Department of Geography
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Staff Profile

Professor Stuart Elden, BSc (Hons); PhD; PGCE

Personal web pages

Professor in the Department of Geography
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 33 41945
Fax: +44 (0)191 33 41801
Room number: 409

Contact (email at stuart.elden@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

Stuart Elden's research is at the intersection of politics, philosophy and geography.
He joined the Department of Geography as a lecturer in 2002, was promoted to Reader in 2005, and to Professor in 2007. Before arriving at Durham he studied for a BSc (Hons) in Politics and Modern History (1994) and a PhD in Political Theory (1999), both from Brunel University. Between 1999 and 2002 he was a lecturer in the Politics and International Studies department of the University of Warwick.
He is the editor of Society and Space (Environment and Planning D), having previously served on the editorial board. He has also been the review editor of the Review of International Political Economy, and was one of the founding editors of Foucault Studies. At Durham he is an Associate Director of the International Boundaries Research Unit, having served as Academic Director from 2004-2007.
He has held visiting posts at the Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia; School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania; Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles;  Department of Sociology, New York University; Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore; and as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London. He will be a visiting scholar in the Department of Geography, University of Washington in Fall term 2010, and a visiting fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, between February and May 2011.
More on his background can be found in an interview here

New Book Out - Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty

Published by University of Minnesota Press

Winner of the 2009 Association of American Geographers Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography

Winner of the 2009 Political Geography Speciality Group Julian Minghi Outstanding Research Award

John Agnew, UCLA, writes: “By his focus on how territory animates world politics, Stuart Elden demonstrates how far we are from the borderless world of popular fantasy. More specifically, in this deftly argued and richly empirical book, he shows how, in responding to 9/11 as an act of war, the U.S. government, through its association of al-Qaeda with the Afghan Taliban and in its preemptive invasion of Iraq, directly undermined the very territorial integrity norm that the terror of 9/11 was held to have violated. In this way, ‘terror’ sheds light on the continuing political importance of territory”.
Interviews about the book can be found here and here

The Birth of Territory

Between 2008 and 2011 he is funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to work on a history of the concept of territory. This seeks to provide a detailed account of Western political thought from the perspective of the relation between power and place. There are several strands to this work which covers a long historical period. At the moment the focus is on the political thought of Gottfried Leibniz. As a whole the project seeks to retell the story of the emergence of the state from the perspective of its territorial control. A substantial research monograph tentatively entitled The Birth of Territory is the intended outcome of this work.
Videos of a lecture outlining this work can be found here and here; and the audio of a talk on a single strand of this project, a history of the word territorium, here.

Social/Spatial Theory

Earlier work had a focus on three key thinkers - Heidegger, Foucault and Lefebvre. Books were written on each of these thinkers. Each provided a close textual and contextualised reading, seeking to situate these thinkers in their time and place and to make arguments about the applicability of their work to other problems. An interest in all three thinkers continues, particularly in terms of newly published writings and lecture courses of Heidegger and Foucault.

Reading Kant's Geography

Together with Eduardo Mendieta (Stony Brook University) he has edited a companion volume of essays to Immanuel Kant's lectures on geography. This project was funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in late 2007. The book is entitled Reading Kant's Geography and the book will be published by SUNY Press in their Contemporary Continental Philosophy series in June 2011.

The Space of the World

An ongoing interest over the past several years has been in understandings of the world in writers such as Henri Lefebvre, Kostas Axelos, Eugen Fink, Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux and Peter Sloterdijk. The fellowship at ANU in 2011 is to begin work on a book on the philosophy of globalisation, tentatively entitled The Space of the World. Two recent edited collections have looked at related issues.
1. A book of Henri Lefebvre's writings entitled State, Space, World: Selected Essays, edited with Neil Brenner (New York University). The writings in this book are nearly all new translations, made by Gerald Moore and the editors. There is a lengthy introduction of 20,000 words and extensive notes to Lefebvre's texts.
2. A special issue of the journal Society and Space entitled The Worlds of Peter Sloterdijk, edited with Eduardo Mendieta and Nigel Thrift. This issue comprises translations of Sloterdijk's 'Rules for the Human Zoo' and two extracts from Sphären, and several specially commissioned pieces by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars.
An edited book on Sloterdijk's work is contracted with Polity and is forthcoming in September 2011. Contributors include Babette Babich, Jean-Pierre Couture, Wieland Hoban, Efrain Kristol, Eduardo Mendieta, Marie-Eve Morin, Nigel Thrift, and Sjoerd van Tuinen.

Research Groups

Research Interests

  • European political theory and philosophy
  • Territorial integrity
  • The concept of territory from a historical perspective
  • The politics of calculation
  • The territorial aspects of the 'war on terror'
  • Western Marxism

Selected Publications

Books: authored

Books: edited

Books: sections

Edited works: journals

Journal papers: academic

Show all publications

Related Links

Grants Awarded and Grant Applications

  • 2011: Visiting Fellowship, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University
  • 2009: Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London
  • 2009: Distinguished Visiting Scholarship, Ben Gurion University, Israel
  • 2008: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Visiting Scholarship, National University of Singapore
  • 2007: Kant's Geography (British Academy Conference Grant, £2000)
  • 2007: Kant's Geography (Leverhulme Research Fellowship, £22,048)
  • 2006: The Geometry of the Political: A History of the Concept of Territory (Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, £113,151 - to run from 1 February 2008 to 31st January 2011)
  • 2005: International River Boundaries Database (RGS-IBG Small Grant, £2750)
  • 2005: The Territorial Integrity of Iraq: Preservation, Sovereignty, Viability (Nuffield Foundation, £5771)

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