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Staff Profile

Professor Jen Bagelman

Professor in Human Geography, Deputy Director for the Institute for Social Science

Background

I was born on Dene territories (Yellowknife, Northwest Territories), and grew up on Coast Salish territories on Vancouver Island, where I completed my BA and MA at the University of Victoria. After completing my PhD at the Open University, I taught at Durham University and the University of Exeter. I am now Professor in Geography and Director of Research at Newcastle University.


My research sits at the intersections of mobility and displacement, environmental change, public health, reproduction and community planning. I work with Inuit, Indigenous, migrant and refugee communities to understand how people sustain collective life amid colonial and environmental harms. Public health is a connecting strand across my research. It links my work on climate-related wellness, food security, and Indigenous and Inuit food systems with research on maternal care, healthcare access, and pathways for displaced medical professionals.


I bring a community-planning orientation to these questions. Working through long-term partnerships, I co-design creative and participatory research that supports locally grounded action and contributes to political, planning and policy change.


Intersecting research specialisms:

  • Migration, displacement and sanctuary
  • Public health, wellbeing and reproductive geographies, including maternal health, mental health and food security
  • Environmental and climate justice
  • Community-led planning, Indigenous and Inuit food systems, and climate action
  • Creative and participatory methods for political, planning and policy change


Research

Climate change, wellness and Indigenous futures

A major strand of my research examines how Inuit communities respond to relocation, displacement and environmental change across Inuit Nunangat. I co-lead the three-year POLAR Knowledge Canada and UKRI NERC-funded project Carving out Climate Testimony. The project brings Inuit youth together with UK and Canadian collaborators to explore how 'unikkausivut'—Inuit forms of storytelling—articulate relationships among climate change, displacement and wellness. It is inspired and led by the work Inuit youth are already undertaking within their communities.

I extend this research through ArcticRoutes, a New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) project examining the interconnected effects of climate change, mobility, wellness and food security across Inuit Nunangat. This work considers food not only as a source of nutrition, but also as a foundation for health, cultural continuity, community connection and self-determination.

My wider public-health research includes work to revitalise Indigenous and Inuit food systems. Through the Food as Medicine project on Lekwungen territories and ArcticRoutes in Inuit Nunangat, I explore how climate change and colonial systems affect access to food, while supporting community-led efforts to strengthen culturally grounded food practices and futures.

This research builds on long-standing collaborations with diverse Indigenous communities. These include my involvement in the five-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded (SSHRC) Seascape Stories project, which documented how energy developments disrupt Indigenous relationships with—and sovereignty over—land and water. The project foregrounded Indigenous marine epistemologies both as sources of critique and as foundations for more just environmental and planning futures.


Migration, sanctuary and public health

A second strand of my research examines how climate change, conflict and border regimes produce conditions of displacement. I am particularly interested in how practices of sanctuary challenge—and can sometimes inadvertently reproduce—the hostile treatment of refugees and other displaced people.

My book Sanctuary City: A Suspended State and a forthcoming co-authored book with Nick Gill, to be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, explore these dynamics. I am also a Co-Investigator on the ESRC-funded RefugeesCare project, working with NHS partners to examine retraining, accreditation and employment pathways for refugee doctors and other displaced medical professionals in the UK.

Beyond Global North sanctuary movements, my work addresses maternal health and birthing across borders in Kenya. I study how women living in the Dadaab refugee camps mobilise practices of sanctuary to establish alternative networks of maternal care. Through the GCRF–UKRI-funded Migrant Mothers: Digital Health Network, scholars from Kenyatta University and Newcastle University work alongside UNHCR practitioners and refugee midwives to understand the diverse experiences of pregnancy, birth and maternal healthcare across borders. Across these projects, I approach displacement as a lived and intersectional condition shaped by overlapping histories of colonialism, environmental harm and unequal access to healthcare—not as a discrete issue or single event.


Community-led planning and creative practice

Community planning is both a focus of my research and a way of working. I collaborate with diverse communities to identify priorities, co-design research and translate collective knowledge into practical interventions, public conversations and policy change. Creative methods—including film, virtual reality, storytelling and body mapping—help knowledge travel between communities, policymakers and public institutions.

Within Newcastle University, I serve as Director of Research and have served as Co-Director of the Institute for Social Science, where I've worked to elevate ambitious and engaged social-science research. I also co-lead the Migrations Collective, which connects academic and non-academic partners to think and work together towards migrant justice.

Across all my roles, I enjoy supporting early-career researchers and helping them develop their ambitions. I have mentored successful applications to schemes including Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, ESRC and SSHRC, and I remain deeply committed to fostering collaborative, and inclusive research environments.

Beyond the university, I volunteer with sanctuary and community-planning initiatives, including City Seams. With my sister, Carly, I also run the non-profit organisation Glean. Outside work, I can usually be found crafting, surfing, practising yoga or being walked by my dog.


Teaching

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, planners and policymakers 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.

Publications