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This paper aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on participatory place branding processes and, in particular, on multiple actors’ ability to build agency.

An in-depth qualitative inquiry of place branding processes in Cardiff (UK) was undertaken during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured (online) interviews with 28 city representatives from the public, private and voluntary sectors are analysed using three-stage conceptual coding.

Five transitions in the meaning-making and engagement processes at the nexus of participatory place branding are identified: heightening value of the local environment; building and sharing local knowledge; embedding a sense of community into relational networks; innovating engagement channels; and blurring of roles and responsibilities. Combined, these demonstrate a cultivating place (brand) attachment and evolving logics around participation.

Transitions in actor agency require monitoring over time, drawing on additional studies, wider samples and multidisciplinary frameworks.

Local knowledge and multi-actor networks are increasingly viewed as valuable assets, providing legitimacy for those in possession of these resources and for the brand. Practitioners, policy makers and community representatives should support innovative ways to involve and learn from local actors, including those not currently active across the place brand web.

Antecedents to actor agency are investigated, highlighting that during a period of disruption actors gained legitimacy for their participation by emphasising the value attached to localities, building place (brand) attachment and drawing on blurred place branding boundaries.

The aim of this paper is to explore the role and potential of lived experiences in informing and shaping the formation of place identity within the sphere of the production and consumption of craft objects.

This paper is part of a larger funded research project and focuses on Manchester’s Craft and Design Centre. It draws upon a series of in-depth interviews conducted with craft makers and visitors.

The analysis and interpretation of textual data help to theorise an experiential identity of place, which revolves around the fusion of the cultural heritage and lived insideness of the physical setting; activity spaces and the micro-encounters of craft-making; and conflicting meanings and attachments to the Craft and Design Centre.

This study provides a novel perspective on the understanding of place identity in the context of craft-making by focusing on the lived experiences of various stakeholders and acknowledging the multi-faceted, dynamic and processual nature of place.

Meetings with colleagues are an essential activity in workplace collaboration. The iterative nature of collaborative work demands spaces that team members can access quickly and easily. Creating suitable meeting spaces will become more critical if the hybrid work model continues and the workplace environment becomes the hub for face-to-face collaborative time, learning and training. Workspace and fit-out is expensive so it is crucial that the investment in meeting spaces supports employees’ collaboration activities.

This paper presents a case study of a corporate organisation undertaken in New Zealand to investigate how employees from two business units use their workspace to collaborate within their own team and across other teams in their organisation. The study uses ethnographic techniques, including participant observation and in-depth face-to-face interviews.

The findings show that the frequency and nature of small group work in collaboration was underestimated in the initial planning of the new workspace. Although participants found the design and fit-out of the formal meeting rooms supportive of collaborative work, the meeting rooms were in high demand, and it was difficult to find a room at short notice. The breakout spaces were confusing because they lacked key design attributes identified by the participants as conducive to small group work. Design shortfalls together with fit-out features perceived as supportive of collaborative work are identified.

The research reports on employees’ perceptions and experiences across two functionally diverse business units, reflecting their different needs and concerns.

Post-socialist urban development changed cityscapes and city life profoundly, reusing public space in a different manner and reinterpreting the role of work, heritage, and consumption among others. Focusing on two case studies – the Outer Józsefváros in Budapest and the Praga North district in Warsaw – the paper examines this transformation, following how and to what extent these characteristic neighbourhoods have changed, how local heritage has been reconceptualised and what role work has played in this process.

The comparative analysis combines a literature review with a case study investigation that includes interviews, on-site visits, experiments with locally driven adaptive reuse, and document analysis.

The two case studies put heritage conservation, identity building and value determination processes in the context of architectural design, economic investment and labour market. The paper shows the relation between aesthetics and economic transition, how work, or its loss, has shaped the areas, creating a milieu of transition in a physical and a social sense, offering a reconceptualization of local identity. It also highlights the seminal value of civic initiatives and artists/artisans to increase the engagement of the local community.

The paper provides a rarely done comparison between two former Socialist cities undergoing similar transformations. It focuses on work as intangible heritage, the connected architectural aesthetics and their role in shaping the identity of various groups.

Transnational migration has produced a state of flux in the naturalized conception of home as a fixed, bounded, discreet and trouble-free place of origin, (re)casting home as a more complex, or perhaps simpler, project entangled within the workings of the global capitalist economy. In this context, here the author qualitatively explores migrants’ engagement with the notion of home in the sense of how they conceptualize and experience home, based on the lived experiences of Sri Lankan women who have migrated to Kuwait as live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) independently of their families. The stories of the MDWs simultaneously made the meaning of home as conventionally defined, more straightforward and more complicated: home was taken on a journey with them to a faraway foreign land. The MDWs negotiated and constructed belonging and not belonging dialectically in multiple homes, thus being simultaneously “here,” “there” and “nowhere.” In migration, home thus manifests the evolution of female power and duty, portraying it at once as a locus of women’s liberation and as new and perhaps more extreme forms of (re)subjectivation in the emplacement of home within global capitalism. Migration performs home as a space in the (un)making: an ongoing project through the course of life.

This paper aims to delve into the interdependent connection between place branding and social capital, specifically focusing on how it contributes to uniting a city’s recovery efforts during times of crisis. By using the theoretical frameworks of social capital and cultural intermediation, the case study of Vilnius, Lithuania, exemplifies how cities can navigate through turbulent periods by prioritising the work of place marketers and their relationships in their strategic approach.

A qualitative, mixed method case study approach used four different methods of investigation, drawing on multiple sources of evidence, including a mix of interviews with key actors, content analysis, netnography and participant observation.

Go Vilnius, in collaboration with the City of Vilnius Municipality, leveraged existing stakeholder relationships and a strong common identification among political actors, promotional intermediaries, residents and city institutions to not only adapt to the unfolding crisis but to evolve its marketing, place-making, tourism and community engagement strategies to emerge as a more resilient, dynamic and animated city after the pandemic.

This case study demonstrates that a “network constellation” approach centralised around key stakeholder relationships held by marketing, tourism and promotional professionals is a crucial component in urban post-pandemic and emergency planning.

By placing marketing professionals at the heart of crisis planning, cities can capitalise on the inherent social capital that is their key occupational resource and leverage their relationships with residents, the business community, international collaborators and the media for swift and maximum impact.

By identifying the “network constellations” that facilitated the institutionalisation of place branding activities in the face of both a local and global shutdown, this paper positions place marketers, acting as cultural intermediaries, at the centre of crisis planning and prevention strategies for anti-fragile cities of the post-pandemic future.

The highly contagious coronavirus and the rapid spread of COVID-19 disease have generated a global public health crisis, which is being addressed at various local and global scales through social distancing measures and guidelines. This is coupled with debates about the nature of living and working patterns through intensive utilisation of information and telecommunication technologies, leading to the social and institutional acceptability of these patterns as the “new normal”. The primary objective of this article is to instigate a discourse about the potential contribution of architecture and urban design and planning in generating knowledge that responds to pressing questions about future considerations of post pandemic architecture and urbanism. Methodologically, the discussion is based on a trans-disciplinary framework, which is utilised for conceptual analysis and is operationalized by identifying and discoursing design and planning implications. The article underscores relevant factors; originates insights for areas where future research will be critically needed, through key areas: a) Issues related to urban dynamics are delineated from the perspective of urban and human geography, urban design and planning, and transportation engineering; b) Questions that pertain to socio-spatial implications and urban space/ urban life dialectics stem from the field of environmental psychology; and c) Deliberations about new environments that accommodate new living/working styles supervene from ethnographical and anthropological perspectives. The article concludes with an outlook that captures key aspects of the needed synergy between architectural and urban education, research, and practice and public health in a post pandemic virtual and global world.

In this chapter, we underscore the enduring importance of research on work, workers, labour markets, and the places and spaces of work. We then examine the particular and valuable contributions that come from ethnographic research in providing detailed studies of work, particularly when these are situated and interpreted in their wider socio-political contexts. We discuss the key dimensions of ethnography before overviewing the contributions to the volume. The volume presents cutting-edge ethnographic research on contemporary worlds of work and the experiences of workers from a range of contexts including an alternative community, working online, the gig economy, and the hospitality industry. Alongside novel empirical chapters, the collection includes the reflections of ethnographers with regards to, for example, the experience as a young female management researcher working amongst journalists in a media firm, personal feelings of precarity within and beyond the field, and how to navigate the challenges of researching inequalities ethnographically.

The purpose of the study was to specify the perceived outdated nature and lack of definitional clarity associated with the concept of work and further to outline that the nature of work has dramatically changed in the 21st century, while definitions of work referenced in research remain those that were dominant in the previous century. Lastly, the study aimed to propose an updated conceptualisation and definition of work to aid future research.

A scoping literature review was adopted as the methodology guiding the study. A scoping review is particularly suited to identifying the conceptual boundaries on a given multi-disciplinary topic and is used to map the key concepts underpinning a research area as well as to clarify working definitions.

Nine main themes underpinning the concept of work were extracted from the extant literature. These were assimilated with contemporary literature across multiple disciplines. Contexts of work as they relate to dimensions of work and workspace are developed and visualised. A proposed contemporary definition of work is presented.

The aim of the study was to address the problem with current and future research continuing to refer to traditional conceptualisations of work, while the nature of work has dramatically changed. The findings are preliminary and intended to stimulate further discourse towards a greater consensus of a definition. The implications of proposing an updated definition of work is that it is intended to better inform future research reflective of its multi-disciplinary and significantly changed nature.

The implications to practice are the main impetus of this study. The authors found that research associated with work was being confounded by traditional and outdated interpretations, excluding alternative forms of work or not recognising its multi-dimensionality. It is proposed by the paper that an updated conceptualisation of the nature of work in this era, as it is reflected across disciplines and practice, would positively contribute to the understanding, management and conceptualisation of work in practice.

A systematic literature review across disciplines of the definition of work will reveal the outdated nature and disparate interpretation of the concept of work. An inclusive, multi-disciplinary and contemporary definition of work has not been suggested. This scoping review was conducted to address this problem and gap in the literature. Further, this paper presents a multi-dimensional and spatial conceptualisation of work that is proposed to better inform future research and practice associated with work.

Hybrid work is changing modern conceptions of work as workers move between their office space and alternate spaces such as a home office. Social aspects of work are therefore also changing, and this study aims to explore the implications arising for workplace fun when workspaces become dispersed.

We undertook ethnographic research into two different companies to explore in depth the concept of fun at work and how it is being adapted for hybrid work. Data were collected through full immersion into both companies and gathered using mixed qualitative methods comprising semi-structured interviews, participant observations and evidence from organizational online platforms. A structured coding system was used in the analysis with an interpretive approach.

Our themes include (1) artefacts, (2) organizing fun and space and (3) loss of fun and these provide the underpinning for our theoretical contribution.

We had limited access to online channels and identified opportunities for future research to explore fun in online platforms including chat functions, meme, gifs and other places where workplace fun may be enacted.

Work has changed for workers and managers, and this impacts fun which needs to adapt to hybrid work models.

Hybrid work is changing workplace social interactions, particularly, for fun and play. We depict how workers navigate the changing context of work and the significance of emerging elements of workplace fun and the implications for fun cultures.

Our contribution is in a re-theorization of workplace fun arguing that sharing and supporting the creation and promotion of fun among workers at all levels offers new opportunities for organizations that value a fun culture. Our theorization of workplace fun shows its adaptation to new hybrid work contexts that deemphasize co-location and physical presence. We outline the significance of artefacts and depict the variability of workplace fun in hybrid work.