USP research newsletter

Research activities 

Dr Paula Meth held a substantial and well-attended Festival of Social Science Exhibition in November 2022 at the Winter Gardens. This included an in-person exhibition, an online exhibition and two parallel exhibitions in South Africa during the same week. The exhibition lets us into the lives of young adults living in South Africa (Ekangala) and Ethiopia (Hawassa). Through photographs, videos, songs, stories, poems and interviews we get a glimpse of the ‘local areas’ they live in, and learn about their everyday lives, their dreams and frustrations. The online exhibition is still live.

Paula was invited to deliver the Annual Lovatt Lecture in October 2022 at Worcester University for staff, students and visitors from Geography, Biology and other disciplines. The lecture was titled: 'Youth and the work/housing nexus in the global South'.

Ryan Powell gave a presentation to the South East Migration Partnership on findings from the MIMY (Migrant Youth Integration and Empowerment) project and implications for unaccompanied asylum seeking children (Thea Shahrokh, SCS and Ryan Powell, USP). Funding from USP and HEIF has secured the continuation of the youth-led, arts-based groups established through MIMY: Young People Together in Sheffield and Becoming Us in Barnsley. These co-produced, collective spaces of creativity and care seek to foster peer support, youth-led change and ultimately re-frame narratives around young people seeking sanctuary in England. A documentary on the arts-based process will be publicly available in February. 

A new monograph and special issue that seeks to reinvigorate class analysis in polarizing times is being launched on 28 April here at Firth Court. Part of The Sociological Review series Class, Emotions and the Affective Politics of Social Inequality is edited by Jay Emery, Lee Crookes and Ryan Powell. The event brings together the co-editors, contributors and other scholars of class and social inequality in contributing to a reinvigorated dialogue on class and affective politics in the contemporary period. The publication features contributions from Michelle Addison, Satnam Virdee, Valerie Walkerdine, Ben Rogaly, Paul Watt and (our/Geography's very own) Rowan Jaines. 

Tickets are free and can be accessed here: Class, Emotions and the Affective Politics of Social Inequality Tickets, Fri 28 Apr 2023 at 13:00 | Eventbrite 

Liz Sharp’s research on how local communities can help to mitigate the challenge of intense rainfall has been featured by the RTPI as part of their ‘Planning Research Matters’ project. As part of this initiative the RTPI wants to showcase the exceptional research going on in RTPI accredited planning schools. The web resource also has an informative interview with Liz about the MAGIC research project funded by UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priority Fund for Climate Resilience. 

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Recent publications

BAKER, Alexander (2023) Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement & Resistance, The AAG Review of Books. 

CASAGRANDE, Olivia (2022) ‘On our own terms’: refusal, masks, and indigenous counter-narratives in Santiago de Chile public space, International Public History, 5(2):93-104. https://doi.org/10.1515/iph-2022-2050

METH, Paula (2022) Eternal urban youth? Waithood and agency in Ethiopian and South African settlements, Gateways, 15(2). https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8314

OLADIRAN, Olayiwola (2023) Implementation of Lean for Small and Medium-sized Construction Organisational Improvement, Smart and Sustainable Built Environment. https://doi.org/10.1108/SASBE-10-2022-0233

ROBINSON, David (2022) Race equality in housing: a review of the policy approach in England, Scotland and Wales. https://housingevidence.ac.uk/publications/race-equality-in-housing-a-review-of-the-policy-approach-in-england-scotland-and-wales/

WANG, Jingxia (2023) Quality index approach for analysis of urban green infrastructure in Himalayan cities, Land, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/land12020279

WHILE, Aidan (2023) Housing and the politics of Nationally Strategic Infrastructure Planning in England, Land Use Policy, 124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106429