Dr Les Roberts BA (London) PhD (Middlesex)

Personal Statement

My research interests and practice fall within the areas of urban cultural studies, the mediation of cultural memory, and spatial anthropology/spatial humanities. With a background in anthropology and cultural studies my work explores the intersection between space, place, mobility, and memory, with a particular focus on film, popular music, and cultures of everyday life.

I am the author of Posthuman Buddhism and the Digital Self: the Production of Dwellspace (Routledge, 2023), Spatial Anthropology: Excursions in Liminal Space (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and Film, Mobility and Urban Space: a Cinematic Geography of Liverpool (Liverpool University Press, 2012). I have edited/co-edited many books and special issue journal editions, including The Phenomenology of Travel and Tourism (2023-24), Spatial Bricolage (2018), Deep Mapping (2016), Mapping Cultures (2015/2012), Locating the Moving Image (2014), Sites of Popular Music Heritage (2014), Liminal Landscapes (2012), The City and the Moving Image (2010).

I am currently working on two new book projects: 1) a collection of edited interviews (with Sara Cohen) titled Song Lines and Inheritance Tracks: Music, Memory and Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2024/25); and 2) a collection of essays titled Poetic-inductive Interventions: Essays in Space, Movement and Method.