The Changing Campus #2: Learning in place?, SHU Space & Place Group online session 16-2-22
Channel: Sheffield Hallam University Space & Place Group
Date: 2022-02-18

This event was the second in the Sheffield Hallam University Space & Place Group’s 2022 series of events, running under the theme of ‘Changing Places’. Our first two events, curated jointly with the University’s Interdisciplinary Higher Education Research Cluster, examined how university campuses are changing, due to changes in student expectations and the exigencies of Covid-19. Our first event, held on 19 January 2022, focussed upon how the experience of being on campus can be researched. 

Our second session, held on 16 February 2022, examined the role of the human/thing relations in campus making, learning and researching.

The session was chaired by Becky Shaw, who opens the event with a provocative reflection on the thingly nature of our experience of being ‘on campus’. This introduction is followed by presentations from:

Hiral Patel (Cardiff University)

'Aligning learning and space – a tale of buildings, users and technologies'

Learning approaches within higher education are continuously evolving and diverse. This is evident through changes in pedagogies, curriculum content and programme structures. University buildings are required to act in tandem and need to be continuously adapted. My research on adaptations of a library building over 50 years demonstrates the fluidity of the building in response to emerging technologies, pedagogical innovations and the creation of new library services. These observations demand a shift from thinking about learning spaces as fixed entities. Instead, conceiving buildings as socio-material practices highlight their constant state of flux and the ‘ontological politics’ (Mol, 1998) that surround them.

Such a conception has two implications. Firstly, we need to rethink the design and management of learning spaces that integrate different scales (a chair to the city) and sectors (work, living, cultural and learning). Secondly, we need to develop tools and capabilities to continuously align learning practices and learning spaces.

The talk will conclude with provocations for future learning spaces. These provocations emerge from the work of LE-DR Lab, which focuses on the impact of the fourth industrial revolution on university spaces.

Mol, A. (1998) ‘Ontological Politics. A Word and Some Questions’, The Sociological Review, 46, pp. 74–89. doi: 10.1111/1467-954X.46.s.5.

James Corazzo & Layla Gharib (SHU)

'Part of the furniture: encountering people and sofas in the design studio'

Part of the furniture: a person or thing that has been somewhere so long as to seem a permanent, unquestioned, or invisible feature of the landscape.

The unquestioned things we shall be questioning in this talk are a pair of green sofas. Arranged in an L-shape around a coffee table and forming a small domestic looking space within a larger open-plan design studio at Sheffield Hallam University. At first glance, the sofas appear ordinary, invisible even. However, upon closer scrutiny, we begin to see the sofas as active participants in how teaching and learning practices unfold in the studio. We suspect these sofas are not innocent or invisible features in this educational setting but objects with power and significance that materialize different kinds of relations (Suchman 2005), different kinds of knowers and different ways of knowing. In an attempt to understand these sofas, we sat down with them, had a conversation with them and believe it or not, they spoke back…

Suchman, L. (2005) ‘Affiliative Objects’, The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory and Society Vol.12(3) pp.379—399

Justine Pedler (SHU) 

‘Variety is the condition of harmony – Student thoughts on Hallam Teaching & Learning Spaces’

As Programme Lead for the Future Spaces Project (Extended Campus) Justine gave us an insider’s insight into an ongoing project at Sheffield Hallam aimed at understanding how the new campus spaces being created at the University are being perceived and used by a variety of students. She showed how photo elicitation has been used to get a student ‘eye’ on these developments and as an aid to focus group insights.