The University of Sheffield
Department of Geography

Dr Matt Watson

Senior Lecturer in Human Geography

Matt Watson

Room number: F9
Telephone (internal): 27911
Telephone (UK): 0114 222 7911
Telephone (International): +44 114 222 7911
Email: M.Watson@Sheffield.ac.uk

Matt Watson gained his PhD from Lancaster University. He spent a number of years as a postdoctoral researcher at Lancaster University and the University of Durham before joining the department in 2007.

Research Interests

Social and cultural geographies of everyday practices, consumption and sustainability; and related issues of governing.

Current research

My work is concerned with the complex systemic processes which make, shape, shift and stabilise practices with consequences for sustainability and wellbeing, and with exploring the routes and institutions through which those practices are governed. Addressing themes including consumption, energy, waste, mobility and biodiversity, my research engages with geographical and sociological theories of practice, materiality and everyday life, as well as with science and technology studies, and literature on the structures and processes of governing.

My research programme springs from the basic insight that social interventions designed in response to the challenges of sustainability and wellbeing must be grounded in an understanding of the dynamics of what people do. Questions about how expectations escalate, how environmentally damaging behaviours become normal or how more sustainable ways of life can be propagated require methods and perspectives that go beyond individualistic and rational-choice based paradigms and that confront the embeddedness of everyday practices in spaces, social relations, routines, norms and socio-technical systems.

Current funded research takes this programme forward through two projects.

Consumer culture in an age of anxiety (CONANX)
Consumer culture in an age of anxiety (CONANX) is a four-year research programme led by Professor Peter Jackson and funded by the European Research Council. As co-investigator on the programme, I am leading a three-year work package, working with Dr Angela Meah to explore negotiations of anxiety in mundane domestic provisioning practices. Through exploring the uncertain relations between official messages around food and the routinised coordination of what goes on in the kitchen, this research will illuminate key issues in the relations between governing and everyday practice.

Photovoltaics for future societies
Photovoltaics for future societies is a four-year interdisciplinary project on which I am Co-Investigator. Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council the project brings together academics from Physics (including the Principal Investigator, Alastair Buckley), Electrical Engineering, Architecture and Human Geography. Working across disciplinary boundaries and with communities in South Yorkshire and in Bangladesh, the project sets out to develop new insights for the development and effective implementation of novel sustainable technologies. This project runs from late 2011 to 2015.

Waste Prevention is a research project being undertaken by Dr Ana Paula Bortoleto under a Marie Curie Incoming International Fellowship, for which I am Scientist in Charge. The project is exploring commonalities and contrasts in domestic waste minimisation practices between Sheffield and Sao Paulo.

Teaching

In keeping with the research-led teaching strategy of the University and of the Department of Geography, my teaching is closely aligned with my research. In much of my teaching, the topics, concepts and knowledge I help students learn about are related to my own research on themes of sustainability, governing, technologies and consumption. Through modules like Environment, Society and Policy or Geographies of Consumption, a key aim is to engage students critically with big geographical themes, like climate change, food security, well being and social justice, and with contemporary ways of thinking about them, by reflecting upon their own lives as members of the society which produces and responds to these issues.

The other side of my teaching focuses on the processes of doing research. A fundamental part of becoming a graduate from this department is gaining both understanding and practical experience of producing geographical knowledge. Contributing to this, I am able to draw upon my experience as a researcher to teach social research methods and research design, and enable students to learn by doing, from first year undergraduate through to early stage doctoral researchers.

Matt is convenor of these undergraduate and postgraduate modules:

Level 1
GEO151 Qualitative Methods in Human Geography
Level 2
GEO217 Environment, Society and Policy
GEO264 Research Design in Human Geography
Level 3
GEO360 Geographies of Consumption
Postgraduate

Matt also teaches on these postgraduate modules:

GEO6002 Research Design in Human Geography (Masters level)
GEO6420 Masters Dissertation (Masters level)
FCS661 Qualitative Methods for Social Science Research
(part of the Core Programme for Doctoral Training Centre PhD students across the Faculty of Social Sciences)

Like all academic staff in the department, I also engage in personal supervision and tutoring of individual undergraduate students at all three levels, including through the following modules:
GEO163 (Information & Communication Skills for Geographers)
GEO264 (Research Design in Human Geography)
GEO302 Extended Essay
GEO356 (Geographical Research Project)

Key publications