This page elaborates the methods the project uses to explore third cultures and their potential for thinking outside boxes about mobility and more generally. We also share some of our key references informing the methods we have used.
Please refer to the MobileWorlds Toolbox for more details and specific how-to’s to carry out your own workshops, mobile interviews, spatial analysis and/or festival inspired by the MobileWorlds rationale!
Workshops & Toolbox
The Mobile Worlds workshops take a hands-on, creative approach to explore mobility practices through the lens of culture – based on a set of norms and values that we identify with, for instance based on nationality, region, or subgroup (e.g. environmentalist, academic, skater, etc.). They begin with an introspective, individual part (which can remain private), and then move on to group creations and discussions about various cultures coming together within individuals and between individuals and groups. The workshop uses drawing, collage, plasticine, and other such methods to stimulate out-of-the-box engagement with the topic. The workshops are adjusted for diverse age-groups and backgrounds.
For the workshops we are inspired by methods bridging arts and science approaches, as well as by methods of hands-on engagement, and of participation with children, youth, adults and older adults.
We have continuously perfected the workshops and made adjustments based on specific audiences. Besides the value of the results of the workshops for our research, part of our reason to conduct the workshops is also to find out how well different methods work for different audiences, how receptive people are to participating in this way, and what the relationship can be between the content and the method. Based on these experiences, we are developing a toolkit that indicates not only materials needed to coduct a Mobile Worlds workshop, but also strategies of engagement and relationality, and identification of themes and audiences that these workshops can be especially suited for.
The images below show some impressions of the physical workshop toolkit content so far, and some impressions from previous workshops (anonymized).
Workshop toolkit materials gallery:
Workshop impressions gallery:
Interviews & Mobile Interviews
Mobile Worlds is also conducting regular and mobile interviews. Regular interviews are conducted with some experts and people less willing to engage in the mobile interviews. Mobile interviews are especially interesting for a closer and more in-depth understanding of the daily trip a person makes, their reasoning for it, and how it might connect to different cultural experiences of the participant. Mobile interviews are closely based on “Walking Methods” as elaborated by O’Neill and Roberts (2019), yet we are also testing this method in cars, public transport, and on bicycles – accompanying the participants on their path to work or school in the way they are most used to performing that trip. Of course, in some environments and using certain modes, most of the interviewing itself occurs after the mobility, but some reflections and photos might be taking during the mobility, and help the interviewer get a better sense of the path taken (we draw it, too), and makes the discussion of that path more concrete and alive in the immediate aftermath.
Literature review
We have also conducted an extensive literature review of the concept of “third cultures”, to further develop this in the broad sense that we are trying to use it in for this project. We are working on an academic article processing this literature review and look forward to sharing this on the website as well. Suffice to say for now, more than 200 academic articles on this topic were found, and even vaster numbers of non-academic sources giving various interpretations. A surge of literature on the topic of “third cultures” has been emerging over the past few decades. Find out more on the “Concepts” page.
Festival
The Mobile Worlds Festival took place in October and November 2025 in Bergen, Norway, and Porto, Portugal. You can find out more on the Festival page.
Some key references
Bryman, A. (2012). Social Research Methods (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Derr, V., Chawla, L., & Mintzer, M. (2018). Placemaking with children and youth: Participatory practices for planning sustainable communities (1. Auflage). New Village Press.
O’Neill, M., & Roberts, B. (2019). Walking methods: Research on the move (1st Edition). Routledge.