Contact
Biography
My work sits at the intersection of critical legal geography, urban politics, decolonial property theory and engaged scholarship. I hold a MSc and PhD in Geography from the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining the School of Geography at Nottingham I held a faculty position in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London (2022-2025) and a research fellowship at Queens' College University of Cambridge (2020-2022). I also have a background in community organising and community development.
I publish my work in geography and legal studies journals, including: Social & Legal Studies, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Antipode, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, ACME and Urban Geography. I am also committed to and involved in a number of community research and creative pedagogical projects.
My pronouns are she/they. My GoogleScholar profile is here.
Teaching Summary
I have taught across a range of modules including those on urban geography, research methods, political ecology, and geographic thought. I have a Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy and have… read more
Research Summary
My research program includes the following overlapping trajectories:
Il/legal geographies of property
My research primarily focuses on collective struggles over land and housing at the margins of proprietary regimes in the United States and the United Kingdom. I am interested in how these contestations highlight both the limits of liberal property law and practice, and the challenges of commoning under the threat of enclosure. My recent work examines how the use of "vacant" land and buildings in the city of Philadelphia reinforces and destabilizes normative notions of urban development and property, including through (il)legal taking of land to meet community needs (see Urban Geography 2021), speculative (counter) cartographies of urban vacancy (see Transactions 2022), legal counterclaims to urban commons (see Environment and Planning D 2022), and through the circulation of 'fugitive dust' (see Annals 2023).
I am currently taking this focus on legal geographies of property in new directions through both a research project on the management and disposal of 'surplus' U.S. federal property for 'public benefit,' and work on children's trespassing (see Social & Legal Studies 2024).
Reimagining housing crises
In a second related area of research, I explore community responses to housing 'crisis.' This work includes research examining the development of limited equity housing cooperatives by manufactured housing (or 'mobile home') communities facing eviction, and the multiple and conflictual ways cooperative members understand and interact with the commons (what I call 'differential commoning') (see Antipode 2016). As a part of a feminist mapping collective - and in collaboration with two housing movements - I have also explored the relationship between houselessness and property vacancy, and related housing activism in the context of Covid-19, in 25 major U.S. cities (see Guerrilla Cartography (ed), Shelter: An Atlas 2023). I've also co-produced work on contemporary struggles for housing justice (see Radical Housing Journal 2022).
I am currently working on a collaborative research project on rental bidding in London and the impacts of the Renters' Rights Bill.
Local reparative geographies of land justice
In a third trajectory, I explore questions of justice and repair in relation to land use and access. In a project funded by the city of Madison, Wisconsin, I worked in collaboration with a local artist and community groups to produce a series of racial justice and decolonial public art maps related to historic and contemporary use of city space (see Human Geography 2020). Collaborating with a former colleague and students, I researched current efforts to preserve unregistered public rights of way in England and Wales. As part of this project, in collaboration and consultation with national and local land access groups, we are developing an open-source land justice curriculum and mapping university land ownership (see Antipode Intervention 2023).
I am currently working a project with students and a colleague at Vanderbilt University that attends to local efforts to repair and account for historical and ongoing land dispossession in the US, Canada and the UK (see The Conversation 2025). As part of this work, I have collaborated with Shared Assets and Seeding Reparations on a series of workshops in 2024 on local land reparations in the UK, and on subsequent publications (see chapter in Runnymede Trust report on reparations 2025). I am also currently co-editing a Special Issue for the South Atlantic Quarterly on 'Inhuman reparations.'
Paradoxical spaces of radical and feminist praxis
Finally, I consider the productive tensions within radical and intersectional feminist praxis, especially in relation to the organization of activist and educational spaces. Collaborative work emerging from this area of interest includes an article that reconceptualizes 'safe space' as paradoxical - involving the continual negotiation of porous binaries such as safe-unsafe (Antipode 2014), and an article on framing the academic department as a key site for anti-racist feminist intervention (Gender, Place & Culture 2021; Feminist Geography Unbound 2021). Considering what higher educational spaces (can) do - which informs and is informed by my teaching - I have also undertaken collaborative projects on the potential of experimental educational spaces on the 'edge' of the university (Anarchist Pedagogies 2012), the increasing role of financial speculation in higher education (ephemera 2017), redefining urban studies from the perspective of early career scholars (CITY 2022), and a decolonial analysis of the spatial and temporal assumptions in calls for 'slow scholarship' (ACME 2019).
I am also interested in exploring ways of thinking about the intersections of pedagogy, research and community collaborations. This has involved utilising design challenges and experimental mapping (GeoHumanities 2022), involving students in participatory action research on land access and ownership (Antipode Intervention), and most recently (a) collaborative work on gender inclusive design in Tower Hamlets, and (b) developing an East London Atlas that profiles student research in East London (East London Atlas). I have also recently written about 'research as organising' and the role of 'movement scholarship' in academia (ACME 2025).
Recent Publications
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
NOTERMAN, E. and BLOMLEY, N. 2024. Children's legal geographies, and the 'make-believe' of property. Social & Legal Studies 33(2): 236-253.
NOTERMAN, E. 2023. Fugitive dust: the indeterminate trajectories of urban development's present-past. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113(4): 857-872.
NOTERMAN, E. 2022. Adverse commoning: tracing the contested legal geographies of the urban commons. Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 40(1): 99-117.
NOTERMAN, E. 2022. Speculating on vacancy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47(1): 123-138.
BAKER, A., BELOTTI, E., CAN, A. and NOTERMAN E. 2022. Housing Justice, mobilization, and financialization: A conversation from the Antipode Institute for Geographies of Justice. Radical Housing Journal.
URBAN ECA COLLECTIVE, NOTERMAN, E., ET AL. 2022. Redefining the role of urban studies: Early Career Academics in the post-COVID-19 university. CITY 26(4): 562-586.
BLEY, K., CALDWELL, K., KELLY, M., LOYD, J., NOTERMAN, E. ET AL. 2022. A design challenge for transforming justice. GeoHumanities 8(1): 344-365.
NOTERMAN, E. 2021. Taking back vacant property. Urban Geography 42(8): 1079-1098.
AL-SALEH, D. and NOTERMAN, E. 2021. Organizing for collective feminist killjoy geographies. Gender, Place and Culture 28(4): 453-474.
MEYERHOFF, E. and NOTERMAN, E. 2019. Revolutionary scholarship by any speed necessary: slow or fast but for the end of this world. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 18(1): 217-245.
HANSON, E. and NOTERMAN, E. 2017. Speculating on the university: disruptive actions in today's corporate university. ephemera: theory & politics in organization 17(3): 185-202.
NOTERMAN, E. 2016. Beyond tragedy: differential commoning in a manufactured housing cooperative. Antipode 48(2): 433-452.
THE ROESTONE COLLECTIVE (NOTERMAN, E. and ROSENFELD, H.) 2014. Safe space: towards a reconceptualization. Antipode 46(5): 1335-1359.
NOTERMAN, E. and PUSEY, A. 2012. Inside, outside and on the edge of the academy: experiments in radical pedagogies. Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education, pp. 175-199. PM Press.
BLOGS, VIDEOS, MAPS
SAFRANSKY, S., NOTERMAN, E. and LEWIS, M. 2025. Land reparations are possible - and over 225 US communities are already working to make amends for slavery and colonization. The Conversation, 1 April.
NOTERMAN, E. and FEICHTNER, I. 2024. Commons [PODCAST EPISODE]. Underworlds -Sites of Struggles of Global Dis/Ordering Podcast.
NOTERMAN, E. and PENNEY, C. 2023. Accessing land justice: combining pedagogy and praxis to challenge university property regimes. Antipode Interventions, November.
NOTERMAN, E., PENNEY, C., MONTAGUE, J., HANNA, S. 2023. Open the gates [SHORT FILM]. Cambridge Creative Encounters.
FEMINIST MAPPING COLLECTIVE (NOTERMAN, E., LEAVITT, L., KELLY, M., IVERSON, A., CALDWELL, K., and BLEY, K.) 2023. Could we house those experiencing houselessness? An analysis across 25 major U.S. cities during Covid-19 and beyond [MAP]. In: Guerrilla Cartography (ed.), Shelter: An Atlas.
AL-SALEH, D. and NOTERMAN, E. 2021. Calling all collectives: interviews with feminist geography collectives. In: M. Hawkins, B. Gokariksel, C. Neubert, and S. Smith (eds.) Feminist Geography Unbound: Discomfort, Bodies, and Prefigured Futures, 282-288. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
LALLY, N., NOTERMAN, E. and WOODWARD, K. 2020. Madison's Race to Inequity. Abolition Geographies Collective blog.
NOTERMAN, E. and ZANICHKOWSKY, A. 2020. Free the 350: decarceration map of Madison [MAP]. Human Geography 13(1), 99-105.
I have taught across a range of modules including those on urban geography, research methods, political ecology, and geographic thought. I have a Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy and have received commendation for my digital teaching practice.
PhD Supervision
I am interested in supervising PhD projects on a wide range of topics, including: housing, property, land justice, reparations, legal geography, urban geography, and social movements.
Current PhD Students
Fernanda Palmieri, "Reforesting London: exploring the transformative capacity of council estate land for the expansion of urban treescapes"
Isadora Bellati, "Rethinking lawscapes for constiutional land disputes in Brazil"
Former PhD Student
Jacob Stringer, "Building a union for London's renters: Growth, articulation and learning through social movement narratives"
Postdoctoral Fellowship Mentoring
I have served as a mentor for Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow Tim White, "From Homes to Assets: The Role of Consultants in the Financialisation of Housing"
RAE BAKER, DANIELA AIELLO, ELSA NOTERMAN, ASHLEY HERNANDEZ, STERLING JOHNSON, MARINA CHAVEZ and JEFF MASUDA, 2025. Research as organising: a conversation on the challenges and precarity of movement scholarship ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. ELSA NOTERMAN and NICHOLAS BLOMLEY, 2024. Children’s legal geographies, and the ‘make-believe’ of property Social & Legal Studies. 33(2), 236-253 2024. Commons . Underworlds -Sites of Struggles of Global Dis/Ordering Podcast. 09/25/2024 00:00:00
ELSA NOTERMAN, 2023. Fugitive dust: the indeterminate trajectories of urban development’s present-past Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 113(4), 857-872
ELSA NOTERMAN, 2022. Adverse commoning: tracing the contested legal geographies of the urban commons Environment and Planning D: Society & Space. 40(1), 99-117
ELSA NOTERMAN, 2022. Speculating on vacancy Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 47(1), 123-138
NABEELA AHMED, ALEX BAKER, AKASH BHATTACHARYA, SALLY CAWOOD, ANA JULIA CABRERA PACHECO, MALLO MAREN DANIEL, MATHEUS GRANDI, CHRISTIAN GRIMALDO-RODRÍGUEZ, PRINCE GUMA, VICTORIA HABERMEHL, KATIE HIGGINS, LUTFUN NAHAR LATA, MINSI LIU, CHRISTOPHER LUEDERITZ, SOHA MACKTOOM, RACHEL MACRORIE, LORENA MELGAÇO, INÉS MORALES, ELSA NOTERMAN, GWILYM OWEN, BASIRAT OYALOWO, BEN PURVIS, ENORA ROBIN, LINDSAY SAWYER, JESSICA TERRUHN, HITA UNNIKRISHNAN, THOMAS VERBEEK, CLAUDIA VILLEGAS and LINDA WESTMAN, 2022. Redefining the role of urban studies: Early Career Academics in the post-COVID-19 university CITY. 26(4), 562-586
KALLISTA BLEY, KELA CALDWELL, MEGHAN KELLY, JENNA LOYD, ROBERT E. ROTH, TANYA ANDERSON, ANNE BONDS, JENNY PLEVIN, DARRIN MADISON, CHRISTOFER SPENCER, TREVONNA SIMS, CHRIS ARCHULETA, ZACH ELLNER, TAYLOR MCDOWELL, CHELSEA NESTEL, ELSA NOTERMAN, NICK SMITH and STEPHA VELEDNITSKY, 2022. A design challenge for transforming justice GeoHumanities. 8(1), 344-365 ELSA NOTERMAN, 2021. Taking back vacant property Urban Geography. 42(8), 1079-1098 DANYA AL-SALEH and ELSA NOTERMAN, 2021. Organizing for collective feminist killjoy geographies Gender, Place and Culture. 28(4), 453-474
ELI MEYERHOFF and ELSA NOTERMAN, 2019. Revolutionary scholarship by any speed necessary: slow or fast but for the end of this world ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 18(1), 217-245
LENORA HANSON and ELSA NOTERMAN, 2017. Speculating on the university: disruptive actions in today’s corporate university ephemera: theory & politics in organization. 17(3), 185-202
ELSA NOTERMAN, 2016. Beyond tragedy: differential commoning in a manufactured housing cooperative Antipode. 48(2), 433-452
ELSA NOTERMAN and HEATHER ROSENFELD, 2014. Safe space: towards a reconceptualization Antipode. 46(5), 1335-1359
ELSA NOTERMAN and ANDRE PUSEY, 2012. Inside, outside and on the edge of the academy: experiments in radical pedagogies. In: ROBERT HAWORTH, ed., Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education PM Press.