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Staff Profile

Olivia Mason

Research Associate

  • Email: olivia.mason2@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Geography Politics and Sociology
    Henry Daysh Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
    NE1 7RU
Background

I am currently a Research Associate in Geography at Newcastle University and PI of an ESRC New Investigator Grant entitled 'A cultural politics of nature reserves'. Prior to this I was employed as a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Glasgow, as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography at Newcastle University, and as a Lecturer in Political Geography also at Newcastle. I have a PhD in Human Geography from Durham University, a BA in Human Geography from Newcastle University, and a MRes in Geography from Glasgow University. I have eight years of teaching experience in higher education and I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

Research

My research sits at the interface of cultural, environmental, and political geography, and explores mobility politics and resource colonialism with a focus in the Middle East and North Africa.

My current research covers three main areas.

1.     Cultural politics of nature reserves in Jordan

This research is currently funded by an ESRC New Investigator Grant for a 2 year project entitled 'A cultural politics of nature reserves: resource tensions, state-formation, and Bedouin in Jordan'. This project focuses on three nature reserves/protected areas in Jordan to understand the relationships between postcolonial nationalism, resource scarcity, and community environment engagements. A combination of archival work and participatory methods with local communities in these areas, including a participatory film, will enable this project to provide a historical and contemporary understanding of resource scarcity and environmentalism in Jordan. Work connected to this project on human-animal encounters has been published in GeoHumanities.

2.     Mobility politics

My interest in mobility politics spans across several but connected aspects of my work. First, how mobile methods can re-narrate terms central to political geography such as borders and territory beyond state centric understandings. Second, how are mobile practices such as walking shaped by situated politics and how can we move beyond Eurocentric accounts of mobility in Geography. Third, how are infrastructures of movement a means to understand contested and connected colonial mobilities and politics. These interests have resulted in published papers in Political Geography and Cultural Geography.

3. The politics of knowledge production in higher education

My research is also interested in how the increasing neoliberalism of academia is shaping the politics of who can produce knowledge and how that knowledge is produced. This work has resulted in co-written publications addressing the impact of casualisation and precarity on early career researchers and how neoliberalism is shaping the experiences of what it means to be a geographer.


Teaching

I have over 8 years undergraduate and postgraduate teaching experience across a variety of topics and subjects including political geography, political ecology and the environment, the Middle East, research methods, cultural politics, and biopolitics. I take a research-based approach in my teaching by introducing students to real-world issues to offer a clear, practical, and applied route into theoretical discussions.


Modules I have taught at Newcastle University and the University of Glasgow include:


Undergraduate

Geographical Skills (Newcastle): Seminar leader (1st year)

Interconnected World (Newcastle): Lecturer and seminar leader (1st year)

Contemporary Human Geography of the UK (Newcastle): Lecturer (1st year)

Geographical Analysis (Newcastle): Seminar leader (1st year)

Doing Human Geography Research (Newcastle): Seminar leader (1st year)

Political Geography (Newcastle): Module leader and lecturer (2nd year)

Geopolitics (Newcastle): Module leader and lecturer (final year)

Geography 1 (Glasgow): Lecturer (1st year)

Population Geography (Glasgow): Module leader (honours level)

Research skills (Glasgow): Lecturer (honours level)

Conceptualising Human Geography (Glasgow): Seminar leader (honours level)

Geographical Thought (Glasgow): Seminar leader (honours level)

Personal tutor (Newcastle).

Undergraduate dissertation supervisor (Glasgow and Newcastle).


Postgraduate

Earth Futures MSc (Glasgow): Lecturer and dissertation supervisor

Human Geography Research MA (Newcastle): Lecturer


Undergraduate Fieldtrips

Fieldwork at Home (Newcastle): Module leader (2nd year)

Exploring Everyday Political Geographies in a Divided City: Nicosia (Newcastle): Co-module leader and lecturer (2nd year)

Inverness Fieldtrip (Glasgow): Co-module leader (2nd year)

Publications