Staff Profile

After many years working as a chef and co-ordinator within community food and wellbeing projects in Bradford, I began to question how eating-well is framed, comprehended, encountered and enacted.  I moved down south to undertake a MRes in Critical Human Geography at the University of Exeter, before obtaining ESRC funding for my PhD research entitled:  Fat Chance?  Eating-well with margarine, supervised by Prof. Steve Hinchliffe and Prof. Ian Cook. This work engaged 'CoPSE', a novel play-centred methodology, to explore who and what are entangled with the stuff of margarine, why margarine is known and done the way it is, and investigate how such mundane knowledges and practices shape and are shaped by the ways it appears sensible or possible for human and nonhuman communities to live together.

I am now back up north working as Research Associate at Newcastle University. Still exploring bodies, care, wellbeing, and more-than human communities. Since my PhD I have become increasingly interested in the folding of the urban with non-human lives. 

My principal interests lie in developing innovative participatory, creative and ethnographic methodological approaches which ground wider theoretical debates in embodied relationships and performances. Through my research I seek to rehearse practices of wellbeing, understanding, care, and belonging, within and between more-than human communities in urbanised spaces.

Currently exploring more-than human living together with food, microbial life, urban seas, class, ethics, bodies, supply networks and sustainability.

Academic Employment

2022 - present

Coastal Cuisine

Co-I and Researcher Investigator with Mary Watson and Cate Watkinson, Sunderland Glass Centre, Suzy O'Hara Sunderland University, Sarah Campbell, National Trust and FODI, ICOS, ACCANE and Back on the Map, Sunderland.

£6,000 Heritage Lottery (SeaScapes Tyne to Tees)

Oysters!

PI and Research Associate, School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University.

£4,675 Faculty Impact Fund, Newcastle University. With Maggie Roe

Sea Sure: Our Climate Future

Co-PI and Research Associate, School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University.

£30,689.46. QR Policy Fund, Newcastle University. Co-PI Maggie Roe

2021 – present:

Food in the Tyne to Tees Seascape.

Research Associate, School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape, Newcastle University.

Heritage Lottery Fund, PI Maggie Roe.

2020 – present:

Immersed 2: In From the Cold: Exploring embodied well-being and body image in older sea-swimmers, a case study.

PI, Research Associate and Lead Researcher, Geography, Newcastle University, UK.

£4,823 Newcastle University Pioneer Fund, UK.

2019 – present:

Immersed 1: Into the Swim: Well-being in older adults in North Tyneside, a case study. 

Co-I, Research Associate & Lead Researcher, Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences, Newcastle University, UK.

£5,141.08 Newcastle University Social Justice Fund. PI: Dr Simon Woods.

2018 – 2021:

Sustainable Consumption, the Middle Classes and Agri-food Ethics in the Global South (SCArFE).

Research Associate, Geography, Newcastle University, UK.

£584, 900 ESRC. PI: Professor Alex Hughes.

2017 – 2018:

Corporate food retailers, meat supply chains and the responsibilities of tackling antimicrobial resistance.

Research Associate, Geography, Newcastle University, UK.

£174,934 ESRC. PI: Professor Alex Hughes.

2016 – 2017:

Feeding Exeter: Understanding the Exeter Food Network in Practice. 

Researcher-Investigator and Research Assistant, Geography, University of Exeter, UK.

£3,000 ESRC IAA Impact Cultivation Award. PI: Professor Stewart Barr.

2012 – 2017:

Graduate Teaching Assistant, Geography, University of Exeter, UK.

2022-23

Guest Lecture and Seminar: Walking as Method - APL8015

Marking: Conceptualising Landscape, APL8000

2021-22

Guest Lecture and Seminar: Interdisciplinary Teams - Advanced Interdisciplinary Research Design, ESRC SWDTC MRes.

Marking: Conceptualising Landscape, APL8000

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy with a particular interest in creative, collaborative and participatory methods. In addition to planning and delivering sessions both in the classroom and in the field, and at all stages from first year undergraduate through to masters level, my teaching has included convening and facilitating training sessions for PhD researchers.

Along with Dr Holly East at Northumbria University, I convene Geography "WriteClub", structured social writing sessions for staff and PGR's. Please email Holly or myself if you are interested in joining us.

• Zhong S, Hughes A, Crang M, Zeng G, Hocknell S. Fragmentary embeddedness: Challenges for alternative food networks in Guangzhou, China. Journal of Rural Studies 2022, 95, 382-390.
• Hughes A, Roe E, Hocknell S. Food supply chains and the antimicrobial resistance challenge: On the framing, accomplishments and limitations of corporate responsibility. Environment and Planning A: Economy & Space 2021, 53(6), 1373-1390.
• Hopkins P, Newcastle Social Geographies Collective, Pain R, Shaw R, Gao Q, Bonnett A, Jones C, Richardson M, Rzedzian S, Benwell MC, Lin W, McAreavey R, Stenning A, Blazek M, Pande R, Najib K, Finlay R, Nayak A, Ridley G, Mearns G, Bonner-Thompson C, McLaughlin J, Boussalem A, Iqbal N, Heslop J, Jarvis H, Burrows R, Bambra C, Copeland A, Tate S, Campbell E, Thompson M, James A, Raynor R, Cunningham N, Powells G, Herbert J, Hocknell S, ed. Social Geographies: An Introduction. London, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021.
• Hughes A, Hocknell S, Afonso R, Bartholo R, Crang M, Daya S, Doherty B, Fastoso F, Gonzalez-Jimenez H, Kleine D, McEwan C, Vicari S, Zeng G, Anand G, Carvalho C, Coetzee K, Kirby D, Lukas M, Sarayed-Din L, Wang L, Whitehead R, Zhong S. Sustainable Consumption, the Middle Classes, and Agri-food Ethics in Brazil, China, and South Africa: Trends, Practices, and Influences. Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University, 2021.
• Hocknell S. Food and More-than-human Geographies. In: Newcastle Social Geographies Collective, ed. Social Geographies: An introduction. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020.
• Hocknell S, MacAllister L. Matters of Fat: distaste, gut feelings and fatty materialities. In: Falconer E, ed. Space, Taste and Affect: Atmospheres That Shape the Way We Eat. London: Routledge, 2020.
• Hocknell S. CoPSE: a methodological intervention towards gentle more-than human relations. Area 2019, (ePub ahead of Print).
• Hughes A, Hocknell S, Roe E. Corporate food retailers, meat supply chains and the responsibilities of tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Impact 2019, 2019(1), 17-19.
• Hocknell S, Hughes A, Roe E, Keevil B, Wrigley N, Lowe M. Corporate Food Retailers, Meat Supply Chains, and the Responsibilities of Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance: Stakeholder Report. Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University, 2018.
• Hocknell S. Chewing the Fat: “Unpacking” Distasteful Encounters. Gastronomica 2016, 16(3), 13-18.