Power, Space, Politics
Power, Space, Politics

Themes
Geography at Newcastle hosts a vibrant and dynamic group of political and international development geographers who are part of the PSP research cluster. Through our research we examine expressions of political power across space at a range of scales, from the international and national to the intimate, and with reference to a range of global contexts.
Research undertaken by staff within the PSP cluster makes leading contributions to academic debates and to theoretical and empirical development, employs a diverse range of methodologies, and has positive societal impacts around the following areas of political geography:
Staff
Our research group staff have significant experience and expertise in analysis of power and politics in relation to space.
StaffList: Power, Space, Politics
Dr Matt Benwell
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography
Email: matthew.benwell@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 3935
Dr Alice Cree
Research Fellow
Professor Peter Hopkins
Professor of Social Geography
Email: peter.hopkins@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: (0191) 208 3924
Dr Neil Jenkings
Senior Research Associate
Email: neil.jenkings@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)191 208 3806
Dr Craig Jones
Lecturer in Political Geography
Email: craig.jones@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: 0191 208 3960
Dr Robert Shaw
Senior Lecturer
Email: robert.shaw2@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 3918
Dr Kathryn Manzo
Senior Lecturer
Email: kate.manzo@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6454
Dr Nick Megoran
Reader in Political Geography
Email: nick.megoran@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6450
Professor Rachel Pain
Professor of Human Geography
Email: rachel.pain@ncl.ac.uk
Dr Raksha Pande
Senior Lecturer
Email: raksha.pande@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)191 208 3557
Dr Silvia Pasquetti
Lecturer in Sociology
Email: silvia.pasquetti@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 5817
Dr Jonathan Pugh
Reader in Island Studies
Email: jonathan.pugh@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6425
Dr Alison Williams
Reader in Political Geography
Email: alison.williams1@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 8489
Dr Astrid Wood
Lecturer in Economic Geography
Email: astrid.wood@ncl.ac.uk
Professor Rachel Woodward
Professor of Human Geography
Email: rachel.woodward@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 6434
Teaching
Staff within the PSP cluster contribute to both the undergraduate and postgraduate Geography programmes at Newcastle:
Undergraduate:
Modules include:
- Interconnected World
- Contemporary Human Geography of the UK
- Political Geography
- Exploring Everyday Political Geographies in a Divided City: Cyprus field class
- Citizenship in a Global City: Hong Kong field class
- Migration, Belonging and Everyday Geopolitics: Contested Geographies of New York City
- Aerial Geographies
- Development and Globalisation
- Geographies of Film, Representation and Critical Spectatorship
- Geopolitics; Humanitarianism: Representation, Intervention and Rescue
- Militarism: Space and Society
- Participatory Research and Development
- Caribbean Societies
- Cities of the Global South
Postgraduate:
Political Geography modules on the MA in Human Geography (Research); Doctoral research students (PhDs).
Postgraduates' Projects
Our postgraduates are working on a wide variety of power, space, politics subjects. These range from women's political participation in trade unions in Chile to securing livelihoods in Peru through fair trade.
Name | Topic |
---|---|
Eleojo Abubakar | The Socio-Spatial Coverage and Inequality of Healthcare Services in Nigeria |
Paul Barber | |
Daniel Barwick | The Black Lives Matter Movement: Transnational Activism and the Role of Neo-Liberal Urbanism. |
Religion, migration and the (post)secular city: politics and poetics of migrant-worker Christians in post-reform Shenzhen, China | |
Panayiotis Hadjipavlis | The Peculiarities of Cyprus' Airspace - Implications for Modern State Sovereignty |
Matthew Hanchard | Anchoring securities and mobilities: towards a digital sociology of maps |
Joe Herbert | Between crisis and transformation: exploring the agency of young green activists in an era of socio-ecological upheaval |
Nathar Iqbal | Exploring everyday social and political geographies and encounters of non-heterosexual Muslims in the UK |
Matthew Kearns | Military masculinities and recruitment practices in the British Armed Forces |
Hannah Lyons | Assembling the nation: spatialising young, religious American's affective experiences of the nation, fear and danger in the everyday |
Stefan Rzedzian | Indigenous Empowerment, Extractive Industries and the Rights of Nature: Assessing Ecuador's "Revolutionary" Political Framework |
Lexy Seedhouse | Be(com)ing Indigenous in the Time of Extraction: (Re)articulating Identities in the Context of Peru’s Ley de Consulta Previa. |
Lauren Tibble | Playing the Aerial: Storytelling, Spirits and the Sky |
Andrea Wilkinson | Climate Change and Fairtrade Agriculture – Securing Livelihoods in Peru |
Isabel Williams | Cartographies of Heritage: Mapping the Interpretations of Landscape |
Publications
- Pinkerton, A and Benwell MC. Heritage, strategic narratives, and the making of geopolitical pasts, presents and futures at Europa Point, Gibraltar. Political Geography, 2017, epub ahead of print
- Benwell MC. Argentine territorial nationalism in the South Atlantic and Antarctica. In: Dodds, K; Hemmings, AD; Roberts, P, ed. Handbook on the Politics of Antarctica. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017, pp.540-554.
- Benwell MC. Going Underground: Banal Nationalism and Subterranean Elements in Argentina’s Falklands/Malvinas Claim. Geopolitics 2017, epub ahead of print.
- Benwell MC. Connecting ontological (in)securities and generation through the everyday and emotional geopolitics of Falkland Islanders. Social & Cultural Geography 2017, (ePub ahead of Print).
- Benwell MC, Núñez A, Amigo C. Flagging the nations: citizen’s active engagements with everyday nationalism in Patagonia, Chile. Area 2018, (ePub ahead of Print).
- Hopkins P, Hörschelmann K, Benwell M, Studemeyer C. Young people's everyday landscapes of security and insecurity. Social and Cultural Geography 2018, ePub ahead of print.
- Núñez A, Baeza B, Benwell MC. Cuando la nación queda lejos: fronteras cotidianas en el paso Lago Verde (Aysén-Chile) - Aldea Las Pampas (Chubut-Argentina). Revista de Geografía Norte Grande 2017, 66, 97-116.
- Gasel A, Benwell MC. Memorias, cotidianeidad y territorios: Malvinas en las escuelas secundarias argentinas. Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Sociales 2017, 8(1), 88-107.
- Manzo K. The usefulness of climate change films. Geoforum 2017, 84, 88-94.
- Megoran, N. (2017) Nationalism in Central Asia: A biography of the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan Boundary, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press.
- Megoran, N. (2017) Warlike Christians in an Age of Violence, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock
- Megoran, N. (2017) Martin Luther King in the UK: A resource pack for teachers in key stages 2,3 & 4, Newcastle: Martin Luther King Peace Committee.
- Khamidov A, Megoran N, Heathershaw J. Bottom-up peacekeeping in southern Kyrgyzstan: how local actors managed to prevent the spread of violence from Osh/Jalal-Abad to Aravan, June 2010. Nationalities Papers 2017, Epub ahead of print.
- Pasquetti, Silvia and Giovanni, Picker. 2017. "Confined Informality: Global Margins, Statecraft, and Urban Life". International Sociology, 32, 4 (special issue).
- Behr EH, Megoran NWS, Carnaffan J. Peace education, militarism and neo-liberalism: conceptual reflections with empirical findings from the UK. Journal of Peace Education 2017, epub ahead of print.
- Foster Russell, Megoran Nick, Dunn Michael. Towards a geopolitics of atheism: Critical geopolitics post the ‘War on Terror’. Political Geography 2017, 60, 179-189.
- Megoran N. Warlike Christians in An Age of Violence: The Evangelical Case Against War and for Gospel Peace. USA: Wipf & Stock, 2017.
- Chander, D and Pugh, J (2018) ‘Islands of Relationality and Resilience: the shifting stakes of the Anthropocene, special section in Area on ‘Contemporary debates in Island Studies’ e-put ahead of print https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/area.12459
- Pugh, J (2018) ‘Relationality and island studies in the Anthropocene’, Island Studies Journal, 13(2), 93-110, https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.48
- Pugh J and Grove, K. (2017) Assemblage, Transverality and Participation in the Neoliberal University, EPD: society and space, 35, 6, 1134–1152.
- Pugh, J. (with The Analogue University) (2017) Academic identities in the managed university: Neoliberalism and resistance at Newcastle University, UK, Australian University Review, 59, 2, 23-36.
- Pugh J. (with The Analogue University) (2017) Control, resistance and the ‘Data University’: towards a third wave critique. Antipode https://antipodefoundation.org/2017/03/31/control-resistance-and-the-data-university/
- Pugh J. (2017) A sceptical approach to ‘the everyday’: Relating Stanley Cavell and Human Geography. Geoforum, 79, 36-45.
- Pugh, J. (2017). Postcolonial development, (non) sovereignty and affect: living on in the wake of Caribbean political independence. Antipode, 49(4), 867-882.
- Pugh, J. (accepted, forthcoming) Resilience and Islands. In Fassin, D. Das, V. (eds) Words and Worlds: a lexicon for dark times, Princeton University Press.
- Pugh. J. (accepted) A phenomenology of archipelagos: from thinking with to within the archipelago. In: Stephens, M. and Martínez-San Miguel, Y. Anthology: Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations.
- Grove K, and Pugh J. (2018) Adaptation Machines or the biopolitics of adaptation. In Lawrence J, Bohland J, Davoudi S, Knox P, (eds) The Resilience Machine, London and New York: Routledge. chapter 7, pp 110-125.
- Pugh J. (2017) Resilience as New Political Reality. In: Butler R. W. (ed) Resilience and Tourism. CABI: Wallington, Oxfordshire, chapter 16, pp 206-215.
- Pugh, J (2018) Review of Michael Wiedorn, Think like an archipelago: paradox in the work of Édouard Glissant, Islands Studies Journal, 13 (2), pg 211-213.
- Pugh, J. (2017) Review of Roberts. B.R. and Stephens M.A. ‘Archipelagic American studies’, Duke University Press, Durham and London. Review in Island Studies Journal (2017), 12 (2) 329-330.
- Pugh J. (2017) Review of Crane, R and Fletcher, L Island Genres, Genre Islands: conceptualisation and representation in popular fiction. Rowman and Littlefield: London and New York. Review in Island Studies Journal (2017) 12 (1) 255-256).
- Pugh J. (2017), Review of Crane, R. and Fletcher, L (2017) Island Genres, Genre Islands: conceptualisation and representation in popular fiction. Rowman and Littlefield: London and New York. Cultural Geographies, 24(4), 255-256.
- Williams, AJ. Vertical: the city from satellites to bunkers, Island Studies Journal, 12(2): 331-334.
- Williams AJ. The Hidenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology
- Williams AJ. Aircraft carriers and the capacity to mobilise US power across the Pacific, 1919–1929. Journal of Historical Geography 2017, 58, 71-81.
- Woodward R, Jenkings KN, Williams A. Militarisation, universities and the university armed service units. Political Geography 2017, 60, 203-212.
- Williams AJ. The Empire's Edge: Militarization, Resistance, and Transcending Hegemony in the Pacific (Book Review). Geographical Review 2017, 107(2), e19-e23.
- Woodward R, Duncanson C. An introduction to gender and the military. In: Rachel Woodward and Claire Duncanson, ed. The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military. London: Palgrave, 2017, pp.pp.1-20.
- Woodward R, Duncanson C, Jenkings KN. Gender and military memoirs. In: Rachel Woodward and Claire Duncanson, ed. The Palgrave International Handbook of Gender and the Military. London: Palgrave, 2017, pp.525-542.
- Merriman P, Peters K, Adey P, Cresswell T, Forsyth I, Woodward R. Interventions on military mobilities. Political Geography 2017, 56, 44-52.
- Woodward R. Military geography. In: The International Encyclopedia of Geography. Oxford: John Wylie & Sons, 2017.
- Jenkings KN, Woodward R. Serving in Troubled Times: British Military Personnel’s memories and accounts of service in Northern Ireland. In: Dawson G; Dover J; Hopkins S, ed. Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain: Impacts, Engagements, Legacies and Memories. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017, pp.91-107.
- Jenkings KN, Woodward R. Serving in troubled times: British military personnel's memories and accounts of service in Northern Ireland. In: Dawson, G., Dover, J. and Hopkins, S, ed. The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain: Impacts, Engagements, Legacies and Memories. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017, pp.pp.92-107.