David Fevyer, a Transport Planning and Management MSc graduate, was one of ten winners of a New Voices Award for his dissertation titled ‘Cycles of violence: Analysing media discourse in the newspaper reporting of bicycle users and road fatalities’.
David Fevyer’s dissertation was chosen from 60 entries across 19 countries to receive an award. He successfully submitted his work to the New Voices Awards team along with a short article explaining its topic, findings, and contributions to theoretical and policy debates. As one of the winning entries, his article will also be published on the Mobile Lives Forum webpage.
The Mobile Lives Forum is a transdisciplinary and transnational research institute that focuses on mobility as both physical movement and social change. The institute’s New Voices award was created in 2017 and seeks to reward and highlight early career researchers specialising in mobility. David’s dissertation was one of three Masters level dissertations to win this year’s edition.
David’s dissertation project analysed how fatalities of bicycle riders and pedestrians are depicted in newspaper reporting, and how this depiction shapes and is shaped by discourses of cycling, walking, driving, and road safety. This is a relatively new and expanding area of research within transport studies, with several recent studies highlighting patterns in reporting that affect public attitudes to and understandings of road safety. David’s research contributed to this work by using a systematic critical discourse analysis method to identify different depictions of those involved in road collisions that were specific to their transport mode. A journal article based on the research and co-authored with Professor Rachel Aldred, Professor of Transport at the University of Westminster, is also currently undergoing peer-review.
The importance of how road collisions are reported has also recently received widespread attention thanks to the publishing of new Road Collision Reporting Guidelines developed by journalist Laura Laker in collaboration with the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy. David’s findings also contributed to the consultation for these guidelines.
Talking about receiving the award, David said: “I am so grateful to have been chosen as one of the winners of the New Voices Award, and to have done so for research on a topic that I care about deeply. I came to Westminster to study transport because I wanted to develop my interest in active travel into a professional discipline, and to be able to work on a dissertation like this under the auspices of the Active Travel Academy and the guidance of Rachel Aldred has been a privilege.”
Enrica Papa, Course Leader for the Transport Planning and Management MSc course, said: “The New Voices Award is a prestigious prize of one of the few institutes that provides research on and discussion about mobilities with a deep interdisciplinary approach. I’m delighted that David’s dissertation has been selected from 60 entries received from 19 different countries. This is a great achievement for him and the Transport Planning and Management MSc at the University of Westminster.”
Rachel Aldred, Director of the Active Travel Academy and supervisor of David’s dissertation, added: “I’m delighted that David’s excellent work has been recognised in this way. He not only applied a method - Critical Discourse Analysis - to a new problem, but also adapted it as needed to his subject area. The findings are both academically fascinating and have important policy implications around reporting of road deaths.”
Find out more about the 2021 New Voices award.
Find out more about the Road Collision Reporting Guidelines.
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