Siying Wu awarded 2025 John Urry Article Prize

Congratulations to Siying Wu, PhD researcher in Human Geography, who has received the John Urry Article Prize for her research on the everyday mobilities for metro passengers in contemporary China.

Siying smiling for a photo while sitting in a cafe.

The Article Prize is awarded annually for the best and most significant article in the Mobilities journal, which explores the movements and mobilities of people, objects, capital, information, knowledge and material things at all scales. The prize was initially developed in memory of John Urry, the journal’s co-founder. Siying’s article was awarded the prize for its “important empirical and conceptual contributions to the field of mobilities."

In the winning piece, Siying explores how people's bodies, emotions, and the physical and social infrastructures all shape the everyday experience of commuting. To demonstrate this, the research included field observations and interviews with new and experienced metro passengers travelling in the city of Guangzhou.

Siying explores the concept of 'squeezing in', not only as the physical act of boarding the often confined and overcrowded spaces of the metro, but also through the affective intensities experienced by passengers of different bodily experiences and knowledges of the transport infrastructures during the daily commute. The research highlights how the seemingly ordinary practice of commuting is intimately linked to the socio-cultural norms of bodily conduct in shared public spaces as well as the material infrastructures that facilitate passenger mobilities. Specifically, Siying’s research explores how the making and practice of 'good ridership' is bound up with the making of 'quality citizenship' in post-reform China.

I feel incredibly honoured to receive this reward and it is such an encouragement and motivation for me as an early career researcher. Getting this award feels very special because Professor John Urry’s work was a major inspiration for me when I first started this project several years ago. I also want to thank Professor Tim Cresswell and Professor Dan Swanton, my supervisors, and my fellow PhD colleague Manasa Gade for their invaluable support during the writing process.

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