Introduction

Abstract

The past decade or so has seen a proliferation of introductions, handbooks, and companions to mobilities studies, all of which have played a crucial role in defining and developing the field.1 These overviews have proved especially important in maintaining the purpose and integrity of mobilities scholarship as it has expanded into a multidisciplinary phenomenon whose status (“paradigm”? “subject area”? “field”?) has become increasingly hard to pin down.2 Over time, these multiple applications and interventions have added ever more depth and complexity to what mobilities—as an interpretative framework—can achieve, but its popularization has not been without risk. For example, there has been a tendency within (some) humanities research for “mobility” to be understood merely as a synonym for movement (e.g., transport, travel, migration, etc.) rather than the complex system of power- inscribed social, discursive, and political mobile practices envisaged by Tim Cresswell, Mimi Sheller, John Urry, and Peter Adey (albeit in slightly different ways).3 Handbooks, encyclopedias, and special issues are thus invaluable in keeping the principles that first informed mobilities scholarship in view to new generations of scholars, and it is our hope that this double issue—on mobilities and/as pedagogy—will make a distinctive contribution to these ongoing debates. As every teacher knows, the “classroom” (broadly conceived) is the one place where it is impossible to “fudge” what a concept—or body of knowledge—means and why it matters, and we believe the nine articles gathered together here make an excellent case for why attention to pedagogy is a sure means of maintaining the rigor, as well as the innovation, of mobilities scholarship. Although the second decade of mobilities research gave rise to several important publications on “mobile methods” more widely, this is the first publication to focus specifically on pedagogy, even though most of us who conduct research in the field also incorporate it into our teaching and public engagement work.