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

I teach on the undergraduate modules

GEO1010 Interconnected World: Introduction to Human Geography

GEO2103 Development & Globalisation

GEO3099 Geography Dissertation

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 (NUAcT-funded): Life and death at Erez Checkpoint in Gaza, Palestine

Zena Agha (ESRC-funded): Colonial Cartography in Palestine-Israel and the Decolonising Potential of Counter-Maps

Daoud Ghoul (ESRC-funded): Emerging geographies of Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance in East Jerusalem

Ichamati Mousamputri (ESRC-funded): Spaces of informal militarism: Analysing violence, resistance, and militarism in contemporary India

Anas Ismail (ESRC-funded): Children’s healthcare in Gaza: therapeutic geographies, (im)mobility and (in)capacity in a besieged territory

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.

• Griffiths M, Brooks A. A Relational Comparison: The Gendered Effects of Cross-Border Work in Palestine within a Global Frame. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 2022, epub ahead of print.
• Griffiths M. Thanato-geographies of Palestine and the possibility of politics. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 2022. In Press.
• Griffiths M. The geontological time-spaces of late modern war. Progress in Human Geography 2022, 46(2), 282-298.
• Griffiths M, Joronen M. Governmentalizing Palestinian futures: uncertainty, anticipation, possibility. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 2021, 103(4), 352-366.
• Joronen M, Tawil-Souri H, Amir M, Griffiths M. Palestinian Futures: Anticipation, Imagination, Embodiments. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 2021, 103(4), 277-282.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Women and checkpoints in Palestine. Security Dialogue 2021, 52(3), 249-265.
• Griffiths M, Baker K. Decolonising the spaces of geographical knowledge production: the RGS‐IBG at Kensington Gore. Area 2020, 52(2), 455-458.
• Eichhorn M, Baker K, Griffiths M. Steps towards decolonising biogeography. Frontiers of Biogeography 2020, 12(1), e44795.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Women’s Lives Beyond the Checkpoint in Palestine. Antipode 2020, 52(4), 1104-1121.
• Baker K, Eichhorn M, Griffiths M. Decolonising field ecology. Biotropica 2019, 51(3), 288-292.
• 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.
• 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, Repo J. Biopolitics and Checkpoint 300 in Occupied Palestine: Bodies, Affect, Discipline. Political Geography 2018, 65, 17-25.
• 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.
• Baillie Smith M, Laurie N, Griffiths M. South-South volunteering and development. The Geographical Journal 2018, 184(2), 158-168.
• Griffiths M. Writing the body, writing Others: a story of transcendence and potential in volunteering for development. Geographical Journal 2018, 184(2), 115-124.
• 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, Brown E. Embodied experiences in international volunteering: power-body relations and performative ontologies. Social & Cultural Geography 2017, 18(5), 665-682.
• Griffiths M. From heterogeneous worlds: western privilege, class and positionality in the South. Area 2017, 49(1), 2-8.
• Griffiths M. Hope in Hebron: the political affects of activism in a strangled city. Antipode 2017, 49(3), 617-635.
• 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.