Dr. Mimi Sheller

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		Mimi Sheller, Ph.D.
		Professor of Sociology
		Office:	Macalister 5011
		Phone:	215-571-3652
		Email:	mimi.sheller @ drexel.edu
	Center for Mobilities Research and Policy mCenter@Drexel [Facebook]     Centre for Mobilities Research in Lancaster Mobilities (Journal)
	Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University. She is also former co-Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University (UK) and founding co-editor of the international journal Mobilities. She received her A.B. from Harvard University, and her MA and PhD in Sociology and Historical Studies from the New School for Social Research, and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for African and Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan. She has held recent Visiting Fellowships in the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University (2008-09); Media@McGill in Montreal (2009); the Center for Mobility and Urban Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark (2009); and the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania (2010-11). Sheller is a founding theorist in the field of mobilities research. She is the author of 6 books, including Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (2000); Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (2003); and Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke University Press, 2012). She is co-editor with John Urry of Mobile Technologies of the City (Routledge, 2006), Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play (Routledge, 2004), and a special issue of Environment and Planning A on ‘Materialities and Mobilities’. Her work in the field of mobilities research is concerned with the convergences of information technologies, mobile communications and physical spatiality, especially in relation to mobility justice and the ethics of mobility in both urban and trans-border spaces. Sheller is currently collaborating on a project in Denmark on “Analyses of activity-based travel chains and sustainable mobility (ACTUM)” with colleagues at the University of Aalborg and the Technical University of Denmark. In September 2011 she taught in the PhD Summer School of the Technical University of Berlin on the theme of “Passengering”, and in May 2012 she will be teaching in the PhD Summer School on “Mobile Methods” at Aalborg University, Denmark. Dr. Sheller’s international research includes a recent NSF-funded study of post-earthquake reconstruction in Leogane, Haiti, with colleagues in the College of Engineering. This led to her working with the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) as co-chair of a workshop developing recommendations for the National Science Foundation. In January 2012 she was invited by EERI to travel to Tokyo, Japan, as part of a team of 12 global experts commissioned by the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction to help develop a report on lessons from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami for developing countries. Her current work in progress includes: the forthcoming book Aluminum Dreams: Lightness, Speed and Modernity (MIT Press) on the history of aluminum as a material of speed and mobile modernity, and its relation to Caribbean bauxite mining and global environmental issues; the co-edited volume Handbook of Mobilities (Routledge, 2013), a definitive guide to this new field; and a co-edited special issue of Leonardo Electornic Almanac on Mobile Art: Network Culture and the Aesthetics of Placemaking, based on the mobile art exhibit LA Re.Play that she co-curated with Hana Iverson in Los Angeles in association with a double session they organized for the College Arts Association Conference in February 2012 (see www.lareplay.net).
	CURRENT AREAS OF RESEARCH Sustainable Mobility and Mobility Justice: new cultures and infrastructures of travel, transport, mobile communication, and urbanism Caribbean Studies: history, culture and political theory of the region, including intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class Caribbean Mobilities: the relation between tourism, migration and air travel across the U.S.-Caribbean borders Tracing the histories and forecasting the futures of cultures of mobility and wider mobility regimes, including theorizing transitions in complex systems CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS Co-PI for National Science foundation “RAPID: Supporting Haitian Water and Sanitation Infrastructure Reconstruction Decisions with Local Knowledge: Case Study in Leogane, Haiti” (2010-2012) CBET–1032184. Danish Strategic Research Council, “Analyses of activity-based travel chains and sustainable mobility (ACTUM)” with colleagues at the University of Aalborg and the Technical University of Denmark. Co-PI for submission of NSF-PIRE 11-564: “International Partnership for Science, Engineering, and Education on Caribbean Sustainability” (Carib-SEES) with colleagues at CUNY and various Caribbean universities. Co-PI for submission of NSF-PIRE submission on Green Infrastructure with partners at Syracuse University, Drexel University, and Georgia Tech SI for submission for NSF Research Center: Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe), with PI Youngmoo Kim, Drexel University
	SELECTED PUBLICATIONS PUBLISHED MONOGRAPHS - M. Sheller, Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke University Press, 2012) - M. Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies (Routledge, 2003) - M. Sheller, Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica (Macmillan Caribbean, 2000; University Press of Florida, 2001)   EDITED BOOKS M. Sheller and J. Urry (eds), Materialities and Mobilities (Reprint of Special Issue of Environment and Planning A, 38 (London: Ashgate, 2006). (50%) M. Sheller and J. Urry (eds), Mobile Technologies of the City, (London and New York: Routledge, 2006) Networked Cities Series. (50%) M. Sheller and J. Urry (eds), Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play, (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) (50%) Sara Ahmed, Claudia Castaneda, Anne-Marie Fortier, and Mimi Sheller (eds), Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003) (25%)   REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES Sheller, M. ‘Islanding Effects: Mobility Systems, Urban Disaster and the Rebuilding of Haiti’, in press for Cultural Geographies, special issue on Islanding Geographies, eds. Eric Clark and Godfrey Baldaccino. Sheller, M. (2011) ‘Bleeding Humanity and Gendered Embodiment: From Anti-Slavery Sugar Boycotts to Ethical Consumers’ in Special Issue of Humanity, eds. Samuel Martinez and Kathryn Libal, Fall 2011, 171-92. Sheller, M. (2011) ‘Hidden Textures of Race and Historical Memory: The Rediscovery of Photographs Relating to Jamaica’s Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865’, Princeton Library Chronicle, Vol. 72, No. 2, Winter 2011, 532-67. Sheller, M. ‘Air Mobilities on the US-Caribbean Border: Open Skies and Closed Gates’, in The Communication Review, Vol. 13: 4 (2010): 269-288 Sheller, M. ‘The New Caribbean Complexity: mobility systems, tourism and the re-scaling of development’, The Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 30 (2009) pp. 189-203 Sheller, M. ‘Infrastructures of the Imagined Island: Software, Mobilities and the Architecture of Caribbean Paradise’, Environment and Planning A, Vol. 41 (2009), pp. 1386-1403 Sheller, M. ‘Bodies, Cybercars and the Production of Automated-Mobilities’, Social and Cultural Geography, 8: 2 (2008): 175-197 Sheller, M. ‘Virtual Islands: Mobilities, Connectivity and the New Caribbean Spatialities’, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 24 (October 2007): 16-33 Hannam, K., Sheller, M., Urry, J. ‘Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings’, Editorial Introduction to Mobilities, 1: 1 (March 2006): 1-22 M. Sheller and J. Urry, ‘The New Mobilities Paradigm’, Environment and Planning A, ‘Materialities and Mobilities’, 38 (2006): 207-26 Sheller, M. ‘Automotive Emotions: Feeling the Car’, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 21, No. 4/5, (2004): 221-42. Special issue eds. M. Featherstone, N. Thrift and J. Urry Sheller, M. ‘Mobile Publics: Beyond the Network Perspective’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22: 1 (February 2004): 39-52 Sheller, M. and Urry, J., ‘Mobile Transformations of “Public” and “Private” Life’, Theory, Culture and Society, 20: 3 (2003), pp. 107-125 Sheller, M. and Urry, J., ‘The City and the Car’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 24, No. 4, (2000) pp. 737-57            Sheller, M. ‘The Army of Sufferers: Peasant Democracy in the Early Republic of Haiti’ in New West Indian Guide, Vol. 74, Nos 1&2 (2000), pp. 33-56 Emirbayer, M. and Sheller, M. ‘Publics in History’, Theory and Society, 28 (1999): 145-197