THIS WEBSITE IS EMBARRASSINGLY OUT-OF-DATE – I HOPE TO FIND TIME TO UPDATE IT SOON. FOR MORE UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION SEE MY STAFF PAGE AT UMEÅ UNIVERSITY.
I am an interdisciplinary researcher with a primary interest in questions of memory, heritage and infrastructure, particularly within the context of a broadly conceived underground (spatial, political, digital and cultural). In December 2014 I completed a Graduate School Funded PhD in cultural geography at University College London which also included a spell at the Technical University of Berlin as a DAAD fellow. My PhD thesis won first prize in the 2014 Peter Lang Young Scholars in Memory Studies Competition and has since been published within Peter Lang’s peer-review Cultural Memory series.
I also have a postgraduate degree in Heritage Studies from The Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus, Germany (funded by a Leverhulme Trust Studentship) and an undergraduate degree in Archaeology and Ancient History from The University of Birmingham, UK. In addition, I have worked at, or been associated with, Architectural Conservation, Tourism, Urban Studies and Modern Languages departments in the UK, Germany and Australia. Between 2015 and 2017 I undertook a two-year postdoctoral research project entitled Mobilising The Past: The Transnational and Digital Social Memories of Contemporary European Antifascism at the Digital Social Research Unit (DIGSUM) of the Department of Sociology at Umeå University in Sweden. During the first year of that project I was also a visiting fellow at the School of Advanced Studies’ Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory within the University of London. I am currently employed as a a researcher at DIGSUM where I am involved in a number of different research projects whilst also teaching at the Umeå University’s Department of Sociology.
To date I have published research articles, communications and reviews on themes including World Heritage and International Development, Graffiti, Street Art and Heritage, and the Social Memories and Cultural Landscapes of Subterranean Transport Infrastructures. Many of these are available as at least non-typeset versions on my Academia.edu page but if they are not available do feel free to contact me for copies. You might also like to visit my LinkedIn and ResearchGate profiles, follow me on Twitter or visit my current staff page at Umeå University. It is also possible to trace my academic pursuits by visiting my earlier home pages at University College London, Technical University Berlin and the University of London (each of which are like this website out of date to varying extents).
My Current Keywords
Disciplinary: Digital & Cultural Sociology; Memory Studies; Social Movement Studies; Media Studies; Historical and Cultural Geography; Urban Studies; Heritage Studies; Urban & Cultural History; Contemporary Archaeology. Thematic: Cultural Memory; Social Movements; Digital Media; Cultural Landscapes; Underground and Infrastructural Space; Subcultural Heritage. Methodological: Interdisciplinary & Comparative Qualitative Methods; Multi-sited and Mixed Methodologies; Ethnographic and Archival Research; Hybridised Field Surveying; Material Culture; and Digital and Social Media Analysis. Geographic: Europe – Germany, Britain, & Sweden.
Samuel Merrill 