HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Please contact named supervisors for an informal discussion of these research opportunities in human geography.

Restructuring Social Reproduction: Extended Schools and the Needs of High and Low Income Minority Ethnicity Parents and Children.

Supervisor: Prof Sarah Holloway and Dr Heike Jöns
Geographers interested in children, youth and families are seeking to explore the (re)structuring of the neo-liberal state in the context of social reproduction. In Britain these processes have seen, for example, increased ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’ in education, as well as welfare reforms which have emphasised the importance of parents’ labour force participation. This project examines the Government’s Extended Services initiative which envisions schools as hubs of/signposts to wrap around childcare, a varied range of activities for children, parenting and family support, access to specialist services, as well as community use of school facilities. Schools are charged with interpreting this universal policy and implementing it in a way that serves the need of their school community. The aim of this project is to explore the ways in which the implementation of this policy is interpreted by minority ethnicity children and their parents in schools serving high and low income catchments. Specific areas of concern will be ideas about the appropriate spaces for childhood, the responsibilities of state and family for social reproduction, and the nature of home-school linkages.

Student Housing Markets and Student Housing Trajectories
Supervisor:Dr Darren Smith

Understanding the changing geographies of student housing markets is important in terms of developing community cohesion agendas in university towns and cities. At present, it appears that various supply and demand factors conspire to create highly uneven landscapes of studentification, characterised by clusters of rented houses or purpose built development in de facto student neighbourhoods.  This project would consider both the production and consumption of student housing, seeking to identify why students are keen to locate in such student areas given other possible housing choices, and to understand whether it is possible to talk of a 'typical' student housing trajectory.

Sustainable City-Regions? Competitiveness, Cohesion, and Governance
Supervisor: Dr John Harrison

This project looks at the relational spatialities of city-regions and development in contemporary globalization and their implications for sustainability, public policy and spatial planning. More specifically, the project will explore the relationship between sustainability and city-region development by focusing on the interdependencies and tensions between the economic, social, environmental and political dimensions of sustainability in the UK’s core city-regions. Designed to offer new insight into the nature of policymaking in a world increasing defined as a contemporary space of inter-city flows/diffused power in a splintered political-institutional space defined by territorial boundaries, this research will contribute to geographical debates on (amongst others) new state spaces, inter-city linkages, city-region governance, and sustainability in a globalized world. Finally, the project will look at the potential for, and barriers to, integrated planning at the city-regional level in the UK and beyond.

The Impact of the British Academic Diaspora on Higher Education and Research in Britain

Supervisor: Dr Heike Jöns

In 1963, the Royal Society published a report about the emigration of scientists from the UK to the USA and Canada during the 1950s and early 1960s. This report triggered a public debate in which the term ‘brain drain’ was coined that has shaped migration studies and policies up until today. Almost 50 years later, imminent funding cuts in British higher education have prompted warnings about a new wave of external brain drain by university graduates, academics and researchers. While recent migration studies have turned their focus to the role of academic diasporas for home countries, there is no comprehensive study available that examines the impact of the British academic diaspora on higher education and research in Britain. This project reconstructs the emigration of British academics since the 1950s and analyses the extent to which British academic emigrants maintained professional networks in their home country, contributed to international academic mobility and collaboration, shaped academic discourses/policies and possibly returned to Britain. By critically evaluating the long-term effects of ‘brain drain’ from Britain, the research contributes to interdisciplinary debates about its costs and benefits from the perspective of one of the leading scientific countries and helps to develop conceptual debates about the notion of ‘brain circulation’ that accounts for an increasingly transient and networked character of highly skilled migration.

Green Regions: Caught Between Competitiveness and the Environment

Supervisors: Dr John Harrison

Debates in regional geography have, over the past 15 years, been dominated by the ‘new regionalism’ and its connection to notions of ‘competitiveness’. This has certainly been true in England, where Labour’s post-1997 regional policy was designed primarily to enhance the competitiveness of the English regions. Today, however, the English regions face competing demands and pressures. At one level, they are responding to the financial crisis and the pressure to remain competitive. At another level, they are faced with a range of pressures relating chiefly to climate, but also in terms of the availability of water, energy and food. This project will investigate how the English regions are adapting to these competing pressures, which are likely to be highly regionally uneven. It will also include a detailed case study of one of England’s regions.

Exploring Geographies of Migrant/Diaspora Politics
Supervisor: Dr Liz Mavroudi

Migrants and those in diaspora get involved in formal/informal politics in a variety of ways that span local, national, transnational scales. A number of questions can be usefully explored in relation to such processes. What are the different local/transnational/national political spaces, networks and sites that migrants/those in diaspora get involved in, how are they created, who is involved and why? What is the role of particular people, such as, for example, elites and community leaders, in the process? What are the political, religious, social, cultural discourses and identities that those in positions of power such as community leaders may promote that may be inclusive/ exclusive and how do they encourage/prevent participation in such spaces/networks? What are the potential tensions that may arise as result of this? What are the implications of this in relation to the ability of governments to deal with diverse populations with dynamic and complex uses of spaces and networks within and across borders? The project would explore such issues in relation to a qualitative case study of a migrant/diasporic group in the UK.

Biosecurity and Global Public Health

Supervisors: Professor Morag Bell and Dr Adam Warren

The 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic influenza outbreak represents the most recent in a series of global public health events, including the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US, the 2003 SARS outbreak and the re-emergence of H5N1 avian influenza in humans. These outbreaks have caused scholars, public health officials, policy experts, national health agencies (such as the CDC) and transnational organisations (such as the WHO) to reconceptualise global public health as ‘biosecurity’. Although this term has been in use for almost two decades, its main characteristics remain unclear. This uncertainty has generated a number of research questions, including:

• To what extent have debates on biosecurity influenced global public health governance?

• What are the fault lines between global public health governance and national security?

• What are the spatialities of biosecurity? How do they shape postcolonial debates concerning North/South relations?

This research would contribute to emerging debates on biosecurity as a key global public health issue, with implications for particular populations, networks and locations.

Representing Revolution: The US and the Nicaraguan Revolution

Supervisor: Dr Ed Brown
Building upon the Department's history of research in Nicaragua, we are keen to encourage applications from those interested in exploring the legacy of the Sandinista revolution. Whilst this could encompass many different dimensions, in the context of current global geopolitical issues, we are particularly interested in the confrontation between the US and the Sandinistas. As such, this project would explore the contested ways in which the revolutionary process was represented to the outside world and to the Nicaraguan people through a detailed analysis of  Sandinista government and US media archives. This project would involve working closely with collaborating institutions in Nicaragua and would require a reasonable level of Spanish proficiency.

World city Network Formation and EU Spatial Policy
Supervisor: Michael Hoyler
The EU may be interpreted as Europe’s main institutional response to globalization but it still remains a territorial entity in a world where global flows are becoming more and more important. Comparing the global connections of different EU cities and how these do or do not relate to EU policies and to policy-oriented research on EU territorial development and spatial planning (ESPON) would be the theme explored in this project. Research would address the potential tensions between policies promoting a competitive, knowledge-based European economy (e.g. Lisbon Strategy) and those aiming to achieve a balanced and sustainable European urban system (e.g. ESDP).

A Critical Geopolitics of Trade Liberalization in Central America

Supervisors: Dr Ed Brown
This project concerns the ways in which power is exerted in international trade negotiations. The major aim of the project is to situate broad concerns over the unequal capacities of North and South in these negotiations in a more concrete regional setting. As such, the project would explore the positions taken by Central American nations during the so-called development round of WTO talks which begun in Doha in 2001. These multilateral negotiations have, however, coincided with the launch of negotiations between the US and the Central American republics over the proposed Central American Free trade area. The project would, therefore, explore the tensions between bilateral and multi-lateral approaches to liberalization, the various ways in which power is exerted in those forums and the growing regional opposition to the liberalization agenda.

Global Networks in Higher Education
Supervisors: Michael Hoyler and Dr Heike Jöns

Despite a growing interest in the geographies of higher education, little is known about the ways in which academic research and teaching are sustained by global flows of students and academics, knowledge and ideas, symbolic and material resources. This project will investigate how universities develop links across the world by examining either a particular type of network involving a number of universities, or by providing a case study of linkages of one academic institution. By analysing the geographies of 'knowledge nodes' in higher education, the research will contribute to a critical interrogation of different strategies employed in knowledge network formation and the internationalisation of academic practices and discourses.