at the Margins: Stigma, Role and Normalization in the Outreach Encounter’ Symbolic Interaction 34(3) pp 357-376 (Available here)
Housley W, Smith RJ, 2011, ‘Telling the CAQDAS Code: Membership Categorization and the Accomplishment of ‘Coding Rules’ in Research Team Talk’ Discourse Studies 13(4) pp 417-434 (Available here)
Smith RJ, Heley J, Stafford I, 2011, ‘Woolworths and Wales: A multi-dimensional analysis’ Sociological Research Online15 (5) (Available here)
Housley W, Smith RJ, 2010, ‘Innovation and Reduction in Contemporary Qualitative Methods: The Case of Conceptual Coupling, Activity-Type Pairs and Auto-Ethnography’ Sociological Research Online 15(4) (Available here)
Housley W, Moles K, Smith RJ, 2009, ‘Identity, brand or citizenship: The case of post devolution Wales’ Contemporary Wales 22 pp 196-210 (Available here)
Book Chapters
Smith R, 2011, ‘Landscapes of fiction and fictional landscapes: Dr Who, Torchwood, and the mundane interpretation of Cardiff Bay’ in New Dimensions of Doctor Who: Exploring Time, Space and Television Ed(s) D Mellor, B Earl (Forthcoming)
Reviews
Smith RJ, 2011, ‘Where Does Mobility Get Us?’ Sociology (Forthcoming)
Smith R, 2010, ‘Book Review: Review Symposium: Martyn Hammersley Questioning Qualitative Inquiry, Sage, London, 2008′ Qualitative Research 10(6) pp 750-753 (Available here)
Smith R, 2010, ‘Book Review: Sally Galman Shane, the Lone Ethnographer: A Beginners Guide to Ethnography, Alta Mira Press, CA, 2007′ Qualitative Research 10(2) pp 275-276 (Available here)
Conference Papers
Hall T, Smith R, 2010, ‘Local Motion, Local Knowledge: Research ‘On the Move’ With Urban Patrols’ paper presented at American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 22November, New Orleans, USA
Smith R, 2010, ‘Circuits of City Space: Moving and Meeting With the Homeless’ paper presented at American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, ‘Domesticating and Domesticated Urban Space’ (Session organised by Smith R), 21 November, New Orleans, USA
Smith R, 2010, ‘The Urban Problem: From the Bay to the Soup Run’ paper presented at British Council-Netherlands Knowledge Exchange Workshop on Urbanism, 8-9 October
Smith R, 2010, ‘Hotspots, Stops, and Plots: On Mapping Urban Patrol’ paper presented at Cardiff Centre for Crime, Law and Justice, 22 September, Cardiff, UK
Hall T, Smith R, 2010, ‘Local knowledge: Place, non-place and urban spatial practice’ paper presented at ESRC Research Methods Festival, 5-8July, Oxford, UK
Smith R, 2010, ‘Researching Space, Place, and Setting: Perspectives on Theory and Method’ paper presented at ESRC Research Methods Festival, 5-8 July, Oxford, UK
Smith R, 2010, ‘Mapping Urban patrols: Spatial Practice and place-binding knowledge’ paper presented at EUROQUAL, ‘International Perspectives on Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences‘, 4-6 May, London, UK
Smith R, 2010, ‘Tinkering at the Margins: The outreach encounter’ paper presented at British Sociological Association Annual Conference, 7-9April, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
Hall T, Smith R, 2009, ‘Connections Made Visible: Place-bound Knowledge and the Map as Intellectual Tool – Keynote Address’ paper presented at EUROQUAL, ‘Spatial and Network Analysis in Qualitative Research’, Nicosia, Cyprus
Hall T, Smith R, 2009, ‘Urban Outreach as Sensory Walking’ paper presented at Royal Geographical Society Annual Meeting, Manchester, UK
Working Papers
Smith RJ, 2010, ‘Whose Method is it Anyway? Researching space, setting and practice’ Cardiff University Working Paper Series Paper 135 (Available here)
Smith RJ, 2007, ‘The Strange Absence of the Social Actor in Considerations of the Landscapes of Regeneration in ‘Global Cities’’ Cardiff University Working Paper Series Paper 87 (Available here)
