Researcher to study sound and fury

Media Release
April 9, 2009

Waikato University researcher wins funding for study of sound and fury

What’s noise to some is sweet music to others, but perceptions of noise also have a lot to do with where it happens.

It’s a topic that’s won University of Waikato geography researcher Paul Beere a government-funded Top Achiever’s Doctoral Scholarship. He’s been awarded $96,000 over three years to research how people negotiate issues relating to sound and noise in the home.

Noise might be an unusual subject for a geographer, but Beere, who spent ten years performing and organising street theatre in Hamilton before heading to university, says his focus is on what he calls ‘sensuous and emotional geographies’.

“Human geographers see social phenomena in spatial terms,” he says. “It might be the home, it might be the body. There’s been lots of work done on the psychology of how people respond to noise; my research aims to put that work in a spatial context – it’s all about the location.”

Beere became interested in noise after researching boy racers in Te Rapa in north Hamilton for his Masters thesis. “In that study, people complained about the noise from boy racers, but these were people living along State Highway 1. They seemed to be sensitive to some noises, but could ‘block out’ other noise that was just as loud as the boy racers.

“The same thing happens in the home: people can be totally OK with the sound of kids playing next door, but when the same volume of noise comes from teenagers, it’s a different issue.”

Beere has begun interviewing individuals and groups in the Waikato region for his research, and is particularly interested to hear from people who are flatting together.

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