Matt Benwell

Title: Early Career Research Fellow (Leverhulme Trust)
Phone: 01782 734598
Email:
Location: Rm 1.17, Claus Moser Research Centre
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Contacting me:

My research engages with Critical Geopolitics and the Geographies of Children and Youth. I have experience of undertaking research with children and youth in different parts of the world including the UK, South Africa, Argentina and the Falkland Islands. My PhD research in post-apartheid South Africa explored the ways in which societal change (alongside other interconnected factors) shapes children’s mobilities around public space. My more recent postdoctoral research looks at geopolitical discourses and representations of territorial disputes in the south Atlantic (principally, the Falklands/Malvinas question) and Antarctica and their reception by Argentine, British and Falkland Islander youth.

The making of the geopolitical citizen’: the case of the Falklands/Malvinas – Early Career Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust

This three year research project investigates the ways in which young people from Argentina, the Falkland Islands and the UK learn about and engage with everyday geopolitical discourses of the nation-state. Its focus is the intractable territorial dispute over the status of the Falkland Islands or Islas Malvinas. The research is exploring how young people learn about the geopolitics of these contested territories and their perspectives on the ongoing sovereignty dispute. It addresses key issues set to characterise global geopolitics in the 21st century such as the status of post-colonial territories and access to resource-rich polar regions.

  • Benwell M.C. (2014, forthcoming) Connecting Southern Frontiers: Argentina, the South West Atlantic and ‘Argentine Antarctic Territory’. In: Powell R and Dodds K eds. Polar Geopolitics, Knowledges, Resources and Legal Regimes. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar.
  • Benwell M.C. (2013) Rethinking conceptualisations of adult-imposed restriction and children’s experiences of autonomy in outdoor space. Children's Geographies 11 pp 28-43
  • Benwell, M.C., Borello, J. & Haselip, J. (2013) Housing, security and employment in post-neoliberal Buenos Aires. Latin American Perspectives   DOI: 10.1177/0094582X12467759
  • Benwell, M.C., Dodds, K. & Pinkerton, A. (2012) Celebrity Geopolitics. Political Geography 31 pp 405-407
  • Benwell, M.C. (2012) Don't believe the hype. Geographical, RGS-IBG, April, pp 46-49
  • Benwell M.C., & Dodds. K. (2011) Argentine Territorial Nationalism Revisited: The Malvinas/Falklands Dispute And Geographies Of Everyday Nationalism. Political Geography 30 pp 441-449
  • Dodds, K., & Benwell, M.C. (2010) More unfinished business: The Falklands/Malvinas, maritime claims and the spectre of oil in the South Atlantic. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 pp 571-580
  • Benwell, M.C. (2009) Challenging minority world privilege: children’s outdoor mobilities in post-apartheid South Africa. Mobilities 4 pp 77-101
  • Benwell, M.C. (2009) ‘Race’ or race: reflections on (self-) censorship and avoidance in research with children. Children’s Geographies 7 pp 229-233