Academic staff

Dr David Adams has research interests in urban planning and urban geography.  He has a Geography BSc (2002) from Loughborough University, an MA in Spatial Planning (2008) and a PhD (2014) in planning from Birmingham City University.  He taught planning at Birmingham City University from 2008 until 2017.  In 2015, he became the programme lead for Birmingham City University’s ...

Dr. Rakib is an interdisciplinary scholar with a research focus on technology-oriented urbanisation, infrastructure development and their interconnection with right-wing nationalism. Rakib is a chartered Architect and a Town Planner with extensive knowledge and practical experiences across countries. His research interests sit at the intersection of Urban Planning, Political Economy and ...

Dr. Attuyer's research advances debates in urban geography with a focus on community engagement with the redevelopment of their neighbourhood, neoliberalisation of urban development policies in different geographical contexts , and financialisation. 

Her second area of expertise lies in well-being and the urban environment, with a particular emphasis on how the social and physical ...

Austin is an experienced teacher, researcher and writer who brings a passion for cities and urban life to all aspects of his professional work. He has played a leading role in development of planning education at the University of Birmingham and has established a research profile in the planning and regeneration of city centres and inner cities in Britain, Europe and North America.

Dr Susanne Börner’s research focuses on youth everyday agency, emotions and urban well-being in the context of interconnected urban crises. Susanne is particularly interested in the experiences of those growing up and living ‘at the margins’, such as children and young people as well as multi-generational contexts of knowledge generation. Her Marie Curie Global ...

Julian Clark is Reader in Political Geography at the University of Birmingham. His research informs and extends debates focussed on critical geographical understandings of the state, and the governance of natural resources. In these domains Julian examines questions of how states are materialized and stabilised over space and time, including through geographies of diplomacy; and critical ...

Dr Natasha Cornea’s research sits at the intersections of urban and development geographies, focusing on urban environmental governance and politics in Indian and Zambian cities. Conceptually her research draws on post-structuralist and situated approaches to urban political ecology, the everyday state and everyday governance.

Dr Natasha Cornea is part of the Birmingham ...

Gethin Davison is an interdisciplinary researcher and educator with a background in human geography, planning and urban design. He has published widely in the fields of urban planning, design and housing, and has a particular interest in the governance of design and the relationships between people and place.

Rosie Day is an environmental human geographer interested in various aspects of peoples experience of, and engagement with, the wider environment. Much of her work has been in the area of environmental inequalities and environmental justice where she has developed a particular theme on ageing and environmental issues. She is currently largely focused on research to do with energy ...

Dr. Dilum Dissanayake is an experienced academic with particular interest in transport planning and human Geography. Her passion for educating STEM careers means that she devotes time in developing research careers at Postdoctoral, PhD, as well as Postgraduate and Undergraduate degree levels. Dr Dissanayake’s ambition is to further advance knowledge and skills in transport planning and data ...

Dr Andrea Frank is an urban planning scholar regarded for her work on community engagement in planning as well as researching and advancing planning education and pedagogies particularly in respect to international and community-engaged (socially responsible) co-learning. She is regularly invited as keynote speaker on education for spatial planning issues.

Dr Fregonese is a political geographer with a background in Middle Eastern Studies. Her research is about the relations between geopolitics, security and urban space, and how geopolitical situations and events impact on the everyday life of cities, their built environment and residents. 

Charles is a Geographer and trained planner with research and teaching interests in strategic planning/regional governance, community involvement, housing supply/affordability and planning history. His ESRC-funded doctoral research focused on the Green Belt, England's housing crisis and the planning system and is published in a range of practitioner and academic outlets. Charles' research is now ...

Dr Griffiths is a social scientist, working on mobility and immigration enforcement in the UK. She has been a Birmingham Fellow at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences since February 2018, after completing an ESRC Future Research Leaders grant at the University of Bristol.

Sophie Hadfield-Hill is a Professor in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. Principally a Children’s Geographer, Sophie’s expertise is children and young people’s everyday experiences of urban change in diverse contexts.  Her research portfolio spans young people’s lives in the UK, India and Brazil; she has been Principal and Co-Investigator on numerous ...

Dr Jenkins is a Historical Geographer, with an interest in landscape change and people’s relationship with the past.

Dr Phil Jones is a cultural geographer who focuses on issues related to the city.  His work deals with a number of research areas including urban regeneration, cycling and the arts.  He has a particular interest in research methods, including qualitative GIS, mobile interviewing and arts-based approaches.

Dr Kärg Kama develops critical social science perspectives on natural resources development, specialising in unconventional fossil fuels, at the intersection of political geography, science and technology studies, and economic sociology. Dr Kama currently holds an ESRC Future Research Leaders award to study the scientific and political controversies of shale gas development in Europe. She is ...

Professor Peter Kraftl is best known for his research on children’s geographies, focusing on children and young people’s experiences of and interactions with environmental processes – such as sustainable urban design, environmental resources and pollution. He also publishes on geographies of education and architecture. He is currently national co-lead for the Children, Young ...

Dr Irina Kuznetsova's research expertise includes areas of migration, forced displacement, health, and critical urbanism. Her recent projects focus on social consequences of population displacement in Ukraine, Russia, Rwanda, Nigeria and Japan, including mental health and well-being, and the impact of migration on rural communities.

Alice is a feminist social and cultural geographer, specialising in the field of emotional geographies.

Her doctoral research critically examines the gendered, emotional experiences of expectant fathers across myriad everyday spaces/places (against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic).

Alice’s broader research interests include spatialities of family/parenting (and other intimate ...

Dominique Moran’s research and teaching is in the sub-discipline of carceral geography, a geographical perspective on incarceration. Supported by the ESRC, her research has informed and extended theoretical developments in geography, criminology and prison sociology, whilst interfacing with contemporary debates over hyperincarceration, recidivism and the advance of the punitive state. ...

Pat Noxolo is an award-winning researcher and teacher, whose work brings together the study of international development, culture and in/security, and uses postcolonial, discursive and literary approaches to explore the spatialities of a range of Caribbean and British cultural practices. She has been lead researcher on the Caribbean In/securities and Creativity (CARISCC) research network, funded ...

Jon Oldfield’s research is primarily focussed on an exploration of Russian understandings of physical natural systems. His current research has three main strands: Soviet climate science and its intellectual legacies, the science of geoengineering in the Soviet /Russian contexts, and Russian engagements with the Anthropocene as an empirical and conceptual entity. This research is ...

Jessica Pykett is a social and political geographer with research interests in governance, knowledge practices, policy innovation and political subjectivities.  Her research has focused on affective and emotional techniques of governance, and the influence of neuroscience and behavioural science on public policy and economic theory. Current work is on the intersections of neuroscience and ...

Adam Ramadan is a political geographer with a focus on the Middle East and refugee issues.

Paul Richardson’s research and teaching is at the intersection of political and historical geography, with regional interests in Russia and Eurasia. His research activities focus on national identity, nationalism, borders, sovereignty, and territory, which have been supported by funding from the ESRC, AHRC, British Academy, and Leverhulme Trust. He is author of At the Edge of the Nation: ...

John Round is a socio-economic geographer whose main research interest is concerned with how people/households develop tactics to cope with marginality in all its forms. His PhD examined how senior citizens survive in the Russian far north east city of Magadan in the face of extreme economic marginalization and hostile climatic conditions.  After this he researched the experiences of middle ...

Dr Yuli Shan is an expert in Climate Change and Sustainable Transitions. His interdisciplinary research aims to reveal how human activities affect global and regional climate change. He also seeks alternative low-carbon approaches towards the achievement of climate targets and a net-zero emission society. 

He is a Global Highly Cited Researcher (since 2020) and a Fellow of Royal ...

Dr Fraser Sugden is a human geographer who has written extensively on shifting class, gender and generational relations in agriculture, and their interaction with contemporary environmental, political and economic stresses.

He has conducted intensive rural fieldwork across South and East Asia, with a focus on Nepal and the Eastern Gangetic Plains, and was based in this region for most of the ...