Schrödinger’s Trucker: Presence and Absence in Mobile Freight Work

Tuesday, 16 June 2026, 5.30pm to 6.45pm

Lorry drivers are essential to modern economies, moving goods across vast distances and sustaining everyday life. Yet their work often occupies a strange position: highly visible in practice, but curiously absent across urban planning, occupational policy, and infrastructure design and operation. This means that they quickly become out of place, operating in spaces that are not quite right for their needs, or where they are made to feel in the way of other users.

This free lecture from Dr Debbie Hopkins uses 'Schrödinger’s Trucker' as a metaphor to describe the ways through which mobile workers are simultaneously present and absent in discourse, policy and practice.

Drawing on a decade’s empirical research in the UK road haulage industry, including the ESRC 'Trucking Lives' project, Dr Hopkins will use visual and textual storytelling to depict the everyday experiences of UK lorry drivers, showing how the presence–absence dynamic has material consequences: shaping working conditions, influencing policy blind spots, and reinforcing the invisibility of critical labour. By making these dynamics visible, we invite a broader reconsideration of how we recognise and value mobile work in contemporary society.

This lecture is part of the Rewley House Lecture Series. These lectures provide an opportunity to experience the extraordinarily diverse research interests of academics from across and beyond Oxford Lifelong Learning, and to participate in multidisciplinary debate. Lectures are free and open to all.

Speaker(s): Dr Debbie Hopkins (Associate Professor in Human Geography)

Series: Rewley House Lecture Series

Venue: Rewley House - Lecture Theatre - Lecture Theatre Rewley House 1-7 Wellington Square Oxford Oxfordshire OX1 2JA United Kingdom

Department: Continuing Education (Division)

Organiser: Oxford Lifelong Learning

Host: Oxford Lifelong Learning

Register here: https://lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk/events/view/schrdingers-trucker-presence-and-absence-in-mobile-freight-work

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