My broad research interests relate how people live together in cities. I am particularly interested in developing understandings of the experiential aspects of this, focusing on how various social relations unfold amidst a range of materialities, planning and policing discourses, and embodied (more-than human) encounters. In doing so I draw on experimental ethnographic and visual methods and develop insights from non-representational, post-structural and (post)phenomenological philosophies.

Currently:

Associate Professor of Human Geography

Associate Head of School (Research)

Previously:

Leader of the Centre for Research in Society and Environment

UoA14 (Geography and Environmental Sciences) coordinator for the Research Excellence Framework

ESRC South-West Doctoral Training Partnership Lead (Human Geography)

Programme Co-ordinator for the MSc Human Geography Research / MSc Social Research

Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (2011-2023)

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2011-present)

Member of ESRC Peer Review College (2024-present).

Member of editorial board for ‘Social and Cultural Geography’ Journal (2020-present).

Steering Committee of the International Ambiances Network (2015-present)

RGS-IBG History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group Committee

• Chair (2014-2018)
• Membership Secretary (2011-2014)
• Member (2010-2011)

RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group Committee

• Member (2021-2023)
• Publications Officer (2013-2014)
• Member (2012-2013)

My teaching interests broadly lie in the areas of:

Urban Geography (Urban Design, Security and Counter-terrorism Everyday Life, and Public Space)

Experiential Geographies (Perception of the Environment, Embodied Experiences of Practice, Performance, and Mobility)

Theory and Philosophy in Geography

Qualitative Methods

Recent Research Project

2020-2024: 'Atmospheres of (counter-)terrorism in European Cities. Funder by the Open Research Areas scheme (ESRC, ANR, DFG)(Co-I / UoP lead with Sara Fregonese (PI), Damien Masson (Co-I), Simon Runkel (Co-I) and Helen Heurtel (Co-I)) (project funding: ~1.4million Euro; UoP funding: £~280k)

This project explores the felt and emotive dimensions of contemporary terror threats and counterterrorism measures as they play out in people’s ordinary experience of cities. The project’s concern with the felt quality and intangible aspects of counterterrorism in cities leads to different ways of posing questions about urban security/counter-terrorism, focusing for example on how security and security infrastructures feel instead of how they appear or what they mean. To do so, the project adopts the notion of atmosphere as a means of interpreting such individual and collective felt dimensions. Atmosphere here refers to an immersive and shared felt quality of a situation which emerges from, and is shaped by, the presence and agency of both human and nonhuman actors. Atmospheres are already the ‘object target’ of various agencies, from commercial marketing to policing, and so are becoming an important part of attempts to shape behaviour in different settings. However, a much less studied realm concerns everyday users’ experiences and the atmospheres around spaces of security in cities. Through the lens of atmosphere the project explores feelings of (in)security – and their social implications – that the tangible ‘fabric’ of urban counterterrorism can bring about.

For more on the project see: https://atmoct.org