Background

I joined the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology in 2019 as a NUAcT Research Fellow. Before joining Newcastle I held faculty positions at the University of Oulu in Finland and Northumbria University. At Oulu I worked on RELATE, an Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence focused on the territorial politics of bordering, identities and transnationalisation. At Northumbria I worked in the Centre for International Development in the Department of Social Science. I completed my post-graduate studies at University College London and King's College London

Research interests

My research is orientated around the theme ‘a critical geopolitics of development’ and is focused on analyses of military occupation and ethical inquiry in geographical research. I work primarily in Palestine where I collaborate with local academic partners and NGOs to document and better understand life in the context of occupation. On ethics, I have given talks and written on research practice and positionality in fieldwork settings in the ‘global South’. I have worked on and led projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and British Academy. 

Please contact me for research collaboration or post-graduate supervision, and also for questions about the NUAcT scheme.

I teach on the undergraduate modules

GEO1010 Interconnected World: Introduction to Human Geography

GEO2103 Development & Globalisation

GEO3102 Geopolitics

For prospective doctoral study and applications for ESRC (and AHRC) funding, please write to me directly. I currently supervise the following PhD candidates:

Ishraq Othman

Zena Agha (from January 2021)

• Griffiths M, Joronen M. Governmentalizing Palestinian futures: uncertainty, anticipation, possibility. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 2021, epub ahead of print.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Women and checkpoints in Palestine. Security Dialogue 2020, ePub ahead of print.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Women’s Lives Beyond the Checkpoint in Palestine. Antipode 2020, 52(4), 1104-1121.
• Griffiths M, Joronen M. Marriage under occupation: Israel’s spousal visa restrictions in the West Bank. Gender, Place & Culture 2019, 26(2), 153-172.
• Joronen M, Griffiths M. The affective politics of precarity: home demolitions in the occupied West Bank. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2019, 37(3), 561-576.
• Baker K, Eichhorn M, Griffiths M. Decolonising field ecology. Biotropica 2019, 51(3), 288-292.
• Eichhorn M, Baker K, Griffiths M. Steps towards decolonising biogeography. Frontiers of Biogeography 2020, 12(1), e44795.
• Griffiths M, Baker K. Decolonising the spaces of geographical knowledge production: the RGS‐IBG at Kensington Gore. Area 2020, ePub ahead of print.
• Joronen M, Griffiths M. The moment to come: geographies of hope in the hyperprecarious sites of occupied Palestine. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 101 2019, 101(2), 69-83.
• Griffiths M. For speaking against silence: Spivak’s subaltern ethics in the field. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2018, 43(2), 299-311.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Biopolitics and Checkpoint 300 in Occupied Palestine: Bodies, Affect, Discipline. Political Geography 2018, 65, 17-25.
• Griffiths M. Hope in Hebron: the political affects of activism in a strangled city. Antipode 2017, 49(3), 617-635.
• Griffiths M. From heterogeneous worlds: western privilege, class and positionality in the South. Area 2017, 49(1), 2-8.
• Griffiths M. Writing the body, writing Others: a story of transcendence and potential in volunteering for development. Geographical Journal 2018, 184(2), 115-124.
• Baillie Smith M, Laurie N, Griffiths M. South-South volunteering and development. The Geographical Journal 2018, 184(2), 158-168.
• Griffiths M, Brown E. Embodied experiences in international volunteering: power-body relations and performative ontologies. Social & Cultural Geography 2017, 18(5), 665-682.
• Griffiths M. “It’s all bollocks!” and other critical standpoints on the UK Government’s vision of global citizenship. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 2017, 24(4), 398-416.
• Griffiths M. I’ve got goose bumps just talking about it!: Affective life on neoliberalized volunteering programmes. Tourist Studies 2015, 15(2), 205-221.
• Griffiths M. The affective spaces of global civil society and why they matter. Emotion, Space and Society 2014, 11, 89-95.