So I’m Matt – officially Dr. Matthew Spokes (I worked for it so I should probably use if more often) – and I’ve been lecturing for around five years. My teaching experience has been pretty varied; before coming to St.John at the tail-end of 2015, I’d worked at the University of York for four years, intially as a post-graduate teacher where I ran seminars for first year students on Sociological Theory whilst I was completing my PhD, and then as an Associate Lecturer, a teaching-only role that enabled me to develop my pedagogic practice and build up a portfolio of experiences across a diverse range of sociological and criminal topics.
At ‘other’ York I was responsible for running first year Criminology (The Sociology of Crime and Deviance), and worked with colleagues to deliver year long modules on Social Research Methods and Crime, Culture and Social Change in Year 2. I also taught on Year 3 modules for Theoretical Criminology and Master’s sessions on Research with Social Media and Critical Perspectives on the Criminal Justice System. At St. John I’ve built on these experiences to design modules that equip first year Criminology students with a solid grounding in research methods and fundamental theories in criminological research, trying to ensure a contemporary spin on the classics, assist first year Sociology students in developing a critical eye for questions around deviancy, and cultivate perspectives of enquiry for second year Sociology students moving towards their dissertations.
Aside from teaching, I’ve also developed my research a fair amount since beginning my lectureship at St. John. My PhD focused on deviant subcultures around avant-garde music, and the connections between the classifications, organizations, spatial and resistive practices of participants, stemming from a reappriasal of Becker’s Art Worlds. I suspect unlike many academics, I’ve little interest in publishing from the PhD (drawn a line through it and move on etc.) though space and resistance are themes that continue to run through my work. I’d describe myself as a magpie academic so far, as I tend to find inspiration not in following one particular route or theoretical framework, but instead allowing chance and circumstance dictate things somewhat. This might be why I’m writing another blog post comparing social demographic changes in Cumbria with Postman Pat (according to creator John Cunliffe, Greendale is supposedly modeled on Longsleddale near the Southern Lakeland town of Kendal where he grew up).
At the beginning of September I delivered a paper at the Death and Culture conference in York which has been accepted for publication following revisions, so I will be spending the next few weeks tinkering with that. Alongside this I am working with a former colleague on a long-winded and often-stalled project on the quantification of the self (using Lupton’s work) where my own database of my PhD drinking habits is being used to demonstrate the problems with unreliable data sets. Finally, I am collaborating with an artists community in East London on a paper about gentrification and the housing crisis, looking at the redevelopment of the Woodberry Down Estate from an insider-perspective: the paper uses photo documentary, photo-elicitation and psycho-geography to explore the narratives of current residents, with the intention to co-write the article with participants.