Cody Rodriguez
PhD
Cody is a PhD candidate in Anthropology and Development Studies under supervision by Prof. Andrew Dawson, Dr. Paul Green, and Prof. Tamara Kohn. He is a first-generation university graduate and Chicano Indigenous American. Before joining SPSS at UniMelb, Cody studied social science at various institutions around the world such as the London School of Economics, the University of Hawaii, and Columbia University. His research interests include social inequalities, alienation, mobility studies, migration, marginalised group identities, class struggles, and ethnographic approaches. Cody is also (and perhaps unusually for the academy) an internationally qualified and highly experienced teacher. He aspires to become a full-time university lecturer and innovative ethnographic researcher.
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Thesis
The Vagabond Tales: An Ethnographic Journey of Van Life Cultures in the 21st Century
Since the start of the #vanlife movement in 2010, millions of alienated people have found themselves "living the dream" as vanlife nomads. Having been a vanlifer myself years prior in Hawaii, I sought to better understand this growing phenomenon and the communities that have formed as a result. I conducted a mobile ethnographic exploration of vanlife cultures in the United States. This involved three months of full-timing living in a Mini Cooper while driving to various vanlife events and gatherings mostly in the Pacific Northwest, plus more than fifteen months of digital participant-observation from Australia via a mobile smartphone and social media networks due to pandemic constraints.