Sonic Geographies Research Assistant
Joel Wanek, Lecturer
Geography
Applications for Fall 2026 are closed for this project.
Sonic Geographies is a creative field studies course offered every Spring in the Geography Department. The class guides students in making high quality stereo recordings in an effort to understand Place. Every landscape has a distinct sound. How can we listen to the relationships happening in any given place - between people and the built environment, between the built and natural environment, between people and non-human beings - and make recordings that describe what we notice?
For the past two semesters, Sonic Geographies has been walking along creeks in the Bay Area.
Qualifications: The Sonic Geographies Research Assistant would help in the identification of walking routes that explore creeks throughout the East Bay Area. What parts of the creeks are even walkable? Are the paths dirt, concrete, or nonexistent? And, as creeks get culverted and routed underground, how can we still follow the path/s of the creeks as much as possible? How can we plan routes that move us through a variety of landscapes (natural, city, residential, industrial)? The Student-Researcher along with the Faculty Mentor will identify and refine 10 individual routes that the Sonic Geographies class will then travel in the Spring 2027 semester. After we have 10 proposed routes, the Research Assistant and Faculty Mentor will walk each route together, evaluate what worked well and what didn’t, and how we might refine the routes to best serve the class goals.
Proficiency with using professional audio recorders, microphones, and sound editors is preferred.
Hours: to be negotiated
Off-Campus Research Site: This position will be both on campus and off. The off campus locations will be various creeks around the East Bay area. The Research Assistant will travel with the Faculty Mentor.
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