Current Postgraduate Students

Professor Nicky Gregson

Contact Professor Nicky Gregson (email at nicky.gregson@durham.ac.uk)

I returned to Durham University's Geography Department in October 2011, having left it in 1983. My previous appointments have been at Exeter (1983-84), Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1984-1990), and Sheffield (1990-2011).

I am currently the Department's Director of Research and I am on the module teaching teams for Introduction to Geographical Research (GEO1222) and Social and Cultural Geographies (GEO2561).

Once upon a time I was a historical geographer. So, I used to work in archives. My PhD research was on the transition to agrarian capitalism in North-west England. If you dig around hard enough in the archives of Economic History Review, you will find an article on that. For reasons to do with needing a job, in 1986 I reinvented myself as an interdisciplinary social scientist, working on the interface between human geography and sociology. My first contemporary social science project was on waged domestic labour. It appears as the book Servicing the Middle Classes (Routledge, 1994). My main current research interests are in the fields of consumption and disposal, 'recycling' and waste economies, and science in practice. The approaches that I take to those fields can be identified with traditions of work in material culture studies, cultural economy and STS and they typically involve working ethnographically.

Prospective postgraduates and post-docs: please drop me an email, together with a short synopsis of your interests and proposed area of study.

Anyone else wanting to know any more or to get in touch with me at: nicky.gregson@durham.ac.uk

Research Interests

• Consumption & Disposal
• ‘Recycling’ & Waste Economies
• Science in Practice

External Supervisions

• Anna Krzywoszynska (University of Sheffield)

Previous Supervisions

• Judith Bush
• Louisa Cadman
• Rachel Colls
• Rebecca Ellis
• Helen Holmes
• Tracey Skelton
• Tina Skinner
• Joby Williams

Research Groups

• Culture-Economy-Life (CEL)

Supervises

• Ms Raihana Ferdous
• Mrs Britta Turner

Publications

Journal papers: academic

• Gregson, N., Watkins, H. & Calestani, M. (2013). Political markets: recycling, economization and marketization. Economy & Society 42(1): 1-25.
• Gregson, N. (2012). Projected futures: the political matter of UK higher activity radioactive waste. Environment and Planning A 44(8): 2006-2022.
• Gregson, N., Crang, M., Ahamed, F., Akter, N., Ferdous, R., Foisal, S. & Hudson, R. (2012). Territorial agglomeration and industrial symbiosis: Sitakunda-Bhatiary, Bangladesh, as a secondary processing complex. Economic Geography 88(1): 37-58.
• Gregson, N. (2011). Performativity, corporeality and the politics of ship disposal. Journal of Cultural Economy 4(2): 137-156.
• Gregson, N., Crang, M. & Watkins, H. (2011). Souvenir salvage and the death of great naval ships. Journal of Material Culture 16(3): 301-324.
• Gregson, N., Crang, M., Ahamed, F., Akter, N. & Ferdous, R. (2010). Following things of rubbish value: end-of-life ships, 'chock-chocky' furniture and the Bangladeshi middle class consumer. Geoforum 41(6): 846 - 854.
• Gregson, N., Watkins, H. & Calestani, M. (2010). Inextinguishable fibres: demolition and the vital materialisms of asbestos. Environment and Planning A 42(5): 1065-1083.
• Gregson, N. & Crang, M. (2010). Materiality and waste: inorganic vitality in a networked world. Environment & Planning A 42(5): 1026-1032.
• Bærenholdt, J., Gregson, N., Everts, J., Granas, B. & Healey, R. (2010). Performing academic practice: using the master class to build postgraduate discursive competences. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 34(2): 283-298.
• Bulkeley, H. & Gregson, N. (2009). Crossing the threshold: municipal waste policy and household waste generation. Environment and Planning A 41(4): 929-945.
• Gregson, N. (2009). Material, literary narrative and cultural economy. Journal of Cultural Economy 2(3): 285-300.
• Gregson, N., Metcalfe, A. & Crewe, L. (2009). Practices of object maintenance and repair: how consumers attend to consumer objects within the home. Journal of Consumer Culture 9(2): 248-272.
• Gregson, N., Metcalfe, A. & Crewe, L. (2007). Identity, mobility and the throwaway society. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25(4): 682-700.
• Gregson, N. (2007). Living with Things: ridding, accommodation, dwelling.
• Gregson, N., Metcalfe, A. & Crewe, L. (2007). Moving things along: the conduits and practices of divestment in consumption. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32(2): 187-200.
• Gregson, N. & Crewe, L. (2003). Second-hand cultures.
• Gregson, N., Crewe, L. & Brooks, K. (2002). Discourse, displacement, and retail practice: some pointers from the charity retail project. Environment and Planning A 34(9): 1661 - 1683.
• Gregson, N., Crewe, L. & Brooks, K. (2002). Shopping, space and practice. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20(5): 597-617.
• Gregson, N. & Rose, G. (2000). Taking Butler elsewhere: performativities, spatialities and subjectivities. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18(4): 433-452.
• Gregson, N., Crewe, L. & Longstaff, B. (1997). Excluded spaces of regulation: car-boot sales as an enterprise culture out of control?. Environment and Planning A 29(10): 1717 - 1737.
• Gregson, N. & Crewe, L. (1997). The bargain, the knowledge and the spectacle: making sense of consumption in the space of the car-boot sale. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15(1): 87 - 112.