Tara Brabazon podcast

Mick, Steve and Tara are back together working through Mick's meme chapter.  He has been on an Althusserian journey.  They discussed the relationship between ISAs, RSAs, statism and anti-statism.  But the fear of the tea towel overshadowed much of the meeting.  Wives of theorists have to be cautious in the kitchen...

Dr Geoff Pearson, a senior lecturer in Law at Manchester University, presented an innovative seminar on behalf of the School of Teacher Education and CSU Law.  Geoff explored the specific challenges and profound benefits of ethnography.  He then demonstrated the benefits of ethnography in the study of English football fans.

Tara and Anne talk about the next stage and next chapter of her PhD.  Particularly, we enter the terrain of professional development for early childhood educators and teachers?  But - in this female-dominated profession - is there a promotion of 'personal' rather than 'professional' development?

Fitbit culture, the quantified self and self monitored fitness are configured as movement monitoring activities for the young.  But how are senior citizens using the fitbit?  Tara talks with her 87 year old father Kevin about his use of the fitbit and how it has changed his understanding of movement, health and fitness.

What is happening to FIFA?  Why are there so many drug scandals in cycling and the myriad codes of football?  Do the global sporting events still regenerate and lift a city and region?  Steve and Tara talk through the concept of 'sporting claustropolis' to describe and understand what is happening to global and globalizing sport.

Do we have agency?  Once more, Mick and Tara are having another 'conversation' (discussion / argument) about human agency.  Steve is the voice of reason summoning Althusser and Zizek.  Who will he convince in this argument without end?

How do teachers and students share their expectations and outcomes about assessment?  Dr Jae Major takes colleagues through the methods and strategies to ensure that students and academics can share their assumptions about academic text types.

Tara and Steve get stroppy (again), pondering the nature of ethics committees - and research ethics more generally - in the neoliberal university.

Particular methods are fashionable, and then move out of fashion. Tara and Steve talk about ethnography, the disco of research methods.  But as ethnography moves beyond its fame and height in the 1970s, how can it reconfigure and refresh for the 2010s?

It is time for feminist physical cultural studies.  Steve and Tara introduce Peta Johnston and her doctoral thesis.  Peta is interested in researching women, sexuality, bodies and digitization.  Physical cultural studies provides the frame and impetus for this study. Social media provides the foundation. This exciting thesis begins now.  Join us on this special journey.