Research
Overview
The word ‘geography’ translates as ‘earth-writing’. However human geographers have focused their attention almost entirely on the terrestrial or landed parts of the earth — cities, towns, streets, homes — at the cost of studying the two-thirds of the earth which is water – the maritime world.
Over the past decade geographers have been moving their studies beyond the shoreline, taking the social, cultural and political questions they ask about landed life, to sea. My research is situated within this disciplinary shift, which seeks to take water worlds seriously. I have published widely in this area including the books 'Water worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean (2014, reprinted in paperback 2016, with Jon Anderson) and 'The Mobilities of Ships' (2015, with Anyaa Anim-Addo and William Hasty).
Ocean law and governance
My major research to date has interrogated the use of the sea as a space of politics beyond state regulation (funded by an ESRC doctoral award at Royal Holloway, University of London, 2007-2011). This work focused primarily on the illicit activities of North Sea radio pirates. I am currently working on a series of new projects in this area:
1) Ocean governance for sustainability: Challenges, options and the role of science: I am currently the UK representative on a COST Action network grant funded as part of the EU Horizon 2020 Programme (PI Professor Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Bremen University, Germany). This project focuses on building cross-European conversation regarding the most pressing issues currently facing the world oceans. This project runs from 2016-2020.
2) Invisible infrastructure: maritime motorways and the making of global mobilities: I am currently working on a project that seeks to investigate the invisible infrastructures that underscore the navigation and routing of cargo vessels. Tracing the contested trans-national formulation and complex daily operation of maritime motorways, this project reveals the neglected history and contemporary workings of logistics flows vital to society and the economy. This project is funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and runs from 2016-2017.
3) Ungrounded Territories: I am currently working with colleagues Professor Phil Steinberg and Dr Kate Coddington (Durham University, UK) and Professor Elaine Stratford (University of Tasmania, Australia) on a project that seeks to 'unground' geopolitics from its landed bias. This research explores the various ways in which politics plays out in other, dynamic, geophysical spaces aside from 'solid' land. It asks how politics is reformed and negotiated in aerial spaces, at sea, underground, in icy environments, and so on. This project will culminate in the book 'Territory beyond terra' (to be published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
Historical geographies of ocean space
Much of my work is historical in focus, seeking to question how past oceanic events can help us understand contemporary concerns. To date my research has explored this interest in relation to the case study of offshore radio piracy questioning how historical transgressions led to a change in the law of the sea. I am currently completing a project concerned with how 'transgressive' populations are governed at sea through state-sponsored punitive regimes (a collaborative project with Dr Jennifer Turner, University of Liverpool, UK). 'Geographies of the Convict Ship: (Im)mobilising Carceral Experiences at Sea' focuses on the convict ships that transported individuals to colonies in American and Australia. This collaborative project brings together two areas of expertise: the geographies of maritime space and spatialities of penal history. In particular, it seeks to ask how regimes related to the mobilities of convicts created systems of carceral control. This project chimes with broader, current concerns over the management of populations moving via boat. This project has recently culminated in the book 'Carceral mobilites: interrogating movement in incarceration' (Routledge, 2017).
Research grants
Firing-up Industry in the North West: Igniting Elemental Geographies of Fire Protection and Resilience
MANCHESTER GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY (UK)
April 2017 - July 2018
Invisible Infrastructure: maritime motorways and the making of global mobilities
LEVERHULME TRUST (UK)
June 2016 - July 2017