The University of Sheffield
Department of Geography

Dr Daniel Hammett

Faculty Research Fellow

Dan Hammett

Room number: E14
Telephone (internal): 27956
Telephone (UK): 0114 222 7956
Telephone (International): +44 114 222 7956
Email: D.Hammett@Sheffield.ac.uk

Daniel Hammett read for a BA in Geography at the University of Oxford (2002) before moving to the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh where he gained his MSc by research (2003) and PhD (2007). He then held an ESRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship and an ESRC Research Fellowship at the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh before moving on to a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

He joined the Department in Sheffield as a Lecturer in 2010 and was awarded a Faculty Research Fellowship in 2012. He is also a Research Associate at the Department of Geography, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.

Research Interests

My research concerns the political and social geographies of Southern Africa. My work falls into two main themes: geographies of citizenship and belonging; and the geopolitics of Southern Africa.

Current research

Current research projects include:

Geographies of citizenship and democratisation in South Africa
This work builds from an earlier ESRC research award to explore questions of citizenship, democratisation and education in South Africa. In collaboration with Lynn Staeheli (Durham University), this work considered the ways in which the post-apartheid state conceives the ideals of South African citizenship and how these ideals were translated into citizenship education policy and practice and negotiated and experienced in a range of schools.

Political satire, iconography and contested constructions of the state and nation
Drawing from a range of sources including political cartoons, postage stamps, and political ephemera I explore the ways in which dynamic ideas of nation-hood and state-hood are projected, contested, interpreted and challenged in Southern Africa. - Post-colonialism, the academy and theory. The intention of this work is to develop a more post-colonially sensitive human geography that develops theory written by and from beyond the Anglo-American disciplinary core. Born of conversations with a range of colleagues in South Africa and the UK this project is leading to the development of outputs considering the state of human geography in South Africa, the role of theory in policy and practice, and the need to challenge 'core' assumptions regarding the Global South.

Teaching

Dan's teaching interests cover a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses which allow him to ensure that his lectures and seminars are informed by the latest research in his areas of interest. At the undergraduate level his work on courses in political and development geography explore key geographic issues and their relationship to everyday life. In particular, his teaching explores questions of uneven development, geopolitics and power relations. Through the use of various devices, including board games, music, videos and the media, he engages students in exploring the ways in which our understandings of the world around us are continually reshaped. Throughout these courses he utilises ongoing research interests in sub-Saharan Africa to demonstrate and unpack the theoretical and empirical material presented to make geographic debates interesting and accessible.

This concern with exploring power, development and (in)equality inform his postgraduate teaching in development geography through which he encourages students to consider and contest developmental assumptions and the power relations behind these.

Dan's excellence in teaching has been recognised with the award of status as a Senate Teaching Fellow in 2012 and the Innovation in Teaching award at the 2011 Sheffield Students' Union Academic Awards in recognition that good teaching has an enormous positive impact on student's learning experience.

His citation for the award reads:"As well as constantly bringing examples forward using you tube clips and satire, his enthusiasm and obvious love for what he was teaching me was incredible and incredibly contagious."

Dan teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses including:

GEO243 Political Geographies
GEO367 Development Geographies Field Class

GEO6801 Ideas and Practice in International Development
GEO6802 Research Design and Methods in International Development
GEO6803 Professional Skills for Development

All staff also engage in personal supervision and tutoring of individual students at all three undergraduate levels in the following modules:
GEO356 Geographical Research Project

Key Publications
  • Hammett, D. (2012). W(h)ither South African Human Geography? GeoForum, 43(5), 937-947.
    doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.05.009
  • Hammett, D. (2012). Tales from the Road: Reflections on power and disciplining within the academy. Environment and Planning A, 44(2), 445-457.
    doi:10.1068/a44326
  • Staeheli, L. and Hammett, D. (2010). Educating the New National Citizen: Education, Political Subjectivity, and Divided Societies. Citizenship Studies, 14(6), 667-680.
    doi: 10.1080/13621025.2010.522353
  • Hammett, D. (2010). Zapiro and Zuma: A Symptom of an Emerging Constitutional Crisis in South Africa? Political Geography, 29(2), 88-96.
    doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2010.01.009
  • Hammett, D. (2010). Ongoing contestations: the use of racial signifiers in post-apartheid South Africa. Social Identities: Journal for the study of race, nation and culture, 16(2), 247-260.
    doi:10.1080/13504631003691090

Professional Affiliations

Dan is the current treasurer of the RGS-IBG Political Geography Research Group and is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College. He is an editorial board member of Critical African Studies and Urban Forum, is book reviews editor for International Development Planning Review, and regularly reviews for Political Geography, Environment and Planning, International Journal of Educational Development and South African Geographical Journal.