Overview

Prior to working at Exeter I have worked at the University of Brighton, in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. I completed an AHRC-funded PhD in Cultural Geography in 2012 at the University of Exeter. I have also been an 'A' level lecturer and an arts marketing specialist. 

Broad research specialisms:

Geographies of authority and experience
Cultural geography, geographies of affect and non-representational theories
Infrastructure, deindustrialisation and change

Qualifications

PhD Human Geography (Exeter)
MA Sociology and Philosophy of Culture (Exeter)
BA Cultural and Political Studies (Exeter)
Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy
LTHE, University of Exeter
PGCE (Secondary English), 

Research group links

• Cultural and Historical Geographies

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Research

Research interests

A social theorist and cultural geographer, my research focuses on the politics of affect and experience, on classical and emergent thinking on authority and on forms of experience in late capitalist life, contributing to ongoing debates on power, authority, affect and the commons. My research falls into the following three areas:

Experiential forms of late capitalist life

The principal conceptual thread running through my research is an ongoing concern with the relationship between politics, affect and experience. My PhD research focused primarily on recent theoretical work on embodiment, politics and affect, and developed a politics of the body through an engagement with Spinoza and his relation to critical theory, particularly through new materialist thinking.

I have worked on various projects exploring modes of experience of late capitalist life, including my PhD research on landscape, practice and identity, a project on the experiential politics of debt in the UK, and on the emergence of cultures of militarism in Britain during the war in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2015. My most recent research has focused on the relationship between deindustrialisation and modes of endurance and temporality through fieldwork in a former nuclear town in Lithuania, and focuses on emergent forms of social and collective life in the wake of deindustrialisation and urban decline.

Postfoundational approaches to authority

I have an ongoing interest in accounts of authority in classical and poststructural social theory. In collaboration with other members of the Authority Research Network, I explore understandings of authority-production and the emergence of a politics of immanence through an engagement with the classical work on authority of Weber, Foucault and Arendt, as refigured through postfoundational thought, leading to an edited collection Authority, Experience and the Life of Power (Routledge, 2014). In particular, I am concerned with experiential forms of authority, particularly as articulated through cultural “figures of authority” and the figure as a conceptual and methodological tool in social and cultural critique.

My research on authority has led me to think about the idea of the common as a means of understanding alternative political subjectivities to neoliberal individualism. This interest spans the historical and imaginary understandings of the “commons”, the idea of the common in contemporary philosophy and the material production of common life through practice. This has led to the production of an edited collection: Space, Power and the Commons (Routledge, 2015)

Methodological innovations in cultural critique

My interest in affect theory has led me to develop expertise in methodological innovations for the humanities and social sciences. These draw on theoretical work from feminist science studies and non-representational theory in the production of experimental and critical approaches to the production of academic knowledge. I work closely with colleagues at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick through the development of theoretical and methodological work on the concepts of the figure and of figuration, specifically examining how figures are used in the work of Foucault and Haraway and in recent critical thought.

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD students whose interests intersect with my own. Potential areas of interest could include:

• Cultural geography, geographies of affect and non-representational theories
• Deindustrialisation: politics, aesthetics and experience
• Infrastructure, modernity and change
• Nuclear spaces
• Spaces and landscapes of authority
• Post-humanist geographies
• Temporalities and futures

Research networks

Authority Research Network http://www.authorityresearch.net/
Nuclear Societies http://sites.exeter.ac.uk/nuclearsocieties/
Cultural and Historical Geography Research Group

Research Groups & External Responsibilities:

Founding member/co-ordinator of the Authority Research Network
Member of AHRC Peer Review College
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Committee Member: Royal Geographical Society Social and Cultural Geography Research Group.

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Publications

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Teaching

Modules

2023/24

• GEO2327 - Geographies of Justice: Research Methodologies in Action
• GEO3145 - Troubled Times and Lost Futures: Geographical Thought After Progress

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Supervision / Group

Research Fellows

Alumni

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