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Urban Worlds
The urban geographical research in the department aims to understand the ways in which urban worlds are produced, governed, contested and transformed. We are interested in contemporary and historical urbanism(s), including the techniques through which cities are governed, the domains through which urban life is lived and reformulated, and the prospects of different forms of urban justices.
A key question for us is how to conceptualise and research the changing relations between urbanism and space. For example, this could consider the everyday life of neighbourhoods and street politics, the (re)making of and maintaining of existing and new socio-technical and ecological infrastructures, or the politics of encounters.
We ask how we might understand urban spatio-temporalities and seek to excavate the different ways in which we might think of the world as becoming urban.
We ask how a diversity of urban experiences and theoretical histories pluralise the ways in which we understand and research urban worlds.
For further details, please contact Dr Sam Nowak
PGR Co-convenor: role vacant
Cluster Members
| Name | Position | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Professor Ben Anderson | Professor | Theories of affect and emotion; affective politics; neoliberalism and populism; events; futures; non-representational theories |
| Professor Harriet Bulkeley | Professor | Environmental governance; climate change; urban infrastructure; urban sustainability; nature and biodiversity; energy transitions; socio-technical systems; sustainable finance; urban political ecology; governmentality |
| Professor Mike Crang | Professor | Cultural geography; memory; identity; heritage; tourism; waste and the borders of commodification |
| Dr Jonathan Darling | Associate Professor | Asylum; refugees; political geography; migration; borders; urban politics |
| Dr Meghan Kelly | Assistant Professor | Feminist mapping, Critical GIS, cartography, feminist digital geographies, visual storytelling, design justice |
| Dr Sarah Knuth | Associate Professor | Political and cultural economy; political ecology; green economy; energy and climate justice; urban built environments and infrastructure; financial geographies; technology and industrial policy; fiscal politics and the state; value and devaluation |
| Dr Karen Lai | Associate Professor | Finance, financial centres, fintech, global cities, political economy, cultural economy, knowledge, producer services, advanced business services, Asia |
| Dr Noam Leshem | Associate Professor | Political geography; war & violent conflict; displacement; creative practice; political theory; testimony and witnessing; cultural history; settler colonial & decolonial geographies; |
| Dr Andrés Luque-Ayala | Associate Professor | Urban geography; infrastructure; computational cities; digital geographies; Latin America; postcolonial and decolonial theory; digital natures; anthropocene; |
| Professor Colin McFarlane | Professor | Cities; urban politics; urban theory; poverty and inequality; infrastructure; density; urban knowledge |
| Assistant Professor | Elemental geographies, urban geopolitics, geopoetics, cities, archives and memory, Middle East, art and creative practice, post-/de-colonial thinking | |
| Dr Marijn Nieuwenhuis | Assistant Professor | Elemental geographies; creative methods; Chinese geographies; poetics; arts; breathing; weathers; political geographies; phenomenologies |
| Assistant Professor | Urban geography; political economy; digital geographies; postcolonial urbanism; Southeast Asia | |
| Professor Joe Painter | Professor | Political geography; state theory; citizenship; urban and regional politics and governance; theories of territory; social innovation; localism, local governance and community action; politics of everyday life; art, creativity and urban politics; |
| Professor Marcus Power | Professor | Development; geopolitics; energy; infrastructure; visual geographies and methodologies; China-Africa; decolonisation; subaltern geographies; decolonial and postcolonial theory |
| Professor Helen F. Wilson | Associate Professor | Encounter; encounterable life; difference; cities; urban politics; multiculture; avian geographies; conflict management; postcolonial theory; environmental humanities |
| Assistant Professor | Urban geography; critical urban theory; state theory; space and power; urban peripheries; Asian urbanisms |
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Research Clusters
Our research clusters are focused on ideas. They act as centres of gravity for collective research activity and provide the foundational means through which we generate the diversity, vibrancy and innovation that underpins our research.
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Impacting the World
Our research culture is set up to generate research that is both intellectually innovative and impactful, addressing the key global challenges of our time and providing wider public and societal benefit.
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Virtual Library
Much of our research takes final form in high-impact articles or books. But a considerable amount of our activity takes place in other mediums.
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Our Research Community
Our academic researchers and research staff are completing a wide range of research that is Impacting the World, including work that is relevant to the pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals, and publishing literature that is changing our understanding of the world.
Contact Us
Founded in 1928, the Department of Geography at Durham University is one of the leading centres of geographical research and education in the world.
Department of Geography
Postgraduate Study
Durham University
Lower Mountjoy
South Road, Durham
DH1 3LE, UK
Tel: +44 (0)191 33418000
Be social. Be informed. Be a part of Durham Geography.
