Dr Helen F. Wilson

Contact Dr Helen F. Wilson (email at helen.f.wilson@durham.ac.uk)

Biography and Research

I am a cultural and social geographer interested in the geographies and politics of embodied difference – both human and non-human. I joined the Department of Geography in 2017 following a Senior Lectureship at the University of Manchester, and previous positions at the University of Hull and Durham University. I completed a BA, MA, and PhD (2011) at Durham University.

My work is focused on the geographies of encounter; urban life and living; how embodied difference is negotiated, contested, and supported in times crisis, and/or contestation; and manifestations of conflict that fold in questions of race, culture, and species. 

My research interests include: encounterable life; difference; affect and emotion; cultural theory; animal studies; geographies of education; race and racism; multiculture; urban life and living; and the politics of tolerance. My current research explores the fraught politics of coexistence through the case of urban kittiwakes in both the UK and Norway. 

Research Groups

Department of Geography

• Geographies of Life

Selected Publications

Edited book

• Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan (Forthcoming). Research Ethics for Human Geography. Sage.
• Darling, Jonathan & Wilson, Helen F. (2016). Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Chapter in book

• Wilson, Helen F. (Accepted). Anonymity. In Research Ethics for Human Geography. Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan Sage, London.
• Wilson, Helen F. (Forthcoming). Data Management. In Research Ethics for Human Geography. Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan Sage, London.
• Darling, Jonathan & Wilson, Helen F. (Forthcoming). Geography and Ethics. In Research Ethics for Human Geography. Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan Sage.
• Lobo, Michele, Kelly, David & Wilson, Helen F. (Forthcoming). Participatory Approaches. In Research Ethics for Human Geography. Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan Sage, London.
• Farías, Mónica & Wilson, Helen F. (Forthcoming). Voluntary Spaces. In Research Ethics for Human Geography. Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan Sage, London.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2019). Animal Encounters: a genre of contact. In Animal Encounters: Contact, Interaction and Relationality. Bohm, A. & Ullrich, J. J.B.Metzler.
• Wilson, Helen F, Burman, E, Miles, S & Warren, S (2019). Other(ed) childhoods: supplementary schools and the politics of learning. In Intersectionality and Difference in Childhood and Youth: Global Perspectives. Von Benzon, N. & Wilkinson, C. Routledge.
• Wilson, Helen F (2018). On the paradox of 'organised' encounter. In Cultural Encounters as Intervention Practices. Christiansen, Lene Bull, Galal, Lise Paulsen & Hvenegard-Lassen,Kirsten Routledge.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2017). Building Coalitions: Solidarities, friendships, and tackling inequality. In Place, Diversity and Solidarity. Oosterlynck, S., Schuermans, N. & Loopmans, M. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 51-70.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2016). Encountering Havana: texts, aesthetics, and documentary encounters. In Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York. Darling, J. & Wilson, H.F Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 203-220.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2016). Encounters. In Urban Theory: New Critical Perspectives. Jayne, M. & Ward, K. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 109-121.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2016). Sonic geographies, sound walks and more-than-representational methods. In The Auditory Culture Reader. Bull, M. & Back, L. Bloomsbury. 163-172.
• Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan (2016). The possibilities of encounter. In Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York. Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 1-24.

Journal Article

• Wilson, Helen F. & Warren, Saskia (Forthcoming). Critical geographies of education: race, culture, and supplementarity. Progress in Human Geography
• Anderson, B, Wilson, H.F., Foreman, P, Heslop, J, Ormerod, E & Maestri, G (2020). Brexit: Modes of Uncertainty and Futures in an Impasse. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 45(2): 256-269.
• Wilson, Helen F. & Anderson, Ben (2020). Detachment, disaffection, and other ambivalent affects. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 38(4): 591.
• Antonsich, M, Skey, M., Sumartojo, S., Merriman, P., Stephens, A.C., Tolia-Kelly, D., Wilson, H.F. & Anderson, B. (2020). The spaces and politics of affective nationalism. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 38(4): 579.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2019). Contact zones: Multispecies scholarship through 'Imperial Eyes'. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 2(4): 712-731.
• Anderson, B. & Wilson, H.F. (2018). Everyday Brexits. Area 50(2): 291-295.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2017). On geography and encounter. Progress in Human Geography 41(4): 451-471.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2017). On the Paradox of ‘Organised’ Encounter. Journal of Intercultural Studies 38(6): 606-620.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2015). An urban laboratory for the multicultural nation?. Ethnicities 15(4): 586-604.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2014). Multicultural learning: parent encounters with difference in a Birmingham primary school. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39(1): 102-114.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2014). The Possibilities of Tolerance: Intercultural Dialogue in a Multicultural Europe. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32(5): 852-868.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2013). Collective life: parents, playground encounters and the multicultural city. Social & Cultural Geography 14(6): 625-648.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2013). Learning to think differently: Diversity training and the ‘good encounter’. Geoforum 45: 73-82.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2013). Post-socialist Cities and Urban Studies: Transformation and Continuity in Eurasia. Urban Studies 50(16): 3463-3471.
• Wilson, H.F. (2012). Living with difference and the conditions for dialogue. Dialogues in Human Geography 2(2): 225-227.
• Wilson, H.F. (2011). Passing Propinquities in the Multicultural City: the everyday encounters of bus passengering. Environment and Planning A 43(3): 634-649.

Book review

• Wilson, Helen F. (2012). Book Review: A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City. Urban Studies 49(1): 225.

Other (Print)

• Featherstone, David., Wilson, Helen F., Crossan, John & Sanyal, Romola (2017). Book review symposium: Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin. Urban Studies 54(1): 292.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2017). The Geography of Brexit.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2017). The rise of intolerance? Brexit and the problem with stasis. 25-27.
• Wilson, Helen F. (2016). BREXIT: ON THE RISE OF ‘(IN)TOLERANCE’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (open site)

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Supervises

• Miss Yu Qiao
• Miss Amy Robson