Personal profile

Personal profile

 

As a Cultural Geographer I am drawn both to the feel of particular places and to understanding the movements of things, people and ideas that help to give them those distinctive textures. My research interests focus especially on the role of commercial and material cultures in that regard. Key themes include:

•the geographies of material culture;

•transnational and diasporic geographies; 

•the cultural geographies of consumption; 

•workplace geographies; 

•and, methodologically, the role of ethnographic and creative research practice in exploring these issues.

I have been principal supervisor for forty completed PhD students, from the UK and abroad, working in these and related areas. Funding for this doctoral work has been gained from UK research councils (ESRC, AHRC), the Leverhulme Trust, overseas research councils and RHUL. 

I serve on the Editorial Boards of the journals Geography Compass and Cultural Geographies (of which I was editor 1999-2008). I have served on research funding panels for AHRC, ESRC and Ireland’s IRCHSS. I was Head of Geography at Royal Holloway from 2018-2021.

 

Teaching

 

I enjoy teaching a lot, learning from students' interests and ideas, and engaging them with my own research thought. In 2022-23 I am teaching on the second year undergraduate course in Cultural Geographies (GG2061), on a third year module called The Geographies of Commodities (GG3056), on the MSc in Global Futures and MRes in Cultural Geography, and tutoring and dissertation-advising undergraduate and postgraduate students. I am co-editor of Introducing Human Geographies (Third Edition, Routledge, 2014), one of the principal introductory textbooks to Human Geography at University level, and a co-author of Practising Human Geography (Sage), which guides students on undertaking their own research.

 

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth

Keywords

  • Culture
  • Food
  • Fashion
  • Place
  • Globalization