Denver V. Nixon

PhD Student

Research Supervisor: Joy Parr

Research Interests

My current research program explores the embodied, epistemological dimensions
of common transportation practices, technologies, and landscapes. I examine how
different transportation modes mediate their users’ understandings of social and
physical environments, and through this potentially perpetuate environmental injustices.
Specifically, I compare the ways automobile, bicycle, and pedestrian mobility practices
affect their users’ knowledge of, and connection to, commute environments and
place. This engages a central debate within the mobilities literature—in what ways
does ‘automobility’, the automobile system, ‘alienate’ or ‘estrange’ both drivers and
those outside the car from their surrounding environments? The alleged alienation
associated with automobility may contribute to 1) widespread insensitivity to the impacts
of motor vehicles, 2) the sense of injustice sometimes felt by non-motorists, and 3)
difficulties encouraging mode shift. Current analyses and writing draws on interviews,
commute narratives and GPS logs recorded with Vancouver commuters between 2009-
2010. This research informs public discussion and policy decisions on transportation
and urban planning by introducing new perspectives and conceptual frameworks. It
advances scholarship in areas such as environmental epistemology, transportation and
urban geography, and mobile methodologies.

More broadly, I am interested in the mutually constitutive relationships between:
• daily activities, mundane or otherwise,
• knowledge, tacit or otherwise, and,
• social and physical environments.
How does the way we live and relate to our environment today influence how we’ll live
and relate to our environment tomorrow, given some degree of choice?

“A Sense of Momentum: Transportation Practices and Kinesthetic Energy Conservation
in Vancouver.”
American Association of Geographers 2010 Annual Meeting.
Washington, DC, April 14th-18th, 2010.
Graduate Colloquium Series, Department of Geography, University of Western
Ontario
London, ON, April 23rd, 2010.

“Through the Windshield: Coming to Our Senses about Transportation Modes,
Environmental Knowledge, and Environmental Justice.”
Rounds. School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia.
Vancouver, BC, May 15th, 2009.
 

“Riding With Cars—Researching the Sensuous Knowledge of Bicycling in
Automobilized Spaces”.
American Association of Geographers 2008 Annual Meeting.
Boston, Mass., April 15th-19th, 2008.
Towards Carfree Cities VIII 2008 Annual Meeting.
Portland, OR, June 16th-20th, 2008.

“Goblet Words: Reflexivity and Dialogue in the Research of Daoism”.
Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association 2004 Annual Meeting.
CFHSS’s Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MN, June 4th, 2004.

“The Immediate and Emergent Environmental Benevolence of Qigong Cultivation”.
Daoism and the Contemporary World.
Boston University, Boston, USA, June 6th, 2003.

“Anthropocentricism in Industrial Green Design”.
4th Biennial Conference of the Canadian Society of Ecological Economics
(CANSEE).
McGill University, Montreal, Canada, August 23rd-25th, 2001.

Awards