Dr Evelyn Ruppert
Research Associate, CRESC, The Open University
Research interests
My research interests are in the sociology of governance specifically in relation to enumerating and managing populations. I investigate how different socio-technical arrangements organise and make possible a particular way of making population and acting upon and shaping the social. I have investigated this in relation to the census as a practice of constructing and producing population. I am currently extending this work through an ESRC funded project that investigates practices such as joined up administrative data, border management databases, population registers, and identity cards as contemporary modes of constructing and knowing whole populations as objects of government. The project, The Last Census: Governing Britain with Metrics, examines practices of assembling and reassembling different measurements of subjects—their biographies and transactions—in myriad ways to construct, evaluate and govern the performance of populations. A second area of research concerns investigations of planning interventions such as urban regeneration projects, which seek to shape social relations and govern conduct in the city. I am currently writing a genealogy of the material, aesthetic and functional transformations of the street bollard in the City of London to investigate how social and political change are congealed in the design, operation and presence of urban objects and how objects are deployed to achieve transformations in conduct and the use of urban space.
Recent publication
Books
- Ruppert, E. (2006) The Moral Economy of Cities: Shaping Good Citizens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Books Chapters
- Ruppert, E. (Forthcoming) 'Making the Good City and Citizen', in G. Bridge and S. Watson (editors) The Blackwell Companion to the City. London: Blackwell
- Ruppert, E. (Forthcoming) 'Other Populations', in G. Darroch (editor) The Dawn of Canada's Century: Hidden Histories. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press
- Ruppert, E. (Forthcoming)) 'The Category', in C. Lury and N. Wakeford (editors) Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. London: Routledge
Journal Articles
- Ruppert, E. (Forthcoming) 'Making Populations: From Censuses to Metrics', Leviathan (Berliner Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft)
- Ruppert, E. (2009) 'Becoming Peoples: 'Counting Heads in Northern Wilds',’ Journal of Cultural Economy 2(1-2): 11-31
- Ruppert, E. (2008) ' 'I Is; Therefore I Am': The Census as Narrative and Practice of Double Identification', Sociological Research Online 13(4)
- Bellavance, C., F. Normand, and E. Ruppert (2007) 'Census in Context: Documenting and Understanding the Making of 20th Century Canadian Censuses', Historical Methods 40(2): 92-103
- Ruppert, E. (2006) 'Rights to Public Space: Regulatory Reconfigurations of Liberty', Urban Geography 27(3): 271-292.
Contact Details
CRESC
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK
Tel: +44(0)1908-654319 (x54319)
email: e.ruppert@open.ac.uk