Staff Profile
Dr Jen Bagelman
Reader in Human Geography Deputy Director for the Institute for Social Science
- Email: jen.bagelman@ncl.ac.uk
I grew up on Coast Salish territories (Vancouver Island, Canada) where I completed my BA and MA at the University of Victoria. After finishing my PhD at the Open University, I taught at both Durham University and Exeter University. I am now based at Newcastle, as Reader in Geography & Deputy Director for the Institute of Social Science.
Broad research specialisms:
- Migration & displacement
- Reproductive geographies
- Anticolonial environmental justice
- Creative geographies (experimenting with cookbooks, picturebooks, zines...)
My academic and activist work critically examines how displacement is produced through exclusionary citizenship and bordering practices. I am also deeply interested in how people mobilize to enact more loving geopolitics. I explore these questions through two main streams of research.
The first stream of my research explores how sanctuary movements challenge (and sometimes inadvertently reproduce) the hostile treatment of refugees and other displaced peoples. My recently published book, Sanctuary City: A Suspended State, explores this topic.
Expanding on this work, I have led a GCRF-supported project entitled 'Birthing at the Borders' exploring how women with precarious status living in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camps mobilize 'sanctuary' to establish alternative networks of maternal care. Following on this project, I led a GCRF-UKRI Network Grant entitled Migrant Mothers: Digital Health Network which brings together scholars and practitioners from Newcastle University, Kenyatta University, UNHCR and refugee midwives to consider how digital tools might be developed to support maternal care in camps.
The second stream of my research addresses the settler colonial logics that intrude into the health and wellbeing of Indigenous communities. Along with collaborators, I have recently completed a 5-year SSHRC project Seascape Stories which explored the impacts of proposed energy development projects on Indigenous coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest of Canada. Building on this work, I am now co-leading a new POLAR/UKRI-funded project 'Carving out Climate Testimony' within Inuit Nunangat. Alongside Inuit communities and UK-Canadian collaborators (academics/artists/activists) we are exploring youth-led environmental activism in Nunangat, addressing intersections between climate and mental health.
Within the university, I am a member both 'Power, Space, Politics' and 'Geographies of Social Change' research groups. I am also the Deputy Director for the Institute for Social Science.
Beyond the university, I volunteer in my community to support sanctuary. With my sister, Carly, I also run a non-profit organization called Glean, which seeks to nourish more equitable foodscapes. When not working I'm crafting, surfing, yoga-ing or being walked by my hyper dog.
I am passionate about working with students as I see education as a powerful catalyst for generative change. I have written on creative pedagogy and, in keeping with a ‘service-led’ teaching model I aim to make coursework relevant to and useful for communities that extend beyond the classroom. In the past my students have created beautiful community maps that have been used by NGOS and urban designers and zines that have informed campus policies to embed diversity and ensure more sustainable food practices.
I warmly welcome the opportunity to work with students interested in the themes outlined on my research page.
- Gill N, Riding J, Kirsi P, Bagelman J. Geographies of Welcome: Engagements with 'ordinary' hospitality. Hospitality & Society 2022, 12(2), 123-143.
- Bagelman J. The Home Office: from Border to Climate Control?. The Independent, 2022. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/opinion/climate-control-home-office-fires-heatwaves-b2153436.html. In Preparation.
- Bagelman J, Gitome J. Birthing across borders: ‘Contracting’ reproductive geographies. Dialogues in Human Geography 2021, 1(3), 352-373.
- Bagelman J, Gitome J. Reproductive geography: Reproducing whiteness?. Dialogues in Human Geography 2021, 11(3), 391-394.
- Bagelman J, Mwoma T, Kituku J, Gitome J, Kahumbi N, Ndegwa P, Muthoni M. Role of traditional birth attendants in providing pre and postnatal care to mothers in refugee camps: a case of Ifo Camp Dadaab Kenya. International Journal of Pregnancy & Child Birth 2021, 7(3), 58-62.
- Bagelman J. Zines beyond a means: crafting new research process. Fennia 2021, 199(1), 133-135.
- Schmid-Scott A, Marshall E, Gill N, Bagelman J. Rural Geographies of Refugee Activism: The expanding spaces of sanctuary in the UK. Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 2020, 36(2&3), 137-160.
- Cook I, Bagelman J. Enacting public geographies. In: Kobayashi, A, ed. International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, 2019.
- Bagelman J. Sanctuary and Unsettling "the" Refugee Crisis. In: Cecilia Menjívar, Marie Ruiz, and Immanuel Ness, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
- Bagelman J. Sanctuary artivism: expanding geopolitical imaginations. In: Jonathan Darling; Harald Bauder, ed. Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles. Manchester Press, 2019. Submitted.
- Bagelman J, Kovalchuk S. Subterranean Detention and Sanctuary from below: Canada’s Carceral Geographies. Social Sciences 2019, 8(11), 310-324.
- Bagelman J, Cinnamon J. Border enforcement & the university: a conversation. 2018. Available at: https://societyandspace.org/2018/05/29/border-enforcement-the-university-a-conversation/.
- Simpson M, Bagelman J. Decolonizing Urban Political Ecologies: the Production of Nature in Settler Colonial Cities. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 2018, 108(2), 558-568.
- Bagelman J, Cinnamon J. Home Office rules mean non-British academics can be denied right to strike. The Conversation, 2018. Available at: https://theconversation.com/home-office-rules-mean-non-british-academics-can-be-denied-right-to-strike-93156.
- Bagelman J. Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move [Book review]. The AAG Review of Books 2018, 6(3), 169-170.
- Bagelman J. Who hosts a politics of welcome? – commentary to Gill. Fennia 2018, 196(1), 108-110.
- Bagelman J. Cookbooks: A Tool for Engaged Research. GeoHumanities 2017, 3(2), 371-395.
- Squire V, Closs Stephens A, Yuval-Davis D, Bagelman J. Dead Reckoning / Crossing the Med: Thinking and Feeling Migration Differently. 2017.
- Bagelman J, Weibe S. Intimacies of Global Toxins: Exposure and resistance in 'Chemical Valley'. Political Geography 2017, 60, 76-85.
- Tedesco D, Bagelman J. The 'Missing' Politics of Whiteness and Rightful Presence in the Settler Colonial City. Millennium 2017, 45(3), 380-402.
- Bagelman J. Geo-politics of paddling: 'Turning the Tide' on extraction. Citizenship Studies 2016, 20(8), 1012-1037.
- Bagelman J. Wristband IDs mark refugees as less than human. 2016. Available at: https://ricochet.media/en/914/wristband-ids-mark-refugees-as-less-than-human.
- Bagelman J, Bagelman C. ZINES: Crafting change and repurposing the neoliberal university. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 2016, 15(2), 365-392.
- Bagelman J. Blurring the Pipeline: Energizing an account of the Urban. International Political Sociology 2015, 9(1), 101-105.
- Bagelman J. Foucault & the 'Current' Refugee Crisis. OpenDemocracy, 2015. Available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/foucault-and-current-refugee-crisis/.
- Bagelman J, Tedesco D. Introduction. International Political Sociology 2015, 9(1), 90-91.
- Tully J, Bagelman J, Wiebe S. Reflecting on Public Philosophy with Jim Tully. 2015.
- Bagelman J. Sanctuary City: A Suspended State. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
- Wiebe S, Monk D, O'Connor C, Bagelman J. Turning the Tide: a People’s Paddle for the Salish Sea. 2015.
- Bagelman J, Wiebe S. Preventing a Pipeline from Bisecting Canada. New York Times Company, 2014. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-borders-need-to-be-redrawn/preventing-a-pipeline-from-bisecting-canada.
- Bagelman J. Sanctuary: a politics of ease?. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 2013, 38(1), 49-62.
- Squire V, Bagelman J. Taking not waiting: space, temporality and politics in the City of Sanctuary movement. In: Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel, ed. Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012, pp.146-164.
- Bagelman J, Vermilyea J. The Blind-spots of Kantian Hospitality. Borderlands E-Journal 2012, 11(1), 1-15.
- Bagelman J. Die paradoxen Auswirkungen des kanadischen Multikulturalismus auf Diskurse über symbolische Exklusion. In: Arnd-Michael Nohl, Karin Schittenhelm, Oliver Schmidtke, Anja Weiß, ed. Kulturelles Kapital in der Migration: Hochqualifizierte Einwanderer und Einwanderinnen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010, pp.235-244.