Local cycle campaigning – an activist-academic reports
Katja Leyendecker, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK
Preferred format: presentation
ABSTRACT
It is important that academics recognise and appreciate cycle campaigners. It is equally important that cycle campaigners understand academics. As an autoethnographer and activist-academic I have both academically observed and actively participated in cycle campaigning over several years. I would like to give an experience-based report about local cycle campaigning with a critical / feminist lens. The report is based on my PhD thesis at Northumbria University. At its heart, the report is primarily based on my own involvement and conversations with fellow women activists in Germany and the UK, whilst transport policy analysis and interviews with decision makers form the institutional counterpoint to the activist experience.
More specifically, I am interested in providing an outlook for the future and share what I have personally learnt as well as procedurally gleaned from the experience of cycle campaigning as an academic and as an activist. What does cycle campaigning need in order to be successful? Can cycle campaigning improve? If so, how can this be achieved? What can academics do to facilitate campaigning? I will conclude with suggesting theoretical and practical answers to these questions and outline a model for local cycle campaigns.
Word count 192 (abstract only)
