Options
Materialising networks: moving knowledge, governing mega-events
This project proposes to examine how knowledge on the organisation of mega-events circulates between the organising committees, the IOC and FIFA as well as third parties and how, in the course of this circulation, it is adapted to varying contexts and put into practice. It compares the practices of knowledge transfer, adaptation and application for the Olympic Games in Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016 as well as the Football World Cup 2014 in Brazil and 2018 in Russia with regard to three key questions:
1) How and where does knowledge circulate?
2) How is knowledge adapted and put into practice in local contexts?
3) When and why does knowledge transfer work ‘according to plan'? When and why does it produce unintended effects?
In order to capture the social and material substance of the knowledge networks and trace the emerging processes of association, the project will draw on a combination of organisational ethnography, qualitative interviewing and quantitative survey research.
Focussing on how immutable mobile carriers of knowledge create what Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law have dubbed an actor-network, this project contributes to an emerging research agenda around actor-network theory (ANT) and the circulation of knowledge within economic geography, organisation studies as well as planning and urban studies. On the empirical side, it aims to work towards a better understanding of the circumstances under which knowing practices evolve and are shaped in the transient, translocal settings that have become more and more commonplace through the proliferation of projects in the modern organisation of work.
Higher, longer, costlier: Risiko in der Planung von Grossprojekten
Popular perception of urban transformation through megaevents: understanding support for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi
The economic impact of Olympic tourism: When, who and how much?
State dirigisme in megaprojects: governing the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi