Professor Gill Valentine

Department of Geography

Deputy Vice-Chancellor

Professor Gill Valentine - Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor
Profile picture of Professor Gill Valentine - Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor
G.Valentine@Sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 9780

Full contact details

Professor Gill Valentine
Department of Geography
Room E12
Geography and Planning Building
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
Research interests

Gill Valentine’s research is focused in three interconnected areas: 

  1. diversity and social inclusion
  2. childhood and family life
  3. urban cultures and consumption

Her research has been supported by the award of 15 research grants (value of >£5 million) from European Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and The Leverhulme Trust, as well as research contracts from Government Departments (including: Department for Education and Skills, Department for Work and Pensions) and Non Governmental Organisations (e.g. Gambling Commission, and Citizens Advice Bureau).

Gill has extensive experience of using innovative methodological tools (e.g. audio-diaries, a Big Brother diary room format and public art) and working with hard-to reach groups and with interpreters.

She recently completed an Arts and Humanities Research Council comparative research project about intergenerational justice in three contrasting national contexts (China, Uganda, and the UK) which involved the active collaboration of partners from the creative sector.

Prior to that Gill led a European Research Council Advanced Investigator award research programme Living with Difference in Europe: Making Communities out of Strangers in an Era of Super Mobility and Super Diversity which involved research in the UK and Poland.

She has also conducted international comparative research between UK and Denmark for the ESRC Post-conflict identities project and undertaken research in South Africa, Uganda, USA and UK as part of a social topographic study of a global faith network funded by the AHRC/ESRC.

Gill has (co)authored/edited 17 books and over 150 refereed journal articles.

Her research has been recognised by the award of the prestigious Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographies Murchison Award for her work on the geography of difference, equality and diversity and the RGS/IBG Gill Memorial Award for contributions to Geography and gender, as well as a Philip Leverhulme prize for high achieving scholars and a Sage prize for innovation and excellence.

Gill is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Research group

Gill Valentine has supervised over 20 postgraduate students, funded from a variety of sources, and has examined over 30 PhD students from five different countries.

Current PhD students

  • Anna Gawlewicz ERC (Nov 2010-present)
    Lived experience: the transmission of attitudes towards difference
  • Kasia Narkowicz ERC (Sept 2010-present)
    Spaces of conflict: a case study of group tensions in Warsaw
  • Ying Nan China Scholarship Council (Sept 2010-present)
    Religion and tourism in Tibet
  • Jennifer Brown ESRC (1+3) (Sept. 2008–present)
    A Home from Home? (De)constructing conceptualisations of home in experiences of transnational Polish migrant families in Manchester

Former PhD students

  • Rosa Mas Giralt (2011)
    Latin American families in the north of England and their diverse childhoods
  • Matthew Higgs (2010)
    Consuming Futures: exploring the role and meaning of alcohol within the spaces of higher education
  • Nancy Worth (2010)
    Transition spaces: Intersections of youth, identity and visual impairment
  • Peter Hemming (2009)
    School life, faith and culture: exploring religion and spirituality in children's everyday spaces
  • Chrissy Buse (2009)
    Silver surfers: older people’s use of the internet
  • Olivia Stevenson (2008)
    From public policy to family practices: A study of children and their families’ use of information and communication technology (ICTs)
  • Emma Rawlins (2008)
    Bodyspace: A study of childhood obesity discourse
  • Julia Keenan (2006)
    The governance of health through risk: Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia in Sheffield
  • Myles Balfe (2006)
    Personal geographies of diabetes
  • Charlotte Kenten (2005)
    Geographies of marginalised identities in non-metropolitan spaces
  • Ben Anderson (2004)
    A principle of hope: listening/hearing practices and everyday life
  • Camilla Bassi (2003)
    Asian gay counter hegemonic negotiations of Birmingham’s pink pound territory
  • Kathryn Morris-Roberts (2003)
    Individuality and (dis)identification in young women's friendship groups at school
  • Robert Vanderbeck (2002)
    Constructions of traveller young people: discourse practice, and power in contemporary Britain
  • Janet Elsden (2005)
    The lived body: experiences of ability and disability
  • Rachel Pennant (nee Burrows) (2001)
    Embodied identities : geographies of food, exercise and racialised masculinities
  • Tomasz Jozef Delph-Janiurek (2000)
    Language and the (re)production of gendered and sexualised space
  • Francine Watkins (1998)
    Imaginings of 'community' : contested social relations in an English rural village
Teaching activities

Gill has taught at all levels and in a wide range of formats including: lectures, tutorials, practicals, workshops, team project groups, and field classes.

She was the founder and original director of the MA in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Sheffield.

Gill has (co)authored/co-edited a number of textbooks (e.g. Social Geographies, Key Concepts in Geography, Key Methods in Geography, Key Thinkers on Space and Place, Key Texts in Geography, Approaches to Human Geography) as well as publishing teaching articles in Journal of Geography in Higher Education and Geography.

Gill currently has a senior management role in the University as the Provost and Deputy Vice Chancellor and is not therefore available to teaching undergraduates this year.

Professional activities and memberships

Gill Valentine was a co-founder and co-editor of the international journal Social & Cultural Geography (2000-08), co-editor of Gender, Place and Culture (1999-2004) and an original commissioning editor of the book series Key Ideas published by Taylor Francis.

She currently serves on the editorial boards of two international journals: Children’s Geographies, and Geography Compass.

Gill is a member of the ESRC’s Strategic Advisory Group, and was a member of the ESRC’s Steering Committee for the International Benchmarking Review of UK Human Geography.

She was appointed by the ESRC to evaluate two of its interdisciplinary investments: the Cultures of Consumption Research Programme and the Gender Equality Network, and has also been a member of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Research Programme Advisory Group the Philip Leverhulme Prize awards panel and has served in a number of international advisory roles including, for example, as a member of a Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities (QANU) research assessment committee and as an external assessor for the Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal.