Staff

Professor John Wylie
Professor of Cultural Geography, Director of Research (Human Geography)
3339
Amory C356b
Amory Building, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ , UK
Office hours: Office Hours, Term 1 2021-22 Please drop me a quick email in adavance to book a time to talk during my office hours, whether you wish to meet F2F on campus or online via Teams. Week 8 - week commencing Monday Nov 8th. Office Hours will be online via Teams this week Monday 16.00 - 17.00 Thursday 15.00 - 16.00
Overview
I'm a cultural geographer. I'm interested in the development of landscape theory in geography, and more broadly in geographies of writing, art, affectivity, haunting and performance.
I'm originally from Enniskillen, a town in the west of Northern Ireland. I came to England to do a geography degree at the University of Manchester, graduating in 1994. Afterwards I moved to the University of Bristol to take the MSc. Society & Space course, and then stayed on at Bristol to do doctoral research, and was awarded my PhD in 2001. By then I was working as Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. I worked in Sheffield for six years, before moving to take up my present post at Exeter in October 2006. I was promoted to Associate Professor in June 2011, and to Professor in August 2013. I was Head of Department, 2013-2017, and Director of Research for Human Geography, 2018-2021
Current Research Projects:
The Common Line - please visit our website to learn about the Line!
Key Roles in Geography at Exeter:
- Director of Research, Human Geography (2018-2021)
- Head of Geography (2013-17)
- Director of Postgraduate Research, College of Life and Environmental Sciences (2010-13).
- Research Group Leader: Geographies of Creativity and Knowledge (2011-13).
External Roles – Research Related:
- Editor, cultural geographies (Sage) (2013 - 2021)
- AHRC Peer Review College Member (2011 - 2018)
- Editorial Board Member, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2008-2013)
- Editorial Board Member, Landscape (Windgather Press)
- International Advisory Board, Landscape Research (Taylor & Francis)
- Treasurer, History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group – a research group of the Royal Geographical Society/IBG.(2011-2013)
External Roles – Education Related
- External Examiner, BA Geography programmes, School of Geography, University of Swansea (2019-2023)
- External Examiner, Human Geography Undergraduate Degrees, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol (2016-2020)
- External Examiner, MA Landscape Archaeology, NUI Galway (2013-2016)
- External Examiner, BA Geography programme, Department of Geography, University of Manchester (2010 - 2013)
- External Examiner, Masters by Research Methods, Department of Geography, University of Durham (2007-2010)
- External scrutineer, MSc Modernity, Space and Place & MA Globalisation, Department of Geography, UCL.
Qualifications
BA (Manchester)
MSc (Bristol)
PhD (Bristol)
Links
Research group links
Research
Research interests
Cultural Geographies of landscape, embodiment & performance.
This is my main research area. Through a sequence of 10 books, single-author journal articles, editorials and book chapters I have attempted to outline and explore a series of arguments aiming to advance landscape studies beyond the ‘ways of seeing’ paradigm dominant in cultural geography since the late 1980’s. Seeking to foreground and delineate theoretically-rich notions of materiality, embodied practice and perception, my research here considers intertwinings of self and landscape - of culture and nature more generally – through focusing upon their performance via everyday practices such as walking and visualising. I also attempt, through my writing, to explore how such practices may be creatively expressed and diagrammed. In connection with this research in 2002 I was awarded an ARHB ‘Innovations’ grant to conduct a solo walk along a 200-mile stretch of the South West Coast Path, a project which lead to a series of publications and which was supplemented by a further grant award from the University of Sheffield Social Science Division Research Fund. I have also undertaken studies of cultures of landscape, the body and the visual centred upon Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England and Antarctica. Underpinning this work is a concern to supplement critical, interpretative and discursive readings with affectual, creative and experiential accounts of enlacings and distanciations of self and landscape. In all of these works I have been concerned with examining how distinctive affinities of self and landscape emerge and are sustained through constellations of materiality, affect, light and morphology. I understand landscape in terms of tensions - tensions between, for example, watcher and watched, interior and exterior, the invisible and the visible. Thought this way, the term landscape names neither an external surface nor a set of cultural meanings, but rather the materialities and sensibilities with which we see.
Spatial Theory & Philosophy
Theory production and innovation in human geography is a longstanding research focus and interest. I am particularly interested in continental philosophy, and in the relationships between phenomenology and post-structuralism, for example the linkages and ruptures between Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida. A specific concern here is understandings of landscape, place, subjectivity and embodiment in these writers. This links my research to the ongoing development of non-representational, performative and affectual approaches in human geography. My work here involves ongoing conversations and collaborations with colleagues Mitch Rose (Hull), Paul Harrison (Durham) Ben Anderson (Durham) and J-D Dewsbury (Bristol), and has resulted in 2 editorials and leading journal special issues and a number of international conference sessions/presentations.
Cultures of Travel & Exploration
My work in this area considers both literary and actual processes of travel and exploration in the broad context of European colonialism and imperialism, and its associated geographical imaginations and practices. My writing in this area has sought to both abet and inflect postcolonial geographies, by attempting to situate their critical account of colonial discourse within contexts of material performance. I have published 5 papers and book chapters on the ambivalent geographies of The Tempest, and the South Polar expeditions of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott.
Spectral Geographies
If space is associated with absence and place with presence, (despite all attempts by geographers and others to think these terms otherwise), then landscape sits precisely on this threshold: presence/absence.In the past two years, much of my writing and thinking has been about presence and absence, focusing in particular upon the configuration and unsettling of senses of landscape and self via processes of haunting. Funded by an AHRC Research Grant (£72K, Dec 2005, project runs March 06 - Sept 09) the focus here is upon the production of a series of discursive and substantive studies of the spectral as a means of re-conceptualising landscape and self. This research is inspired firstly by Jacques Derrida’s ‘hauntological’ writings on self, mourning and testimony, and secondly by the work of the German-born author W.G. Sebald.
Research projects
Grants and Awards:
- 2007 - 2010
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award,
'Land and Sea: the visual geographies of the South West Coast Path,
£50K - 2006 - 2009
AHRC Research Grant,
‘Spectral Geographies: unsettling landscape place and self’. PI
£72K. - 2005
University of Sheffield Divisional Research Fund
‘Smoothlands: fragmenting self and landscape
£750 (a follow-up to my South West Coast Path work) - 2002-2004
AHRB Innovations Award
‘Enacting Landscape: walking the South West Coast Path’ PI
£5000 - 1996-1999
ESRC PhD award:
‘Cultures of Landscape and the Body’
Publications
Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year
Key publications
Publications by category
Books
Journal articles
Chapters
Publications by year
In Press
2022
2021
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2003
2002
John_Wylie Details from cache as at 2022-07-05 13:00:05
External Engagement and Impact
Committee/panel activities
Member of European Landscape Forum
Expert Panel member ERSC’s International Benchmarking Review of Human Geography
Member of AHRC Peer Review College
Teaching
2015-16 Undergraduate modules:
- GEO3121 Cultural Geographies of Landscape (Convenor)
- GEO2325 Research Methods in Human Geography
- GEO2308 Berlin Fieldtrip
2015-16 Postgraduate modules:
- GEOM131 Geographies of Culture, Creativity and Practice
Current PhD students:
- Veronica Vickery (Joint Supervisor, AHRC Award)
- Dominic Walker (Second Supervisor, University of Exeter Scholarship)
- Dalia Kuoraite (Lead Supervisor, self-funded)
- Patrick Weir (Second Supervisor, AHRC Award)
Alumni
- Katherine Morton (completed Sept 2014) AHRC Award, Second Supervisor - now University of Bristol
- Deborah Knight (completed Dec 2012) AHRC Award, Joint Supervisor
- James Riding (completed June 2012) University of Exeter Scholarship, First Supervisor - now University of Sheffield
- Leila Dawney (completed March 2011) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, First Supervisor - now University of Brighton
- Liz Roberts (completed Sept 2010) AHRC Project Student, First Supervisor - now University of the West of England
- Jenny Carton (Mphil completed 2009) ESRC Award, Joint Supervisor.
- Erena le Heron (completed Jan 2008) TEC New Zealand, Joint Supervisor
- Louisa Cadman (completed Dec 2005) ESRC Award ‘Second Supervisor
Modules
2021/22
Supervision / Group
Postgraduate researchers
- Chloe Asker (ESRC SWDTP) Mindful geographies? Towards the geographies of mindfulness