Cultures of Underwater Exploration

This research will address three principal research questions, engaging with scholarship in a range of discipline, principally History and Psychology.

Research questions:
How was diving represented in popular culture and how did representations change over time?
How did the enablers and constraints which determined participation in diving change over time?
How did the material culture of diving shape both representations and the experiences of divers?

This research will show how women and men internalised cultural scripts and heroic examples which profoundly shaped their individual motivations for diving. This research will map a 'cultural circuit', using diving as an extended case study, by charting how individuals were inspired by stories and role models drawn from popular culture, and spread through the media, institutions and social networks.