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Thesis proposals |
Researchers |
Research Group |
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New employment models: psychosocial and labour effects The aim is to analyse how new employment models, characterized by labour flexibility, digitization and precariousness, affect and configure workers' lives and their life projects. Thus, it focuses on the concept of precarious lives to examine how people immersed in these precarious processes perceive, define and experience this situation and how this experience constructs new forms of identity and specific life projects. |
Mail: agalvez@uoc.edu |
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Work-life balance and its gender implications The aim is to analyse how gender roles, the work-life balance models instilled in our society and the organization of labour impact and configure the different strategies and tactics that people develop to balance the different parts of their lives. With this in mind, it focuses on the psychosocial and labour effects that these factors have on people's lives. |
Mail: agalvez@uoc.edu |
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E-working: psychosocial and organizational effects The research focuses on analysing the psychosocial, organizational and cultural effects of e-working. E-working has been key in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts believe that it will be a working practice that will gain ground in the future. With this in mind, the research focuses on analysing its individual, organizational, social and cultural effects. |
Mail: agalvez@uoc.edu |
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More-than-human care in times of crisis. Social studies of technology, buildings and animals as infrastructures of care In a time when technological societies are going through a severe care and welfare crisis, care infrastructures are increasingly populated by a wider range of more-than-human actors. The pandemic has just brought to the fore a crisis produced by austerity and neoliberal policies, economies of care that are based on exploitation and the naturalization of gendered constructs of care, ageist and ableist social imaginaries, and anthropocentric understandings of care that neglect our intimate entanglements with more-than-human beings. At the same time, we are more aware than ever about the wide range of non-human beings embedded in our care infrastructures. All sort of ICT solutions are marketed to deliver more personalized, efficient, responsive and empowering care. Digitalization is also affecting how social care and informal support are configured within families and communities. But not only ICT is changing care. Other more-than-human agents are increasingly gaining importance. Buildings and urban environments are increasingly designed and constructed to support healing processes (hospitals), providing better care (nursing homes) or producing healthier and more active lifestyles (age-friendly cities). The pandemic has also revealed the importance of plants and animals in the construction of these environments. They are also increasingly seen as care agents in non-pharmacological therapies and independent living programs for disabled and chronic patients and in preventing social isolation and loneliness (pets in times of social distancing). We welcome thesis proposals that explore the role of more-than-human beings in the configuration of care and reflect upon the politics of care and constructs of gender, age, dis/ability, and life these more-than-human care infrastructures enact. Candidates must be familiar with ethnographic research and Science and Technology Studies (STS), Feminist Technoscience and socio-material approaches to care, age and disability. |
Mail: dlopezgo@uoc.edu |
CARENET |
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Critical Studies in Risk and Disasters Drawing on the conceptual and methodological work done by STS and techno-feminist approaches, this subline of research interrogates the more naturalised, technology-driven and accelerated approaches to disasters, crisis and emergencies. By using ethnography and participatory methods, we aim to make visible, engage and think with, undervalued and minimized voices, geographies, temporalities, and intersections in disasters, crisis and emergency situations. We also special attention to the social dimensions and public contestations of new digital arrangements and infrastructures for disaster risk reduction and disaster management. What is the actual role of these technologies in the (re)shaping practices, norms and cultures of preparedness and resilience? How do they intervene in the (re)configuration disasters among policymakers, responders and/or communities? |
Mail: irodriguezgir@uoc.edu |
CARENET |