Overview

Human Geography research at Keele is wide-ranging but particularly focused on Social and Cultural Geography. Details of research being undertaken by staff at Keele that are relevant to each theme are outlined below.

Social Geography

Key areas of research include:

• Sustainable rural futures and the relationships between landscape, land use, lifestyles and livelihoods. This work also considers the governance, planning and regeneration of rural communities in the UK and beyond.
• Migration and superdiversity, including motivations and impacts, as well as people’s place-based experiences of globalisation and development in a range of contexts. Research also explores transnational networks, changes in local livelihoods, possibilities for locally sustainable alternative economic development, and environmental degradation linked to migration.
• Time geographies in relation to everyday life, including experiences of busyness and burnout, wellbeing, and everyday activities.

Cultural Geography

Key areas of interest include:

• Power and colonialism in the Global South and how these frame studies of gender, sustainability, narrative and representation. Research has expanded through theorising re-orientalism to include studies of commercial international surrogacy, precarity, hospitality, romance, and recent work on decolonising the curriculum, research, museums and AI.
• The relationships between humans, animals, public knowledge and identity, with a particular focus on historical otter hunting, contemporary otter conservation, animal welfare and pet theft.
• Creative geographies, using innovative methods of engagement focused on curating development, community art and plastic waste.

Research Interests

Social Geography

• Sustainable rural futures; family practices and mobilities; higher education and social justice; busyness and temporal experiences (Professor Clare Holdsworth).
• Circular economy and development geography (Dr Deirdre McKay).
• Migration and superdiversity; urban and rural development and planning; sustainable mobilities (Professor Simon Pemberton).

Cultural Geography

• Postcolonial studies, re-orientalism theory and decolonisation in relation to power, class, narrative, identity construction, social and cultural change, and AI (Dr Lisa Lau).
• Otter hunting and conservation and pet theft reform (Dr Daniel Allen).
• Material studies and arts-based methods (Dr Deirdre McKay).

Research interests

Social Geography

• Family practices and  mobilities; higher education and social justice; ‘busyness’ and family health in relation to substance (mis)use (Professor Clare Holdsworth).
• Migration, development and sustainability (Dr Deirdre McKay).
• Historical Cartography and GIS; Geographies of Food and Eating;  Pedagogy of Geography; Human Geography; geolinguistics and GIS (Dr Alex Nobajas).
• New migration and superdiversity; urban and rural governance; community planning (Professor Simon Pemberton).
• Diabetes, smoking, vaping and health inequalities, including the social, cultural, embodied and spatial norms associated with e-cigarette use (Dr. Mark Lucherini).

Cultural Geography

• South Asian Literature in English, postcolonialism, re-orientalism theory, power, narrative, identity construction, class chasms, social and cultural change (Dr Lisa Lau).
• Otter hunting and conservation and pet theft reform (Dr. Daniel Allen).
• Creative  and informal economies (Dr. Deirdre McKay).

Facilities

Research students in Human Geography have dedicated office space in the William Smith Building. The building houses a vibrant community of postgraduate scholars and research staff. Research training and courses to enhance the employability skills of our research students are provided by the Learning and Professional Development Centre.

Our students are encouraged to participate in these as well as to attend and to present their work in several well established seminar series across the School and the Keele Institute for Sustainable Futures and the Keele Institute for Social Inclusion. The seminars run throughout the year and include both internal and external speakers. Our students also contribute to seminars in other parts of the University and take part in wider Keele graduate symposia and events. They engage with staff research that has attracted support from the ESRC, EPSRC, AHRC, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy and the ERC.

There is an active culture of grant-seeking and research engagement in human geography; members of the group have recently received research funding from the EU, ESRC, Leverhulme Trust; RGS-IBG; Higher Education Academy; British Academy, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement. There are opportunities for students to gain professional experience both through teaching and through contributing to externally funded research projects.

Research staff and students

Our supervisors work closely with research students to support their PhD research. Members of the Human Geography group present their work at international and national conferences and publish widely in the international literature, sitting on international editorial boards.

Supervisors draw on their extensive professional networks to mentor students. Research students are encouraged to use their own research to get involved in professional meetings and join research networks and to develop the profile and CV necessary for a successful career.

Our recent and forthcoming publications include monographs on: population geography, rural regeneration, post-colonial lifewords and archipelagos of care as well as numerous journal articles. 

We are currently supervising research students working in a diverse range of areas including the international impacts of migration on rural areas, mobility challenges in the rural-urban fringe, migration and settlement responses to climate change in Africa, young people’s wellbeing and autotelic practices, intergenerational mobility, modelling agri-tourism, creative spaces and plastic waste and the meanings of cosmopolitan identities.