Power, Space, Politics
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.
Overview
A world-class group of critical geopolitical and international development geographers whose influential research examines the spatially uneven expressions, operation, and outcomes of political power, politics and the political.
Enlarged through multiple strategic appointments, this research agenda is multi-scalar and spans multiple sites of contemporary and historical political change including: the contemporary Middle East, post-Soviet Europe, Latin America, Antarctica, Falkland Islands, South Africa, and North Africa.
Extending this group’s established work on geopolitical theory and practice, military geographies, and peace, new research explores: conflict and displacement, military occupation, civil-military relationships, healthcare in war zones, and geographies of international law.
This work has been developed through diverse engagement with organisations including: International Committee of the Red Cross, Médicines Sans Frontières, British Army, Royal Air Force, Ministry of Defence, English Heritage, OSCE, World Bank, DFID, FCO, European Centre for Minority Issues, and War Childhood Museum Sarajevo.
Advancing interactional, ethnographic, participatory, and creative arts research methods this work spans four key streams:
The international boundaries that separate states are often sources of disagreement, instability and conflict. Our diverse work ranges from analysis of the experiences of people who live alongside them to analysis of the utilisation of military aircraft to enforce and maintain international boundaries. We undertake research on islands (in the Anthropocene), archipelagos and oceanic geographies to allow further interrogation of the often complex and shifting nature of maritime borders and boundaries
People working on this theme:
Critical geopolitics offers a geographical understanding of international relations. Research by members of the PSP cluster makes unique contributions to this field through exploring: theories and models of development across different global contexts; the embodied and everyday geopolitics of childhood, youth and gender; the interface between international and intimate violence.
People working on this theme include:
Newcastle University is a leading centre for the analysis of the effects of military activities on space, places, landscapes and people. Members of the PSP cluster have undertaken recent work on: analysis of the production of military memoirs; gender issues in the UK military; the geopolitics of UK military airspace; the UK armed forces Reserves; and the use of creative arts practice in understanding military phenomena.
People working on this theme include:
- Neil Jenkings
- Alison Williams
- Craig Jones
- Nick Megoran
- Rachel Woodward
- Alice Cree
Our research aims to better understand the ways in which political power is resisted and how justice and peace are achieved within our political world. These questions are explored through examining: the geopolitics of peace; conflict resolution in the Caribbean; the political strategies of resistance and protest exercised by young people, as well as survivors of violence; the hegemony of neoliberalism and alternative modes of scholarship that are more peaceful and compassionate.
People working on this theme include:
Our research group staff have significant experience and expertise in analysis of power and politics in relation to space.
Our research strengths are also reflected in the teaching offered in our Geography undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Newcastle in modules such as:
Undergraduate:
- 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:
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.
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Name |
Topic |
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Eleojo Abubakar |
The Socio-Spatial Coverage and Inequality of Healthcare Services in Nigeria |
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Paul Barber |
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Daniel Barwick |
The Black Lives Matter Movement: Transnational Activism and the Role of Neo-Liberal Urbanism. |
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Quan Gao |
Religion, migration and the (post)secular city: politics and poetics of migrant-worker Christians in post-reform Shenzhen, China |
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Panayiotis Hadjipavlis |
The Peculiarities of Cyprus' Airspace - Implications for Modern State Sovereignty |
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Matthew Hanchard |
Anchoring securities and mobilities: towards a digital sociology of maps |
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Joe Herbert |
Between crisis and transformation: exploring the agency of young green activists in an era of socio-ecological upheaval |
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Nathar Iqbal |
Exploring everyday social and political geographies and encounters of non-heterosexual Muslims in the UK |
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Matthew Kearns |
Military masculinities and recruitment practices in the British Armed Forces |
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Hannah Lyons |
Assembling the nation: spatialising young, religious American's affective experiences of the nation, fear and danger in the everyday |
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Stefan Rzedzian |
Indigenous Empowerment, Extractive Industries and the Rights of Nature: Assessing Ecuador's "Revolutionary" Political Framework |
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Lexy Seedhouse |
Be(com)ing Indigenous in the Time of Extraction: (Re)articulating Identities in the Context of Peru’s Ley de Consulta Previa. |
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Lauren Tibble |
Playing the Aerial: Storytelling, Spirits and the Sky |
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Andrea Wilkinson |
Climate Change and Fairtrade Agriculture – Securing Livelihoods in Peru |
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Isabel Williams |
Cartographies of Heritage: Mapping the Interpretations of Landscape |
- 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 every day 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.