The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is leading the development of a new cross-Research Council research programme on Connected Communities in partnership with the EPSRC, ESRC, MRC and NERC. As a part of this development process, the AHRC has commissioned a number of studies and reviews that will address the underpinning issues. The results of these studies are expected to stimulate debate on the programme topic, to inform the development of the programme’s shape, focus and priorities and to provide a resource to future researchers who take part in the programme.

As one of these studies, Temporal Connectivities will contribute to the Connected Communities programme by exploring how time is involved in the production, maintenance, complication, destruction and/or disavowal of connectivity within and between communities. Research from across the humanities and social sciences, highlights the role of temporality within social methods of inclusion and exclusion, understandings of legitimacy and agency, processes of social change, communal futures and pasts, the experiences of accelerating global networks, the ideal pacing of economic productivity, contradictions between human and ecological time-frames, and the production of social norms. Even so, despite the complicated and wide-ranging role of temporality in some of the most pressing questions about social mechanisms of connectivity and belonging, research on ‘time’ and ‘community’ remains fragmented and underdeveloped. This has meant that knowledge across disciplines has not been adequately connected up. For example, philosophical accounts of community only very rarely deal with insights developed in sociology and anthropology on ‘social time’. This scoping study will thus seek to assess what work has been done already, to draw out current and potential intersections, to highlight emerging trends, as well as themes that may be under-researched. The aim is to provide an overview of how the question of time and community is currently being thought and recommendations for future research.

Outcomes from the associated workshop, including presentations and summary of activities are now available here. And the bilbiographical resource produced as part of this study is available online here or go here to download.

Please contact Michelle (michelle.bastian@manchester.ac.uk) for more details.