About the prize
The Article Prize is in memory of John Urry, co-founder of Mobilities, who did much to establish this field of research, through the journal; the research centre, CeMoRe; his books and other publications; talks, teaching and multiple activities. The prize is awarded anually for the best and most significant article in this journal, Mobilities.
The Editors all agreed that Ole B Jensen’s article “Pandemic disruption, extended bodies, and elastic situations: Reflections on COVID-19 and Mobilities” makes a timely and important contribution by thinking through the ways that the Covid-19 event makes “invisible relations visible.” Jensen considers how the pandemic and its associated regulatory acts in the contemporary city frame a way through which we might think through “existing and ordinary practices” as much as “extraordinary and future ones.” Jensen conceptualizes the everyday mobilities of the pandemic as “extended bodies” made contiguous through the space of air between, and situates those bodies in their “elastic situations” that stretch connectivity. Developing the interconnections that defined John Urry’s influential work, Jensen offers critical tools through which we might understand contemporary urban space, mobility, sociality, and technology. Most importantly, Jensen models a way we can consider the activities and regulations taking place during the pandemic not just as exceptional practices in an exceptional time, but rather as a critical frame by which we might understand everyday mobilities practices.
