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This paper reflects on the importance of 'time spent' in understanding the international student experience. Short‐term mobility programmes (involving stays of between 1 week and 2 months) attracting less privileged students, such as the relatively new Turing Scheme in the United Kingdom, have been hailed as a potential 'solution' to the fact that, traditionally, wealthier individuals have been far more likely to engage in study abroad. However, we do not yet know how short‐term and longer duration programmes compare in terms of the value they confer to students (in relation to their experiences and outcomes). How likely is it that short‐term mobility at undergraduate level is as valuable, according to different measures, as mobility lasting 6 months to several years (as with degree mobility)? This paper reviews some of the evidence to date on shorter duration mobility, addressing how value in international study is constructed and conferred and how this relates to 'time spent'. The paper concludes by arguing that the picture is mixed: although short‐term mobility will be beneficial to students, those engaging in longer term exchanges (usually more privileged students) are likely to derive greater benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency preparedness is a distinctive feature of contemporary anticipatory politics, yet "preppers," a sub‐culture who prepare to survive a range of possible crisis events through practices including stockpiling and survival skill development, are subject to media ridicule and academic dismissal. If the hoarder is the symbolic deviant figure of the consumer society, the prepper is that of the security society. Such constructions of prepper pathology, however, work to reinforce the neoliberal security state. By repositioning the prepper as an amplifier of conditions of the present, what emerges is an emblematic and anticipatory figure who troubles the cracks in the security state's governing logics, exposing its social differentiation and rehearsing the inevitability of its future failures. Drawing on qualitative research on UK prepping cultures, I define prepping across three constellations of imaginative‐material practices, concerning "value," "temporalities," and "crisis." I argue that prepping exposes the contradictions of infrastructural weakening alongside the networked dependencies and restricted agency felt within late modernity, challenges the expert determination of what constitutes crisis, and unveils the myth of the universality of state security protection. Living with profound crisis attunement, preppers nevertheless recuperate pleasure in material potentiality and skilful practice, in thoughtful engagement with temporalities, and in the vitality of community and meaning formed in the times and spaces in, and around, crisis. Drawing on qualitative research on UK prepping cultures, this paper explores prepping through its imaginative‐material practices concerning "value," "temporalities," and "crisis." The prepper emerges as both an emblematic and anticipatory figure who exposes the contradictions of infrastructural weakening alongside networked dependencies, challenges the expert determination of what constitutes crisis, and unveils the myth of the universality of state security protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing the affective geographies of digitally mediated payday loans in the UK, this paper advocates and exemplifies an approach to cultural economy that focuses on how economic worlds are affectively animated and lived. Supplementing the two versions of "culture" that cultural economy approaches have to date been organised around – culture as signifying system or culture as assembled effect – we propose a cultural economy of everyday space‐times which is attuned to the affective composition of forms of living. Drawing on empirical work with 40 users of digitally mediated payday loans, we employ this approach to trace how their loans become part of three intersecting forms of living: relief, as a pressing concern is deferred to the immediate future; separation, as private spaces are created within ordinary life and obligations are felt as individual responsibilities; and pressure, as demands to pay intensify the sense that debt is spiralling out of control and already‐ongoing precarity cannot be sustained. In conclusion, we pose further questions for a cultural economy approach orientated to the analysis of forms of living. Analysing the affective geographies of digitally mediated payday loans in the UK, this paper advocates and exemplifies an approach to cultural economy which focuses on the "forms of living" through which economic worlds are affectively animated and lived. Drawing on empirical work with 40 users of payday loans, it shows how they are lived through three forms: relief, separation, and pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers several critical and feminist interventions that colleagues and I have inserted into some key sociological perspectives and policy terrains in the families field: economic rationality, personal life, brain science, and social change. I use the metaphor of the 'yellow brick road' to discuss the challenges we made to the universalistic, decontextualized and unsituated thinking that often underpins and characterises intellectual and policy landscapes, and to think about how concepts of time and space can enhance understanding and bring the relationship between social divisions and everyday family lives in location into view. I conclude with some reflection on future possibilities and challenges in the families field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant tourist experience literature focuses on 'live' space and time activity, while pre- and post-components are often neglected despite the opportunities offered by increasing use of digital media communication (DMC). Focusing especially on the pre-festival experience but also addressing peri- and post-phases, this study examines the role of DMC in tourists' experiences at British rock music festivals. Interviews with festivalgoers revealed three core and inter-related themes: information, emotional response and communitas. Initial engagement with DMC enabled planning, generated feelings of anticipatory excitement and created a sense of communitas. Online activity reduced peri-festival but continued to enhance the live event experience, while the virtual communitas was extended at the post-festival phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generalised cost (GC) has long been widely used as a measure of the attractiveness of travel alternatives. We argue that its limitations have been forgotten, overlooked or not appreciated, and it is used because 'it has always been used'. We explore the relationships between GC and its components (price, time, value of time) and their respective demand elasticities and show that the variation of component elasticities over time and space is not consistent with the variation implied by a GC formulation. We therefore conduct detailed tests of whether the GC approach is justified. The datasets used are recorded ticket sales between pairs of railway stations for a number of years and covering a variety of types of flow. When restricted to a GC formulation, we find that allowing VoT to be estimated as part of the modelling process is greatly superior to using either the UK official VoTs or using VoTs from meta-analyses. We conclude that the importance of using the correct VoT in calculating GC cannot be overstated. Failure to do so will lead to incorrect derivation of component elasticities from the GC elasticity. A more flexible approach estimating elasticities to components of GC is better than even the best GC formulation. We conclude that robust models, with large sample sizes and very precise coefficient estimates in their standard form, are not able to support the variation in GJT and fare elasticities that would be implied by the GC approach. It might be time to stop using GC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2019 I have the opportunity to talk to Pete Bearder about his recent book Stage Invasion: Poetry & The Spoken Word Renaissance. To the backdrop of a railway station in the UK we delve into some of the issues that his book has raised for me. As we talk, we are surrounded by the rampant consumerism and profiteering promoted by the privatisation of what was once a public, not-for-profit space. The time and space of reflection we carve out and performatively create through conversation in a cafe that sells the simulacrum of benign bourgeois comfort, has more in common with the location of our previous meeting, which took place on a mountain during a festival where I saw Bearder--then in his role as the poet Pete the Temp--stage an interactive performance for children and teenagers, sharing the stage with protagonists of various ages. All of them together created a momentous example of poetic-political education and expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The measurement of rainfall has a long history, but despite its apparent simplicity it is difficult to quantify accurately. The common installation of raingauges with rims above the ground surface results in a difference between the rainfall caught and the amount reaching ground level, termed undercatch. The UK standard installation of raingauges is for their rim to be sited at 0.305 m above the ground; however, the use of weighing gauges installed at a minimum rim height of 1 m has increased in recent years. The installation of these weighing raingauges raises complex questions of homogeneity in rainfall data across space and time. Here, we investigate the impact of these changes using field trials of commonly deployed UK raingauges at a site in south-east England. This paper discusses the results of the trial, exploring the variation in and potential drivers of undercatch with differing gauge sitings. With varying standards for gauge heights around the world and new rainfall measurement technologies coming to the market all the time, improved understanding of undercatch is needed to inform evolving operational practices and explore the possibility of developing catch correction algorithms to remove arising inhomogeneity in precipitation datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the effect of light conditions on road accidents and estimate the long run consequences of different time regimes for road safety. Identification is based on variation in light conditions induced by differences in sunrise and sunset times across space and time. We estimate that darkness causes annual costs of more than £500 million in Great Britain. By setting daylight saving time year-round 8 percent of these costs could be saved. Thus, focusing solely on the short run costs related to the transition itself underestimates the total costs of the current time regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twin ambits of climate change and coastal development have raised public awareness of shoreline management. Simultaneously, they have highlighted a gap in our understanding of sediment transport and morphodynamic processes at time and space scales appropriate for shoreline management purposes. Here, we analyse an exceptional set of beach surveys gathered over a period of twenty-two years along the Suffolk coast, eastern UK, that extends over approximately 80 km to investigate the meso-scale shoreline variations. The surveys have been made biannually along fixed transects spaced at approximately 1 km intervals as part of a strategic monitoring exercise undertaken by the coastal authorities to assist in shoreline management planning. Changes in beach volume, foreshore slope and shoreline position have been computed to investigate both spatial and temporal changes. The analysis reveals some distinct responses to the physical processes of tides and waves, anthropogenic interventions and geological controls. Neither a clear relationship between the presence of sea defences and beach response nor an ordered regional-scale shoreline movement are evident. Temporal variations in beach volumes and position provide a similarly complex picture with recessionary, accretionary and stable behaviour all apparent within the study site. There is evidence of quasi-cyclic behaviour at some locations as well as a reduction in variability over time-scales beyond approximately five years. • Historic beach surveys over a period of 22 years along a frontage of 80km have been analysed for their meso-scale dynamics. • Meso-scale morphological changes of protected and unprotected beaches have been classified. • The majority of beaches fronting hard defences don't exhibit erosive trends; the majority of those without hard defences do. • Beach morphodynamics are constrained to the synoptic scale, with little coherent variation at the meso-scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on constituency campaigning focuses heavily on studies of single national elections, and cross-temporal variability in campaign effects is rarely addressed. Similarly, campaign effects for a party at a given election are assumed to be uniform across the territory of the relevant polity. But both assumptions are questionable. In this paper, we analyse constituency campaign spending effects at British General Elections from 1997 to 2015 to explore their stability across time and space. In doing so, we also evaluate the empirical utility of some of the arguments theorised by Fisher, Cutts, and Fieldhouse (2011) to explain campaign variability. Our results suggest parts of the theory, while attractive, do not adequately account for the observed variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrofusion jointing is a common joint process used to weld polyethylene (PE) water pipe in the UK. For many years, the UK Water Industry has experienced a small number of premature failures of electrofusion fittings; this inevitably causes leakage. The common causes of critical failures have been highlighted and as a result of this, a testing programme was designed and implemented to assess the fatigue performance of electrofusion tapping tees if they were to be installed by 'bad practice'. A fine china talc was used to replicate contamination in the field. The results suggest that failures associated with fatigue are possible in a relatively short space of time on tapping tees when they are subject to contamination. The pressure ranges used in the fatigue regime aimed to replicate the potential magnitude of surge pressures that can be experienced in water distribution mains. • Contaminated electrofusion joints are shown to fatigue under the conditions found in real pipe networks. Perfect ones do not. • S N curves of the fatigue life of contaminated joint has been produced for the first time. • Examination of real, failed joints shows that the electrofusion wire itself adds to the integrity of poorly made joints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automobile commute makes an important contribution to carbon emissions but has proven stubbornly resistant to modal shift policy initiatives. In this paper we use theories of social practice to develop insights into why this stubbornness might exist, and what might help accelerate transitions to bus- and cycle-commuting. By analyzing qualitative data about everyday mobility in two UK cities, we examine how the availability of the constituent elements of bus- and cycle-commuting practices is crucial for modal shift to occur, but they are often absent. We also draw attention to time-space contingencies that render recruitment to low-carbon commuting practices more or less likely, including how commuting is sequenced with other social practices and how the sites of these practices interact with the affordances, and spatial infrastructure, of bus- and cycle-commuting. These insights lead us to argue that choice and land use planning focussed policy initiatives designed to invoke modal shift need to coexist in integrated policy configurations with initiatives designed to reshape both mobility and non-mobility practices. This means addressing the structural barriers caused by the lack of availability of the elements that constitute bus- and cycle-commuting, and intervening in the timing and spatiality of a range of social practices so as to reduce the tendency for commutes to have spatial and temporal characteristics that militate against the use of bus and cycle modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed by a growing literature on space-time patterns of repeat and near repeat burglary victimization, a crime location choice model was used to test whether burglars are attracted to areas they previously targeted. Using data in 3337 detected burglaries from one UK police force, and accounting for the distance to the offender's residence, and for other factors that make target areas attractive to burglars, it was demonstrated that burglars were more likely to commit a burglary in an area they had targeted before. This was particularly the case if the prior burglary was (very) recent. Areas near to those in which burglaries had been committed were also more likely to be selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of a discussion of data sonification--a procedure in which information gathered from systems such as bodies or environmental processes is analyzed and reprocessed into audio models, so aspects of the process generating the data (for example, emotional or tidal ebb and flow) can be apprehended by human senses. This serves various purposes relevant to geography. Firstly, it sets out the principles of sonification as a method, defining its basic principles and relating it to both qualitative and quantitative data. Secondly, it offers potential to geographic interests in process, times, rhythm, landscape, place, and more besides-- 'representing' various aspects of processes that are beyond normal human apprehension, perhaps through register, duration, pitch, and so on. Thirdly, in the illustrating examples, which comprise sonifications of tides and other processes in the Severn Estuary, UK, it highlights possibilities of engaging local communities and stakeholders with the dynamics of landscapes such as tidal processes, which have significant implications for culture, economy, and ecology, as do other tidal and other process geographies elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the writing on urban regeneration in the UK has been focused on the types of urban spaces that have been created in city centres. Less has been written about the issue of when the benefits of regeneration could and should be delivered to a range of different interests, and the different time frames that exist in any development area. Different perceptions of time have been reflected in dominant development philosophies in the UK and elsewhere. The trickle-down agendas of the 1980s, for example, were criticised for their focus on the short-term time frames and needs of developers, often at the expense of those of local communities. The recent emergence of sustainability discourses, however, ostensibly changes the time focus of development and promotes a broader concern with new imagined futures. This paper draws on the example of development in Salford Quays, in the North West of England, to argue that more attention needs to be given to the polities of space-time in urban development processes. It begins by discussing the importance and relevance of this approach before turning to the case study and the ways in which the local politics of space - time has influenced development agendas and outcomes. The paper argues that such an approach harbours the potential for more progressive, far-reaching, and sustainable development agendas to be developed and implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the powerful relations between mental health and nature are explored with reference to past asylum horticultural practices and to contemporary community gardening schemes for people with mental-health problems in the United Kingdom. Through the use of archival evidence, alongside contemporary voices of experience, understandings of the therapeutic and social dimensions to nature work are outlined and deconstructed. It is argued that particular discourses concerning the powers of nature (work) in managing madness and mental-health problems are largely consistent across time and space (from the asylum to the community). However, in the contemporary era it is particular types of nature work that arguably contribute most directly to state agendas for social inclusion, and therefore to securing the place of people with mental-health problems in mainstream society. By briefly profiling the voices of staff and ‘volunteers’ from two urban garden schemes in England and Scotland, different experiences of garden work as ‘restorative’ and as ‘interventionist’ will be discussed. I conclude by evaluating how embodying and enacting gardening work act as a sustainable vehicle for new versions of social citizenship for people traditionally marginalised in mainstream society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The WATET (Water Age and Tracer Efficient Tracking) hydrological model is introduced to quantify the main controls of variability in water transit time distributions (TTDs) at catchment scale. In the model hydrological and conservative transport simulations are coupled to follow multiple water parcels in space and time through small to mid-size catchments. The model is first tested and benchmarked on a catchment in UK where extensive data of discharge and a conservative environmental tracer, chloride, are available. Discharge and chloride concentration are satisfactory reproduced by the model, which generates confidence on the simulated TTDs both forward and backward in time. Results show that TTDs conditional on a given rainfall time are mostly correlated to the season in which the rain event occurs, whereas TTDs conditional on a given exit time are mostly affected by catchment wetness. To further shed light on TTD dynamics, the model is subsequently applied to five catchments in different climatic regions. Virtual scenarios combining the five climates and two topographies are developed to infer and compare the influences of climatic and topographic catchment characteristics on transit time distribution and fraction of young water. Results reveal that for wet climates we can mostly define a curve describing water transit distributions as a function of cumulative discharge that only depends on topographic properties. On the contrary, in dry climates the variability of transit time and young water fraction is much larger even when time is rescaled with cumulative discharge, therefore a synthesis of climatic effects on transit times remains elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]