Contact
Biography
I joined the department in 2016, having previously worked at the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield. My research interests lie at the intersections of urban geography, critical economic geography, migration studies, and the study of social and labour movements. I have worked extensively in the UK and Latin America, and my research draws on a range of critical qualitative methods, emphasising both the potentials and challenges of 'militant research'.
Teaching Summary
I teach on a wide range of modules at all levels. These include:
Exploring Human Geography
Tutorials
Economic Geography (convenor)
Research Tutorial
European Urban Geographies (Berlin field course)
Just Futures and Their Geographies
Geographies of Money and Finance
PhD Supervision
I am interested in supervising PhD projects on a wide range of topics. These include: Critical Migration, Housing, Urban Social Movements, Labour Movements, and Autonomist Marxism.
Current PhD Students
Katie Keddie
Jessica Hirtle
Research Summary
My current research focuses in three main overlapping areas:
Housing, debt, and race - My current work, funded by a British Academy Innovation Fellowship, explores racialised experiences of housing disadvantage and debt. With a particular focus on housing associations it explores the challenges tenants face, how these relate to race and class, and the forms of collective responses that can combat the cost of living crisis. This work also explores experiences of 'hidden' homelessness and how this overlaps with forms of labour exploitation. Work from this project has been published in Geography Compass.
Autonomist Marxist theory - I am extremely interested in the untapped geographical potential found in autonomist Marxist ideas, especially in regard to urbanisation and migrant-led resistance. I have helped develop original forms of 'spatial composition analysis' which allow for geographically-specific readings of both historical and contemporary forms of intersectional class struggles. This work has been published in leading journals such as Progress in Human Geography, Antipode, and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
Mental health and mutual aid - I am part of a number of collaborative research projects that explore mental health challenges in universities. I am especially interested in collective forms of support that foster mutual aid and build new forms of solidarity among all staff and students. This work has also critically considered academic 'failure' including publications in Emotion, Space and Society and Area
Selected Publications
Past Research
Territorial politics in Buenos Aires - My previous work focused on migrants' forms of organising and struggle in Buenos Aires. Conceptually this work developed original readings of 'territory' and placed an important focus on social reproduction as a site of both resistance and control, leading to an award-winning paper in Territory, Politics, Governance