Postgraduate Academic Assistant in Tourism
MA, MSc, BA (Hons)
Sharon is a Postgraduate Academic Assistant in the Department of Tourism, Hospitality and Events. Sharon is currently undertaking a PHD, and her research is based upon the study of motilities and mobility’s of VW Campervan subcultures as they vacate cities and suburbs to commune for recreational purposes. For her thesis she is investigating ways in which ownership of this distinctive form of transport has led to the flow of corporeal travel in the ‘slow lane’. Driven by multiple social behaviors, discourses and interdependencies, she is examining the social and cultural aspects of this collective movement and investigate the phenomena of embodied practices through ‘kinships’ between the vehicle as a material object and owner, as its biological other.
Prior to joining the Faculty, Sharon has spent 10 years working in museums and galleries creating art commissions, facilitating community engaged projects with galleries such as V&A, Tate, Waygood and the Shipley Art Gallery Gateshead and is currently a freelancer at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Much of her creative work is driven by social engagement and inclusion. Using public places as a forum for her work there is at times no division between artist practitioner and the volunteering public who become part of the enquiry. This experience feeds into cultural tourism and events management studies as well as research in the Centre for experience Economy (CREE) at Sunderland University.