Overview
I graduated from the University of Bristol in 2004, gaining a BSc in Geography. This was followed by postgraduate study at Bristol where I completed the MSc in Society and Space and my doctoral research. I first joined the School of Geography at Exeter in October 2008 as an Associate Teaching Fellow. I have since worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, and as a Lecturer at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. I returned to Exeter in August 2011 to take up a lectureship in Human Geography.
Broad research specialisms:
History and philosophy of geographical thought; Geographies of death, absence and finitude; Cultural geographies of literature and visuality.
Qualifications
BSc (University of Bristol)
MSc (University of Bristol)
PhD (University of Bristol)
Office Hours (Term 1)
Week 1: Thur. 28th Sept. 12:30; Fri. 29th Sept. 10:30
Week 2: Mon. 2nd Oct. 10:30; Fri. 6th Oct. 10:30
Week 3: Mon. 9th Oct. 10:30; Fri. 13th Oct. 10:30
Week 4: Mon. 16th Oct. 9:30; Fri. 20th Oct. 10:30
Week 5: Mon. 23rd Oct. 10:00; Fri. 27th Oct. 10:30
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: Mon. 6th Nov. 10:30; Fri. 10th Nov. 10:30
Week 8: Mon. 13th Nov. 10:30; Fri. 17th Nov. 10:30
Week 9: Mon. 20th Nov. 10:30; Tuesday 21st Nov. 11:30
Week 10: Mon. 27th Nov. 10:00; Fri. 1st Dec. 10:30
Week 11: Tues. 5th Dec. 11:30; Tues. 5th Dec. 2:00
Week 12: Wed. 13th Dec. 9:30; Fri. 15th Dec. 10:30
No bookings required.
Research group links
Research
Research interests
Geographies of death, absence and finitude
A large part of my doctoral research centred on developing a agenda on the notion of finitude. The thesis, Experiences of Finitude: Spatiality as Communication after Georges Bataille and Alain Robbe-Grillet, argued for the value of thinking about finitude in the following terms: addressing the phenomenological basis of spatiality; exploring the senses and limits of communication and representation; questioning anthropocentric perspectives and divisions between the human and nonhuman; conceptualisations of inter-subjectivity and the ethical relation; reflecting on absence, mourning, memory and compassion; and developing an environmental ethics that addresses the phenomenon of extinction and conceptualisations of a finite earth.
Cultural geographies of literature and visuality
My research interests in the field of literary geographies stem from my doctoral research where I explored the work of two modernist French authors, Georges Bataille and Alain Robbe-Grillet. I used their work to affirm the value of literature in questioning a range of geographical concepts such as landscape, place and spatiality, and in disrupting habitual approaches to text, context and representation. I have published in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space on aspects of this research, exploring the literary landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet. I have recently developed a paper on Louis-Ferdinand Céline that explores his groundbreaking work Journey to the End of the Night in the context of the geographies of modernity. I am also interested in the geographical function of images in constituting and shaping particular cultural geographies. My third year undergraduate module, Images of the Earth, draws upon this research interest and concentrates on how different visualizations of the earth (from cartography and aerial photography, to landscape perspectives and documentary film), mediate and configure understandings of space, nature, territory and world.
History and philosophy of geographical thought
I have a broad interest in the interactions between philosophy and geographical thought. This interest ranges from the historical development of phenomenological approaches in human geography, to the Swedish geography of Gunnar Olsson and Torsten Hägerstrand and their respective approaches to questions of representation and spatial agency. I am particularly interested in the role of continental philosophy in advancing the intellectual agendas of contemporary human geography – found, for example, in recent work on affect and performance, new political subjectivities, geo-philosophy, and attempts to re-theorize and address matter and the non-human. In this context, I have a longstanding interest in spatial theory and continental philosophy, and the relations between phenomenology and post-structuralism. I am particularly interested in the spatial implications of authors such as Martin Heidegger, Alexandre Kojève, Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Recent conference and seminar activity:
‘On the place of the Anthropocene in contemporary philosophical thought’ Centre for Environmental Arts and Humanities Launch and Symposium, Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter Penryn Campus 11-12 September 2013.
‘Geology as a shock to thought: speculative realism and the naturalist turn in the image of humankind’ presented in ‘Re-evaluating the Anthropocene, Resituating ‘Anthropos’’, session at the Association of American Geographers, Los Angeles April 2013.
‘Herzog’s ridiculous sublime: landscape, appearance and evidence in the ‘natural documentary’ films of Werner Herzog’, presented in the Literary and visual landscapes interdisciplinary seminar series, Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol, 11 March 2013.
‘Nihilism and Modernity: Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night’, presented at Literary Dynamism of Place: Crossing, Settling, Circulation, Ustinov College, Durham University, 8th - 9th, April, 2011
‘Geography, death and finitude’, departmental seminar presented at the Department of Geography, Durham University, 16th March, 2011
Research Groups:
I am a member of the department’s Geographies of Creativity and Knowledge research group, and the Natures, Materialities and Biopolitics research group. I am also a member of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (RGS-IBG).
Publications
Key publications | Publications by category | Publications by year
Key publications
Romanillos JL (2015). Nihilism and modernity: Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the end of the night.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
40(1), 128-139.
Abstract:
Nihilism and modernity: Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the end of the night
This paper explores Louis-Ferdinand Céline's 1932 Journey to the end of the night within the context of growing work on the literary geographies of modernity. The paper argues that Céline's novel can be productively aligned with other texts such as Ulysses or Heart of darkness as a way of thinking about the experiences of modernity in terms of a spatial disorientation that provokes new kinds of writing. At the same time, Céline's novel is distinctive because it presents the experience of modernity as one of nihilism. In particular, the novel diagnoses the 'creative-destructive' project of modernity through a narrative of abjection and disenchantment, asking readers to question the dialectical promise, and idealist pretensions, of the term. This paper explores how this nihilistic writing is expressed spatially through the parodic 'journey' that structures the narrative, and the different nihilistic landscapes dramatised across the novel. The paper proceeds by examining understandings of modernity within literary geographies, and interpretations of nihilism, before exploring some of the central spatial moments of the novel: the deathscapes of World War I, French Colonial Africa and New York. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ways in which Céline's writing could be said to make manifest the spatial experiences of modernity.
Abstract.
Romanillos JL (2014). Mortal Questions: Geographies on the other side of life. Progress in Human Geography: an international review of geographical work in the social sciences and humanities
Romanillos JL (2012). Dark Plasticities: Book Review, Malabou, Catherine 2012 the New Wounded: from Neurosis to Brain Damage.
Web link.
Romanillos JL (2011). Geography, death and finitude. Environment and Planning A, 43(11), 2533-2553.
Ash JN, Romanillos JL, Trigg M (2009). Videogames, visuality and screens: Reconstructing the Amazon in physical geographical knowledge.
Area,
41(4), 464-474.
Abstract:
Videogames, visuality and screens: Reconstructing the Amazon in physical geographical knowledge
In this article we attend to an emergent practice of visualising GIS data in physical geography using the graphics engine of a videogame, Crysis. We suggest these modes of image-making aid the possibility of imagining and disseminating complex geographical data differently by re-contextualising seemingly abstract mathematical information within a human horizon of embodied meaning. Furthermore we argue these ways of imagining are closely linked to the technology and phenomenology of screens which make the presentation of these images possible. We close by reflecting on the possibility that these technologies are shifting the grounds of vision and the geographical imagination of users. © the Authors. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 2009.
Abstract.
Romanillos JL (2008). "Outside, it is snowing": Experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
26(5), 795-822.
Abstract:
"Outside, it is snowing": Experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet
This paper presents and explicates the anonymous and impersonal spatialities tentatively mapped in the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Emerging from the kinds of landscapes and visualities articulated, these spatialities are at odds with the kind of anthropocentrism characteristic of phenomenological narratives of spatial experience that would start from an apparently stable human-subject position. It is argued that his body of literature dismantles the anthropocentric narratives and biographies that would produce in both the space of the world and the 'phenomenological subject' an unwarranted depth and naturalism. Importantly, and reflecting the theoretical turn towards the being of language, Robbe-Grillet questions the legitimacy of linguistic subjects to capture the spaces of the visible. As such, it is argued that his literature reflects an experience of the critiques of phenomenology. Importantly, this 'critique' goes hand in hand with the kinds of spatialities and landscapes that are rendered in the novels - the indefinite perspectives they open up, the paradoxical visualities they sustain or deny, and the disorientation they inject into the heart of spatial experience. These literary effects produce a nonanthropocentric and nonpersonal spatiality which, although contributing to an erasure of the 'subject', at the same time expose and open up a sociospatiality based on singularities, intensities, and finitude. © 2008 Pion Ltd and its Licensors.
Abstract.
Publications by category
Journal articles
Dekeyser T, Secor A, Rose M, Bissell D, Zhang V, Romanillos JL (2022). Negativity: space, politics and affects.
Cultural Geographies,
29(1), 5-21.
Abstract:
Negativity: space, politics and affects
This paper reflects on the status of ‘negativity’ in contemporary social and geographical thought. Based on a panel discussion held at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2021, each contributor discusses what negativity means to them, and considers its various legacies and potential future trajectories. Along the way, the contributors offer ways of attending to negative spaces (voids, abysses, absences), affects (vulnerabilities, sad passions, incapacities, mortality) and politics (impasses, refusals, irreparabilities). However, rather than defining negativity narrowly, the paper stays with the diversity of work on negativity being undertaken by geographers and other scholars, discussing how varying perspectives expand or dismantle particular elements within spatial theory. Collectively, the contributors argue for paying attention to negativity as the faltering, failure or impossibility of relations between body and world, thus situating it in conversation with relational thought, vitalist philosophies and affirmative ethics.
Abstract.
Romanillos JL (2015). GO: on the Geographies of Gunnar Olsson, Book Review. Geographica Helvetica, 70, 161-163.
Romanillos JL (2015). Nihilism and modernity: Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the end of the night.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
40(1), 128-139.
Abstract:
Nihilism and modernity: Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the end of the night
This paper explores Louis-Ferdinand Céline's 1932 Journey to the end of the night within the context of growing work on the literary geographies of modernity. The paper argues that Céline's novel can be productively aligned with other texts such as Ulysses or Heart of darkness as a way of thinking about the experiences of modernity in terms of a spatial disorientation that provokes new kinds of writing. At the same time, Céline's novel is distinctive because it presents the experience of modernity as one of nihilism. In particular, the novel diagnoses the 'creative-destructive' project of modernity through a narrative of abjection and disenchantment, asking readers to question the dialectical promise, and idealist pretensions, of the term. This paper explores how this nihilistic writing is expressed spatially through the parodic 'journey' that structures the narrative, and the different nihilistic landscapes dramatised across the novel. The paper proceeds by examining understandings of modernity within literary geographies, and interpretations of nihilism, before exploring some of the central spatial moments of the novel: the deathscapes of World War I, French Colonial Africa and New York. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ways in which Céline's writing could be said to make manifest the spatial experiences of modernity.
Abstract.
Romanillos JL (2014). Mortal Questions: Geographies on the other side of life. Progress in Human Geography: an international review of geographical work in the social sciences and humanities
Romanillos JL (2013). Rethinking the Power of Maps.
TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR ECONOMISCHE EN SOCIALE GEOGRAFIE,
104(1), 123-126.
Author URL.
Romanillos JL (2011). Geography, death and finitude. Environment and Planning A, 43(11), 2533-2553.
Romanillos JL (2011). Influences of the Imagined: Robbe-Grillet and Jealousy. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(3), 558-559.
Ash JN, Romanillos JL, Trigg M (2009). Videogames, visuality and screens: Reconstructing the Amazon in physical geographical knowledge.
Area,
41(4), 464-474.
Abstract:
Videogames, visuality and screens: Reconstructing the Amazon in physical geographical knowledge
In this article we attend to an emergent practice of visualising GIS data in physical geography using the graphics engine of a videogame, Crysis. We suggest these modes of image-making aid the possibility of imagining and disseminating complex geographical data differently by re-contextualising seemingly abstract mathematical information within a human horizon of embodied meaning. Furthermore we argue these ways of imagining are closely linked to the technology and phenomenology of screens which make the presentation of these images possible. We close by reflecting on the possibility that these technologies are shifting the grounds of vision and the geographical imagination of users. © the Authors. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 2009.
Abstract.
Romanillos JL (2008). "Outside, it is snowing": Experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
26(5), 795-822.
Abstract:
"Outside, it is snowing": Experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet
This paper presents and explicates the anonymous and impersonal spatialities tentatively mapped in the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Emerging from the kinds of landscapes and visualities articulated, these spatialities are at odds with the kind of anthropocentrism characteristic of phenomenological narratives of spatial experience that would start from an apparently stable human-subject position. It is argued that his body of literature dismantles the anthropocentric narratives and biographies that would produce in both the space of the world and the 'phenomenological subject' an unwarranted depth and naturalism. Importantly, and reflecting the theoretical turn towards the being of language, Robbe-Grillet questions the legitimacy of linguistic subjects to capture the spaces of the visible. As such, it is argued that his literature reflects an experience of the critiques of phenomenology. Importantly, this 'critique' goes hand in hand with the kinds of spatialities and landscapes that are rendered in the novels - the indefinite perspectives they open up, the paradoxical visualities they sustain or deny, and the disorientation they inject into the heart of spatial experience. These literary effects produce a nonanthropocentric and nonpersonal spatiality which, although contributing to an erasure of the 'subject', at the same time expose and open up a sociospatiality based on singularities, intensities, and finitude. © 2008 Pion Ltd and its Licensors.
Abstract.
Romanillos JL (2008). Bataille's peak: energy, religion, and postsustainability.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE,
26(6), 1131-1132.
Author URL.
Chapters
Romanillos JL, Beaumont J, Sen M (2012). State-Religion relations and welfare-regimes in Europe. In Beaumont J, Cloke P, Vranken J (Eds.) Faith, Welfare and Exclusion in European Cities: the FBO Phenomenon, the Policy Press, 37-58.
Romanillos JL (2010). Literature, Geography and. In Warf B (Ed) Encyclopedia of Geography, Sage Publications, Inc.
Publications by year
2022
Dekeyser T, Secor A, Rose M, Bissell D, Zhang V, Romanillos JL (2022). Negativity: space, politics and affects.
Cultural Geographies,
29(1), 5-21.
Abstract:
Negativity: space, politics and affects
This paper reflects on the status of ‘negativity’ in contemporary social and geographical thought. Based on a panel discussion held at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2021, each contributor discusses what negativity means to them, and considers its various legacies and potential future trajectories. Along the way, the contributors offer ways of attending to negative spaces (voids, abysses, absences), affects (vulnerabilities, sad passions, incapacities, mortality) and politics (impasses, refusals, irreparabilities). However, rather than defining negativity narrowly, the paper stays with the diversity of work on negativity being undertaken by geographers and other scholars, discussing how varying perspectives expand or dismantle particular elements within spatial theory. Collectively, the contributors argue for paying attention to negativity as the faltering, failure or impossibility of relations between body and world, thus situating it in conversation with relational thought, vitalist philosophies and affirmative ethics.
Abstract.
2015
Romanillos JL (2015). GO: on the Geographies of Gunnar Olsson, Book Review. Geographica Helvetica, 70, 161-163.
Romanillos JL (2015). Nihilism and modernity: Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the end of the night.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
40(1), 128-139.
Abstract:
Nihilism and modernity: Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the end of the night
This paper explores Louis-Ferdinand Céline's 1932 Journey to the end of the night within the context of growing work on the literary geographies of modernity. The paper argues that Céline's novel can be productively aligned with other texts such as Ulysses or Heart of darkness as a way of thinking about the experiences of modernity in terms of a spatial disorientation that provokes new kinds of writing. At the same time, Céline's novel is distinctive because it presents the experience of modernity as one of nihilism. In particular, the novel diagnoses the 'creative-destructive' project of modernity through a narrative of abjection and disenchantment, asking readers to question the dialectical promise, and idealist pretensions, of the term. This paper explores how this nihilistic writing is expressed spatially through the parodic 'journey' that structures the narrative, and the different nihilistic landscapes dramatised across the novel. The paper proceeds by examining understandings of modernity within literary geographies, and interpretations of nihilism, before exploring some of the central spatial moments of the novel: the deathscapes of World War I, French Colonial Africa and New York. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ways in which Céline's writing could be said to make manifest the spatial experiences of modernity.
Abstract.
2014
Romanillos JL (2014). Mortal Questions: Geographies on the other side of life. Progress in Human Geography: an international review of geographical work in the social sciences and humanities
2013
Romanillos JL (2013). Aerial Views.
Web link.
Romanillos JL (2013). Rethinking the Power of Maps.
TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR ECONOMISCHE EN SOCIALE GEOGRAFIE,
104(1), 123-126.
Author URL.
2012
Romanillos JL (2012). Dark Plasticities: Book Review, Malabou, Catherine 2012 the New Wounded: from Neurosis to Brain Damage.
Web link.
Romanillos JL, Beaumont J, Sen M (2012). State-Religion relations and welfare-regimes in Europe. In Beaumont J, Cloke P, Vranken J (Eds.) Faith, Welfare and Exclusion in European Cities: the FBO Phenomenon, the Policy Press, 37-58.
2011
Romanillos JL (2011). Geography, death and finitude. Environment and Planning A, 43(11), 2533-2553.
Romanillos JL (2011). Influences of the Imagined: Robbe-Grillet and Jealousy. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29(3), 558-559.
2010
Romanillos JL (2010). Literature, Geography and. In Warf B (Ed) Encyclopedia of Geography, Sage Publications, Inc.
2009
Ash JN, Romanillos JL, Trigg M (2009). Videogames, visuality and screens: Reconstructing the Amazon in physical geographical knowledge.
Area,
41(4), 464-474.
Abstract:
Videogames, visuality and screens: Reconstructing the Amazon in physical geographical knowledge
In this article we attend to an emergent practice of visualising GIS data in physical geography using the graphics engine of a videogame, Crysis. We suggest these modes of image-making aid the possibility of imagining and disseminating complex geographical data differently by re-contextualising seemingly abstract mathematical information within a human horizon of embodied meaning. Furthermore we argue these ways of imagining are closely linked to the technology and phenomenology of screens which make the presentation of these images possible. We close by reflecting on the possibility that these technologies are shifting the grounds of vision and the geographical imagination of users. © the Authors. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 2009.
Abstract.
2008
Romanillos JL (2008). "Outside, it is snowing": Experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
26(5), 795-822.
Abstract:
"Outside, it is snowing": Experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet
This paper presents and explicates the anonymous and impersonal spatialities tentatively mapped in the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Emerging from the kinds of landscapes and visualities articulated, these spatialities are at odds with the kind of anthropocentrism characteristic of phenomenological narratives of spatial experience that would start from an apparently stable human-subject position. It is argued that his body of literature dismantles the anthropocentric narratives and biographies that would produce in both the space of the world and the 'phenomenological subject' an unwarranted depth and naturalism. Importantly, and reflecting the theoretical turn towards the being of language, Robbe-Grillet questions the legitimacy of linguistic subjects to capture the spaces of the visible. As such, it is argued that his literature reflects an experience of the critiques of phenomenology. Importantly, this 'critique' goes hand in hand with the kinds of spatialities and landscapes that are rendered in the novels - the indefinite perspectives they open up, the paradoxical visualities they sustain or deny, and the disorientation they inject into the heart of spatial experience. These literary effects produce a nonanthropocentric and nonpersonal spatiality which, although contributing to an erasure of the 'subject', at the same time expose and open up a sociospatiality based on singularities, intensities, and finitude. © 2008 Pion Ltd and its Licensors.
Abstract.
Romanillos JL (2008). Bataille's peak: energy, religion, and postsustainability.
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D-SOCIETY & SPACE,
26(6), 1131-1132.
Author URL.
Pepe_Romanillos Details from cache as at 2023-12-04 03:50:10
Refresh publications
External Engagement and Impact
Awards/Honorary fellowships
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Invited lectures & workshops
Invited lectures:
Panel member for On Peter Sloterdijk, Geography, Spheres and Beyond, 2013 AAG Annual Meeting, Los Angeles
Paper presented in the interdisiplinary seminar series Literary and Visual Landscapes: ‘Herzog’s ridiculous sublime: landscape, appearance and evidence in the ‘natural documentary’ films of Werner Herzog', at the University of Bristol, March 11th 2013
Paper presented at Literary Dynamism of Place: Crossing, Settling Circulation, Ustinov College, Durham University, April 9th 2011
Paper presented on 'Geography, death and finitude' in the departmental seminar series at the Deparment of Geography, Durham University, March 17th 2011
Conference sessions convened:
Double session on Geography and Literature, convened at the 2008 AAG Annual Meeting, Boston
Teaching
Undergraduate modules:
- GEO1105 Place, Identity & Culture
- GEO2308 Level 2 Undergraduate Field Class (Berlin)
- GEO2311 Ideas in Geography
- GEO3101 Dissertation in Geography
- GEO3129 Images of the Earth (Convenor)
Postgraduate modules:
- GEOM106A Contemporary Debates in Human Geography (Convenor)
- GEOM130 Geogaphies of Culture, Creativity and Practice
Modules
2023/24
Supervision / Group
Postgraduate researchers
