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The University of Sheffield's Faculty of Social Sciences conference, September 2016

13 September 2016

On 13 September, Kate and Ros gave a presentation at the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Social Sciences conference. This was an opportunity to present Tracking Ourselves? to the faculty, which is the base for diverse and exciting research activities that stretch from urban planning to education, and from law to architecture.

We used the presentation to give an overview of the social science literature to date in the field of self-monitoring. It was also an opportunity to showcase the methodological design of the project; we discussed the different phases and stakeholders factored into the research design, after framing some of the project’s key aims.

The presentation also gave us a chance to discuss some of the research questions that will guide Tracking Ourselves? We are, for instance, interested in how is self-monitoring is ‘scripted’ or shaped by professional, policy and commercial proponents – here we concerned with the ‘worlds inscribed in objects’, to borrow from Madeleine Akrich. The second phase of the research will be directly concerned with how people self-monitor, and how such practices might (or might not be) sustained over time.